And though her heart is willing to put out the fight, could she ever live without that fear again?
[14 October 11:09]
Well, this is day 2 of being in the hospital... I'm listening to X-Men 3 right now, so I'll come back to this later.
[11:32] (had to rebuild LogJam in order to have it do XMMS detection - didn't know I had to turn on a makefile flag. At least I keep all my distfiles.)
[17 October 20:57]
Well, day 5 now. I did get the voice post number, as you've noticed. Had to talk my brother through logging in to LJ Monday and to the FAQ entry with the numbers, but I did it. Talked him through one of his last two computer class assignments in return (he brought my Dad's laptop up here - I don't have Microsoft Office on this one, I have OpenOffice instead!)
First, why I'm here this time. About 3 weeks ago, I had a vomiting spell (and I should specify, I mean repetitive, every 30 minutes, up to and including stomach acid vomiting, even if I hadn't drank or ate anything) - I may have mentioned it to one or two of you, or maybe even publicly here. Can't check at the moment, no Internet access! It lasted about 4 hours, and then stopped, so I didn't worry too much about it. Last Thursday morning, I was feeling nauseous as soon as I had woke up, and by noon, another spell had started. Unfortunately, this one wouldn't stop, and since Dr. Shinoura has been trying to get me off prednisone, (I had seen him since that spell and mentioned it to him) he wanted me to call him if another one started. I did that at about 3 or so. He said if it didn't get better by 9, to come in to the ER, and he'd be on call tonight to get me admitted. It stopped for a little bit at 7, I drank some Gatorade at 8, and it all came up again at 9:30 - with it feeling like there was more to come. Mom got home 5 minutes later (she had taken my sister someplace - if I recall correctly, she had a choir concert) and I got a blessing, started packing (or should I say "finished"? I keep a hospital bag packed nowadays,) and got to the ER at 10:15. Threw up a little bit more while I was getting admitted, so they had me in a bed, with a catheter, a VERY fast IV (500ml/hr) and EKG leads on me before midnight, along with the usual blood testing. Got transferred up to the GI wing at about 3am Friday morning. After the steroid and antibiotic shots, no more vomiting - so I must have gotten here in time for it to be "not so serious".
This time, I actually have someone who actually speaks English - or is trying to - in my room for the past few days. Of course, she's 19, and VERY curious. I must have been introduced to everybody in her family by now, and I think she's wondering why I don't have any games on this computer! (I have a few, just not too many, and it's not as if I can get more while I'm here.)
Got done with both most of the stuff I actually CAN do with the laptop (other than DVD watching) the last few days. I've sent X-Men 3 back - I've seen both the commentaries on it now. Next will be Hoodwinked - and I'll watch it tomorrow. (I just finished a free film I downloaded called "The Boy Who Never Slept" - it was so-so. I'm not going to recommend it to anybody - the language was a little coarse for my taste. I thought the subject matter would be better than it was. The film was well done, however.) I've even got a little website on this computer (I had the DynDNS domain name set up before I went in, so I'm using it for this computer... I'll probably move a lot of the material from my Geocities website over here... that way I can keep it updated better. (Give me two days to bring it up - I just found out I'll have a 6-hour compile on ths system to do because of two major upgrades at once.)
I've got a list of ports (FreeBSD's equivalent to Linux's RPM packages to install software) to download and other stuff to do when I get home, of course.
After family home evening last night, many of the people who went came up to see me! That was quite fun. We ended up having to go to the floor lounge, as they got here just as visiting hours got over... talked for an hour.
I DO have good news! They're talking about me getting out FRIDAY because everything is going so well. That'll be quite nice. Only one week this time. Pray I don't catch the flu again, OK? That would be just downright MEAN.
Yes, that means I'm eating. Been back on liquids since Saturday, and been eating since Sunday afternoon. The stuff is decent for the most part, although I could only choke down a few bites of the cooked spinach they tried to serve as a vegetable at breakfast today. Mom should be bringing up more stuff tomorrow afternoon. (She's been sick herself - the stress from that may be part of the reason why I got so bad so fast. That and we tried something new that my system might have reacted to - but it shouldn't have reacted as bad as it did for as much of it as I had!) I'm also only on an IV port since Sunday night - I'm not hooked to an IV 24/7 at the moment, just 30 minutes every 6 hours for the antibiotic.
I'm back up on 30mg prednisone (I was down to 5mg when I went in.) I wanted to get off it! But if I'm stuck being on it, I'm stuck (at least until I can go stateside and see about whether Entocort will work for me!) - they started that instead of the shots this morning. I think I'll be starting the Pentasa and Imuran up again within the next few days, as well as some Elental, before I go home.
I will mention one thing - I can barely believe how much my weight is jumping! When I was admitted, I was down to 56.70 kg (125 lbs) - for obvious reasons. (I literally had a negative one gallon fluid intake Thursday, if you can believe that! I certainly can!) My weight Sunday morning was 61.something kg, and by Monday morning I was 64.20kg (141.5 lbs) again. (My weight's up a bit because I had the "ravenous appetite" side effect from the pred - one reason why I wanted to get off it!)
This also means I missed General Conference - and I haven't been able to watch it, either. I was too sick to think about copying it to the laptop (I have the WMV files for the general sessions downloaded at home, but I can't talk somebody through burning it for me), and nobody has the DVD disks yet that can get it to me easily.
It's almost 10pm, which means I've got to shut down for the night and get some sleep. I may voice-post tomorrow with the bit about Friday. Haven't decided yet.
[19 October 9:32 am]
Well, I just got told 45 minutes ago that it is TODAY I'm going home! That is great news. (I was figuring on having to rush Friday and Saturday to get all the stuff done before Sunday that I need/want to do! Now things will be MUCH easier!)
I'm now at 62.70kg (138 lb) by the way. Should try and work it down to 60kg (132 lb) safely - that's where I'd like to be.
Well, this is day 2 of being in the hospital... I'm listening to X-Men 3 right now, so I'll come back to this later.
[11:32] (had to rebuild LogJam in order to have it do XMMS detection - didn't know I had to turn on a makefile flag. At least I keep all my distfiles.)
[17 October 20:57]
Well, day 5 now. I did get the voice post number, as you've noticed. Had to talk my brother through logging in to LJ Monday and to the FAQ entry with the numbers, but I did it. Talked him through one of his last two computer class assignments in return (he brought my Dad's laptop up here - I don't have Microsoft Office on this one, I have OpenOffice instead!)
First, why I'm here this time. About 3 weeks ago, I had a vomiting spell (and I should specify, I mean repetitive, every 30 minutes, up to and including stomach acid vomiting, even if I hadn't drank or ate anything) - I may have mentioned it to one or two of you, or maybe even publicly here. Can't check at the moment, no Internet access! It lasted about 4 hours, and then stopped, so I didn't worry too much about it. Last Thursday morning, I was feeling nauseous as soon as I had woke up, and by noon, another spell had started. Unfortunately, this one wouldn't stop, and since Dr. Shinoura has been trying to get me off prednisone, (I had seen him since that spell and mentioned it to him) he wanted me to call him if another one started. I did that at about 3 or so. He said if it didn't get better by 9, to come in to the ER, and he'd be on call tonight to get me admitted. It stopped for a little bit at 7, I drank some Gatorade at 8, and it all came up again at 9:30 - with it feeling like there was more to come. Mom got home 5 minutes later (she had taken my sister someplace - if I recall correctly, she had a choir concert) and I got a blessing, started packing (or should I say "finished"? I keep a hospital bag packed nowadays,) and got to the ER at 10:15. Threw up a little bit more while I was getting admitted, so they had me in a bed, with a catheter, a VERY fast IV (500ml/hr) and EKG leads on me before midnight, along with the usual blood testing. Got transferred up to the GI wing at about 3am Friday morning. After the steroid and antibiotic shots, no more vomiting - so I must have gotten here in time for it to be "not so serious".
This time, I actually have someone who actually speaks English - or is trying to - in my room for the past few days. Of course, she's 19, and VERY curious. I must have been introduced to everybody in her family by now, and I think she's wondering why I don't have any games on this computer! (I have a few, just not too many, and it's not as if I can get more while I'm here.)
Got done with both most of the stuff I actually CAN do with the laptop (other than DVD watching) the last few days. I've sent X-Men 3 back - I've seen both the commentaries on it now. Next will be Hoodwinked - and I'll watch it tomorrow. (I just finished a free film I downloaded called "The Boy Who Never Slept" - it was so-so. I'm not going to recommend it to anybody - the language was a little coarse for my taste. I thought the subject matter would be better than it was. The film was well done, however.) I've even got a little website on this computer (I had the DynDNS domain name set up before I went in, so I'm using it for this computer... I'll probably move a lot of the material from my Geocities website over here... that way I can keep it updated better. (Give me two days to bring it up - I just found out I'll have a 6-hour compile on ths system to do because of two major upgrades at once.)
I've got a list of ports (FreeBSD's equivalent to Linux's RPM packages to install software) to download and other stuff to do when I get home, of course.
After family home evening last night, many of the people who went came up to see me! That was quite fun. We ended up having to go to the floor lounge, as they got here just as visiting hours got over... talked for an hour.
I DO have good news! They're talking about me getting out FRIDAY because everything is going so well. That'll be quite nice. Only one week this time. Pray I don't catch the flu again, OK? That would be just downright MEAN.
Yes, that means I'm eating. Been back on liquids since Saturday, and been eating since Sunday afternoon. The stuff is decent for the most part, although I could only choke down a few bites of the cooked spinach they tried to serve as a vegetable at breakfast today. Mom should be bringing up more stuff tomorrow afternoon. (She's been sick herself - the stress from that may be part of the reason why I got so bad so fast. That and we tried something new that my system might have reacted to - but it shouldn't have reacted as bad as it did for as much of it as I had!) I'm also only on an IV port since Sunday night - I'm not hooked to an IV 24/7 at the moment, just 30 minutes every 6 hours for the antibiotic.
I'm back up on 30mg prednisone (I was down to 5mg when I went in.) I wanted to get off it! But if I'm stuck being on it, I'm stuck (at least until I can go stateside and see about whether Entocort will work for me!) - they started that instead of the shots this morning. I think I'll be starting the Pentasa and Imuran up again within the next few days, as well as some Elental, before I go home.
I will mention one thing - I can barely believe how much my weight is jumping! When I was admitted, I was down to 56.70 kg (125 lbs) - for obvious reasons. (I literally had a negative one gallon fluid intake Thursday, if you can believe that! I certainly can!) My weight Sunday morning was 61.something kg, and by Monday morning I was 64.20kg (141.5 lbs) again. (My weight's up a bit because I had the "ravenous appetite" side effect from the pred - one reason why I wanted to get off it!)
This also means I missed General Conference - and I haven't been able to watch it, either. I was too sick to think about copying it to the laptop (I have the WMV files for the general sessions downloaded at home, but I can't talk somebody through burning it for me), and nobody has the DVD disks yet that can get it to me easily.
It's almost 10pm, which means I've got to shut down for the night and get some sleep. I may voice-post tomorrow with the bit about Friday. Haven't decided yet.
[19 October 9:32 am]
Well, I just got told 45 minutes ago that it is TODAY I'm going home! That is great news. (I was figuring on having to rush Friday and Saturday to get all the stuff done before Sunday that I need/want to do! Now things will be MUCH easier!)
I'm now at 62.70kg (138 lb) by the way. Should try and work it down to 60kg (132 lb) safely - that's where I'd like to be.