GGGAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!
I'm quite annoyed. Mainly, it's because I'm just stressed to the gills. I'm also in a hell of a lot of pain right now, and thus have a much shorter fuse than normal.
Mom has been in the hospital TWICE. Once this past weekend, then a trip to the ER yesterday. When she was first in the ER last Thursday, her blood pressure was in the toilet. Like, 80/40 (where normal is 120/80), which is bordering on too low to pump blood around the body at all. Since she is generally hypertensive and is therefore on blood pressure medicine, the doctor stopped it while she was inpatient and loaded her up with IV fluid and 5 units of blood. However, he neglected to realize that at some point he would give her too much fluid for her body to handle. So he put her into fluid overload. However, since she was on total bed rest while in the hospital, her bp looked completely normal. Then, as she came home, and started being subjected to normal life again, her blood pressure increased. She went into a hypertensive crisis (her pressure, before going back into the ER yesterday was 160/110, which is stroke territory). However, her pulse rate was 60 (80 is a normal resting pulse), so she couldn't take her blood pressure medication to bring it down because it was a combo drug with a heart medication that helps her heart arrhythmia which would bring her pulse down too much. Which is why we took her back to the ER. Well, Sis took her, since I was already out at the doctor's office. While there, the smart ER doc got a chest Xray because she was also having problems breathing when lying down. Turns out that not only did the stupid cardiologist attending overload her with fluids enough to push her over into hypertension, but also cause fluid to back up into her lungs and become pneumonia. Yep, you read that right. Pneumonia. My poor mom can't seem to catch a break. At least all of her coworkers are really concerned about her and have said in no uncertain terms, "DO NOT COME BACK UNTIL YOU ARE WELL." She saw the idiot cardiologist today to get him to sign off on her going back to work. Naturally, (and what I hoped, really) he wouldn't let her until the pneumonia clears. So she'll be home through the weekend, at least. Being home is bothering her, since she's one of those work work work people, and thus she's being rather cranky and prone to overreaction. I'm trying to stay out of her way, but help where I can.
Unfortunately, I'm also being rather cranky and prone to overreaction. I'm just in so much pain. I hate complaining about it, but... so I mentioned my knee and how it dislocated a few weeks ago. I had taken it easy and my knee was about 80% better. Still a little pain, but as of Thursday afternoon, I was doing well. Then, Thursday night, I re-dislocated it. OMG SO PAINFUL. Basically, the medial (inner) side of my tibial head popped forward, then back into place. (See helpful diagram, below.) I have always had tendinitis in my patellar tendon (the one that holds the kneecap in-between the femur and tibia). Now, because of the way I injured my left knee, it feels like the back of my patellar tendon is being scraped with hot forks. In the movement that caused the dislocation, I also hyper-extended my knee, and thus sprained my hamstring. My medial collateral ligament (MCL - the one connecting the femur to tibia on the inner side of the knee) is also sprained. To top that off, my knee on the outer (lateral) side is creaking/popping/cracking, a phenomenon known as crepitus. It's indicative of something really bad going on in the joint space (generally, two bones rubbing together - YIKES). In other words, I totally, royally, fucked up my left knee.
Because my left knee is out of commission as far as bending and weight bearing is concerned, my right knee has had to take over those duties. So now, instead of being able to use staircases like a normal person, and, hell, WALK like a normal person, I'm totally gimpy. I'm having to step down with my left leg, then follow with my right when going downstairs, and pushing up with my right, then following with my straight left leg when heading up. This puts so much pressure OMG on my right knee. And it didn't start out in much better shape than the left one. So I'm basically injuring the right one as I try to heal the left. And, with my wonky gait, all of the tendons and ligaments around my ankles are strained, and it's making my back and hips hurt. Naturally, this all causes my fibromyalgia to kick off. YAY. So, when my pain might normally be a 4, the fibromyalgia points in my knees are causing my nerves to send signals to my brain that my knees are way more hurt than what they probably really are. Reality: a mild sprain. My brain thinks: MY KNEE IS BROKEN!! BROKEN!!! WWAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!
So, on that lovely scale of 0-10, where 0 is no pain, and 10 is the worst pain you ever felt, I was at a 9 1/2 today. And I had to function. Which SUCKED SO MUCH OMG. You know how when an animal is injured, they cower in a corner and get snappy? That was me today. I yelled at the doctor's nurse because I got so frustrated. OH! Don't even get me started on that saga. Suffice it to say that I had one of those days where I got completely and utterly fed up with HCHD and the bureaucracy. They took 2 x-rays of my left knee today. Both of them lying down. I asked the tech to call over to Dr. Hall to have him add the 2 weight-bearing views, which would be really useful, since the main pain occurs during weight-bearing. She said they couldn't do that, so I went over to talk with the nurse. She told me that he was too busy and that I would have to see him again in order to get him to order two more measly xrays. *shakes head* That pissed me off. It's a fucking phone call/fix in the system. And it would be a very important diagnostic tool. But NOOO. So I'm stuck waiting to see him until 3/21 to get 2 more damn xrays. Then again, I won't get an MRI of my knee until APRIL 21. By then, it'll be healed (I hope). This is what I mean. Things move so slowly, it's absurd to try to get any help for anything. But this news of being put off for another 2 weeks for more xrays and then another month after that for the MRI translated to me in my pain this afternoon as, "you'll be in pain forever." That just overwhelmed and pushed me to tears. The asshole security guard walked up with his hand on his only weapon (his flashlight) like I was going to cause trouble. I said I was just in a lot of pain and that I was very frustrated that it was going to take weeks to get the basic testing done, and thus treatment would take weeks more to start, and I didn't want to face over a month of more serious pain. He asked if the doctor had given me any medication. I explained that while he had given me vicodin ("Nice..."), that was really useless since I couldn't take it and do things like drive. ("OH.... right.") So I was in a lot of pain and feeling like the doctor and staff didn't really care. And that I was stuck in a system that definitely didn't care. He was nice after that.
I just realized that I still ended up giving you the whole sordid saga, even though I tried to sum up in a sentence back there. Sorry.
I spent my hour with Monica, my wonderful fantastic therapist (Praise JESUS for her, seriously), yelling about Mom and her hospitalizations freaking me out - the scariest sentence I've ever heard is, "So, Mom is really sick and was just taken to the ER by EMS," - the fact that HCHD is making me feel postal, that Mom and Sis continue to compare their pain/stress/etc. with mine (WHICH IS RI-FRICKING-DICULOUS), etc.
I'm home, curled up with Dr. G on TV, a little wine (though a lot of whine, as is obvious with this post), leftover chinese (chicken fried rice), and some vicodin. I'm just trying to chill out - literally, as it's still warm upstairs, and figuratively - and let today go.
Mom has been in the hospital TWICE. Once this past weekend, then a trip to the ER yesterday. When she was first in the ER last Thursday, her blood pressure was in the toilet. Like, 80/40 (where normal is 120/80), which is bordering on too low to pump blood around the body at all. Since she is generally hypertensive and is therefore on blood pressure medicine, the doctor stopped it while she was inpatient and loaded her up with IV fluid and 5 units of blood. However, he neglected to realize that at some point he would give her too much fluid for her body to handle. So he put her into fluid overload. However, since she was on total bed rest while in the hospital, her bp looked completely normal. Then, as she came home, and started being subjected to normal life again, her blood pressure increased. She went into a hypertensive crisis (her pressure, before going back into the ER yesterday was 160/110, which is stroke territory). However, her pulse rate was 60 (80 is a normal resting pulse), so she couldn't take her blood pressure medication to bring it down because it was a combo drug with a heart medication that helps her heart arrhythmia which would bring her pulse down too much. Which is why we took her back to the ER. Well, Sis took her, since I was already out at the doctor's office. While there, the smart ER doc got a chest Xray because she was also having problems breathing when lying down. Turns out that not only did the stupid cardiologist attending overload her with fluids enough to push her over into hypertension, but also cause fluid to back up into her lungs and become pneumonia. Yep, you read that right. Pneumonia. My poor mom can't seem to catch a break. At least all of her coworkers are really concerned about her and have said in no uncertain terms, "DO NOT COME BACK UNTIL YOU ARE WELL." She saw the idiot cardiologist today to get him to sign off on her going back to work. Naturally, (and what I hoped, really) he wouldn't let her until the pneumonia clears. So she'll be home through the weekend, at least. Being home is bothering her, since she's one of those work work work people, and thus she's being rather cranky and prone to overreaction. I'm trying to stay out of her way, but help where I can.
Unfortunately, I'm also being rather cranky and prone to overreaction. I'm just in so much pain. I hate complaining about it, but... so I mentioned my knee and how it dislocated a few weeks ago. I had taken it easy and my knee was about 80% better. Still a little pain, but as of Thursday afternoon, I was doing well. Then, Thursday night, I re-dislocated it. OMG SO PAINFUL. Basically, the medial (inner) side of my tibial head popped forward, then back into place. (See helpful diagram, below.) I have always had tendinitis in my patellar tendon (the one that holds the kneecap in-between the femur and tibia). Now, because of the way I injured my left knee, it feels like the back of my patellar tendon is being scraped with hot forks. In the movement that caused the dislocation, I also hyper-extended my knee, and thus sprained my hamstring. My medial collateral ligament (MCL - the one connecting the femur to tibia on the inner side of the knee) is also sprained. To top that off, my knee on the outer (lateral) side is creaking/popping/cracking, a phenomenon known as crepitus. It's indicative of something really bad going on in the joint space (generally, two bones rubbing together - YIKES). In other words, I totally, royally, fucked up my left knee.
Because my left knee is out of commission as far as bending and weight bearing is concerned, my right knee has had to take over those duties. So now, instead of being able to use staircases like a normal person, and, hell, WALK like a normal person, I'm totally gimpy. I'm having to step down with my left leg, then follow with my right when going downstairs, and pushing up with my right, then following with my straight left leg when heading up. This puts so much pressure OMG on my right knee. And it didn't start out in much better shape than the left one. So I'm basically injuring the right one as I try to heal the left. And, with my wonky gait, all of the tendons and ligaments around my ankles are strained, and it's making my back and hips hurt. Naturally, this all causes my fibromyalgia to kick off. YAY. So, when my pain might normally be a 4, the fibromyalgia points in my knees are causing my nerves to send signals to my brain that my knees are way more hurt than what they probably really are. Reality: a mild sprain. My brain thinks: MY KNEE IS BROKEN!! BROKEN!!! WWAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!
So, on that lovely scale of 0-10, where 0 is no pain, and 10 is the worst pain you ever felt, I was at a 9 1/2 today. And I had to function. Which SUCKED SO MUCH OMG. You know how when an animal is injured, they cower in a corner and get snappy? That was me today. I yelled at the doctor's nurse because I got so frustrated. OH! Don't even get me started on that saga. Suffice it to say that I had one of those days where I got completely and utterly fed up with HCHD and the bureaucracy. They took 2 x-rays of my left knee today. Both of them lying down. I asked the tech to call over to Dr. Hall to have him add the 2 weight-bearing views, which would be really useful, since the main pain occurs during weight-bearing. She said they couldn't do that, so I went over to talk with the nurse. She told me that he was too busy and that I would have to see him again in order to get him to order two more measly xrays. *shakes head* That pissed me off. It's a fucking phone call/fix in the system. And it would be a very important diagnostic tool. But NOOO. So I'm stuck waiting to see him until 3/21 to get 2 more damn xrays. Then again, I won't get an MRI of my knee until APRIL 21. By then, it'll be healed (I hope). This is what I mean. Things move so slowly, it's absurd to try to get any help for anything. But this news of being put off for another 2 weeks for more xrays and then another month after that for the MRI translated to me in my pain this afternoon as, "you'll be in pain forever." That just overwhelmed and pushed me to tears. The asshole security guard walked up with his hand on his only weapon (his flashlight) like I was going to cause trouble. I said I was just in a lot of pain and that I was very frustrated that it was going to take weeks to get the basic testing done, and thus treatment would take weeks more to start, and I didn't want to face over a month of more serious pain. He asked if the doctor had given me any medication. I explained that while he had given me vicodin ("Nice..."), that was really useless since I couldn't take it and do things like drive. ("OH.... right.") So I was in a lot of pain and feeling like the doctor and staff didn't really care. And that I was stuck in a system that definitely didn't care. He was nice after that.
I just realized that I still ended up giving you the whole sordid saga, even though I tried to sum up in a sentence back there. Sorry.
I spent my hour with Monica, my wonderful fantastic therapist (Praise JESUS for her, seriously), yelling about Mom and her hospitalizations freaking me out - the scariest sentence I've ever heard is, "So, Mom is really sick and was just taken to the ER by EMS," - the fact that HCHD is making me feel postal, that Mom and Sis continue to compare their pain/stress/etc. with mine (WHICH IS RI-FRICKING-DICULOUS), etc.
I'm home, curled up with Dr. G on TV, a little wine (though a lot of whine, as is obvious with this post), leftover chinese (chicken fried rice), and some vicodin. I'm just trying to chill out - literally, as it's still warm upstairs, and figuratively - and let today go.