Rough Month
So far this has been a pretty rough month for me. Not only has it been incredibly hot, like 103º hot WITH humidity, but other bits of turmoil have happened. For instance, my stepmom of nearly seventeen years passed away two weeks ago. Long story short, last October she had to be admitted to the hospital to undergo open heart surgery, and hasn't been at home all through the holidays. She got out sometime in late January, but was still back and forth to the hospital to be put on dialysis three times a week. She did much of nothing while she was here. Never got up to move around too much because she was always sitting around watching TV all day. Not good for one's health. You can gain blood clots that way. Still, it's not like her condition got any better. After her final surgery, she just kept getting worse, but then, it happened. Three weeks back, while she was getting done using the bathroom, my dad turned away from her for two seconds to go get some water for her, she loses her balance, falls, and hits her head on the side of our bathtub. Now I was a sleep at the time (I work overnights now) so I don't know everything that happened. All I remember was the EMTs coming in the house, which is what woke me up in the first place, tending to my unconscious step-mom, and the next thing I know, she's back in the hospital suffering from head trauma. She was only there for seven days, and the Tuesday morning I got home from work and was about to lay down to go to sleep, my dad came in with the bad news that she had passed away from her head injury. It happened while I was at work, so I was the last to know.
What made matters worse is that I was completely unable to go to the funeral, which was last Monday. I had a health scare of my own. The day before, which was my evening off, I had some lunch consisting of some pizza when I started to feel really bad two hours after eating. So bad I ended up throwing up every bit of my lunch. I ended up throwing up about six times afterwards and couldn't sleep at all that night. I thought it was just an upset stomach, but then I noticed I was starting to breathe faster and my heart was racing just as fast. I made the conscious decision to skip the funeral altogether and check myself in the emergency room. Good thing I did because, low and behold, it was my diabetes attacking me. I had just experienced my first diabetic ketoacidosis attack, and it was because my body wasn't producing enough insulin to battle all the sugar I had put in myself. Man, I had no idea how defective my pancreas was. My blood glucose level was up to 389, which is really high and should never be up there. Unlike the last hospital and doctor I was seeing, now it was official that I am Type 1 diabetic, which means I absolutely need to keep taking insulin all my life. I cannot be off it. So at that point, I was in the hospital for a total of four days, getting out last Thursday. Not a good experience being in the hospital AGAIN in a two year period. So now I'm out, taking insulin multiple times a day again, and just trying to keep my glucose under control. I'm going to schedule an appointment with a brand new doctor this week, so I can have a follow-up treatment within the next two weeks. I'm also going to see an endocrinologist as well (that's what the hospital wants).
So now, in this house it's just me and my dad (and our animals). He's been pretty reclusive the past few week, not wanting to get out of the house to do much of anything aside from work. I, on the other hand, despite my DKA panic attack, have made every effort to get out and enjoy myself and the company of family (for instance, my aunt got married over the weekend, and I went, but not my dad). It's good to have that working relationship with one's family after you've been through so much.
Here's hoping the next few months for me goes over a little bit better than this one. I'm on my meds for now, and plan to stay on them this time. Speaking of which, time to go stick myself again so I can go eat. Later.
What made matters worse is that I was completely unable to go to the funeral, which was last Monday. I had a health scare of my own. The day before, which was my evening off, I had some lunch consisting of some pizza when I started to feel really bad two hours after eating. So bad I ended up throwing up every bit of my lunch. I ended up throwing up about six times afterwards and couldn't sleep at all that night. I thought it was just an upset stomach, but then I noticed I was starting to breathe faster and my heart was racing just as fast. I made the conscious decision to skip the funeral altogether and check myself in the emergency room. Good thing I did because, low and behold, it was my diabetes attacking me. I had just experienced my first diabetic ketoacidosis attack, and it was because my body wasn't producing enough insulin to battle all the sugar I had put in myself. Man, I had no idea how defective my pancreas was. My blood glucose level was up to 389, which is really high and should never be up there. Unlike the last hospital and doctor I was seeing, now it was official that I am Type 1 diabetic, which means I absolutely need to keep taking insulin all my life. I cannot be off it. So at that point, I was in the hospital for a total of four days, getting out last Thursday. Not a good experience being in the hospital AGAIN in a two year period. So now I'm out, taking insulin multiple times a day again, and just trying to keep my glucose under control. I'm going to schedule an appointment with a brand new doctor this week, so I can have a follow-up treatment within the next two weeks. I'm also going to see an endocrinologist as well (that's what the hospital wants).
So now, in this house it's just me and my dad (and our animals). He's been pretty reclusive the past few week, not wanting to get out of the house to do much of anything aside from work. I, on the other hand, despite my DKA panic attack, have made every effort to get out and enjoy myself and the company of family (for instance, my aunt got married over the weekend, and I went, but not my dad). It's good to have that working relationship with one's family after you've been through so much.
Here's hoping the next few months for me goes over a little bit better than this one. I'm on my meds for now, and plan to stay on them this time. Speaking of which, time to go stick myself again so I can go eat. Later.