What really happened to me this last month.
First of all, I'm sorry this entry is so late in coming. I promised you all an update regarding my health, and I've been bad about sitting down to write it.
To begin at the beginning:
Sunday Dec. 20:
I was sent home from work in severe pain. I had horrible headaches, and 2 vicodin and 4 ibuprofen were not enough to get it to even diminish. I was very cold, and by this point very stressed out about it. I went home and went straight to bed.
Monday Dec. 21:
I got up in the morning only feeling mildly (but not much) better in the headache department, so I woke up and went to the washroom, came back, and immediately bolted for the washroom again. I had nothing on my stomach, but I vomited anyway. I wouldn't have been too worried if it weren't for the fact that more than 10% of it contained bright red blood. Not good. I call the partner and tell her that I'm going to the emergency room. She calls work and tells them what is going on, and with my roommate driving, we pick her up en route.
I get to the ER and am seen almost instantly. They take my blood pressure, and it is over 200/100, which is BAD. I lose my stomach contents again with the same results, and this brings the ER supervisor running. They pump me full of stomach stabilizers and things to make this stop, as well as a high dose of Morphine (which I detest, it makes me feel horrible despite taking away the pain), and I fall asleep for a little bit while they get my fluids up.
I wake up and they are prepping me for an EKG, sticking electrodes all over my front that do NOT come off easily (more on that later). I don't remember the results specifically, which I guess is good, because it must not have been that critical. So I find myself being prepared for a CT scan, and am soon wheeled downstairs to stare at palm trees in the light fixtures while they radiate my brain. I end up back in the ER and my BP is quite a bit more normal, though still a little high. The decision is made to determine if there is any blood in my spinal fluid, so I have to go through a Lumbar Puncture, more commonly known as a Spinal Tap (yes, you can make the movie joke.) Since they see no blood in my fluid after testing it, they take blood from me in general to test all the other things they test when taking blood. During all this time, the partner is updating both of our families to let them know what is up, as well as updating facebook and here for me. After a bunch of waiting, the decision is made to keep me overnight for observation, and order an MRI for me the next day.
I HATE HOSPITAL BEDS. I have a hard enough time finding a comfortable position in my own bed, but once I find it, I'm fine. Hospital beds? Forget it. May as well have been concrete impregnated teak wood. On top of this, I get hooked up to a heart monitor that has even MORE electrodes pasted on my front, and they have to keep adding new ones every 8 hours or so, because while they come loose enough to not give an accurate reading, they do NOT come off. And of course, I'm still hooked up to an IV, so I'm flat on my back. So do I sleep? NO! At least, not much. I think at one point, exhaustion took over enough to get me an hour to two between constantly being woken up to check my blood pressure and make sure that the heart monitor I'm on is working. When I come to the last time, my back, arms, and legs are aching horribly, despite the morphine that I'm on.
Tuesday Dec. 22:
I get taken of of the IV and prepped for my MRI around 10:00AM. I've managed to be able to walk myself back and forth to the loo without too much of an issue, though I get horrible chills whenever I do. But when I get back into bed, its too hot, and the sheets stick to me. Not to mention that if I stay out of bed too long, I vomit. I discovery WHY this is happening, but I don't think the doctors understood it when I tried to explain it. See, when I set myself up vertically, I would get this sinking feeling in my head like my brain is settling down on something rough. This makes me break out in a cold sweat, and leads to vomiting. I found out later that this was just because my spine hadn't completely reproduced all the fluids I'd lost during the tap. Basically it means that if I lie down again soon enough, I am fine. But of course lying down is an issue, because I'm aching so badly.
I get taken down for my MRI (and an MRA, too, they decide), which was horribly annoying. I really hated it, to be honest. And I'm such a nerd, too. What do I do for the 30 minutes while I'm cramped up into a tiny tube inside a giant machine listening to pounding and thumping and other horrible noises? My mind starts to recite:
"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."
This is the only thing that gets me through it. Those of you who know what that is from may laugh, because it does indeed emphasize my nerdiness, but it works. I get pulled out of the MRI so they can inject me with stuff that will make it easier to take high contrast scans of the last set. This again, makes me vomit as before. Once the scans are done, I get sent back up to my room. I am not put on fluids, and I can't sit upright for more than a few minutes because of that sinking feeling. They dump me on solid foods, or try to, and I can only handle small sips of broth for a while. And I finally say to hell with it and find a way to lie on my side, which allows me to sleep some.
About 3 I am told that my tests all came back fine and I should go home with a bunch of prescriptions and some other suggestions. The problem is, I have no energy. I force food down and sleep a bit more, and get dressed, but because of that sinking feeling, I can't stay upright for too long and vomit again. I wasn't dizzy or anything, just that feeling made me really nauseous. The doctors keep me until later that night and tell me that if I can walk around without vomiting for 5 minutes, I will be released. I manage to save up enough willpower to make this happen, because I know I won't sleep until I get home. I finally am released from the hospital around 7, come home (thank you so much for the ride, Tim!) and throw up one more time from the motion, and then go right to bed and sleep. And boy howdy do I sleep.
Wednesday Dec. 23:
The doctors told me to take my blood pressure twice a day, and put me on Amlodipine, Hydrochlorohyiazide for my blood pressure, and Protonix for my stomach. The partner goes out early in the morning to get my meds and a blood pressure machine, and keeps me on broth and water most of the day, and while I'm not vomiting anymore, I still am not able to be upright for long. I find I have to move the head of my bed away from the wall it is near, because the draft from the window is making my head hurt. I'm slowly recovering, though, and she manages later in the day to go do some grocery shopping to get me some more to eat when I'm feeling better. I begin to live on humus. Thank heaven for humus. I sleep off and on, and am finally starting to feel a little warmer and not feel like a shell.
Thursday Dec. 24:
I am moving around a bit more, and the sinking feeling happens less and less, though I find that I don't have the energy to hold my head up for very long; my neck is just too weak. I manage to force myself to take a shower, however, and get all the electrodes off of me and wash up for the first time in days (which was a wonderful feeling, washing all the hospital off of me) and come back to sit down. I soon find, however, that my hair is too heavy and is causing all sorts of issues, so the partner puts a towel down on my pillow and I lie down.
This is where I break down. I must have cried for at least an hour. The feeling of absolute helplessness really swoops in at this point and I am feeling horrible. I know I'd been through a lot in the past 3 days, but I've never had this severe of an experience, and my body has never taken this long to recover from anything that I can remember. I'm feeling very very scared at this point, and useless, and helpless, and a vast myriad of other emotions that I can't completely list here. But I am DEPRESSED.
Surprisingly, the breakdown helped, because later that evening, I was lying down in the living room, clad in layers and blankets, watching movies with the roomies and partner. I sit up when I can, lie back down when I get tired. Make it through 2 movies, which makes me feel good, despite myself. The partner, in the meantime, is researching the dietary restrictions I've been given by my doctor. And let me tell you, they are vague. VERY vague. "Low sodium, but not low nutrition. Be certain that you don't go too high or too low." Never do they tell us how to gage how much is too high or too low, we don't find this out until much later. I'm ready for more solid food, and the gang finds out that there's much lower sodium in a small Domino's pepperoni pizza than we thought, so I end up with a couple of slices of that. I feel a little more human.
Friday Dec. 25:
I'm still feeling weak, and still can't be very active, but I manage to rest up enough to have Christmas Dinner with the roomie and partner out in the living room. We watch a movie, though I dun remember what it is. I go to bed early. I've done the obligatory things this week, like calling family and work and letting them know I'll be off for a while. I have a followup appointment on the 29th, and we'll know more then.
The weekend is pretty uneventful, just more lying around trying to get better and able to be up for longer periods of time. Monday, we go out to Border's to look into low-sodium cookbooks. THIS IS DEPRESSING! Tons of NO sodium cookbooks, but only one that we find that is LOW sodium. I get VERY depressed and rather angry, and am so flustered that I dun even know what to get for dinner other than a salad that could possibly be low sodium. I settle on a 7 oz steak, a potato, vegetables, and a salad. I'd pretty much given up on more than 1 serving every few days of soda pop, so no big deal there, but the food... all the nutritionally balanced stuff is all based on cholesterol, not sodium/salt content. Fortunately, the dinner didn't change my blood pressure all that much that evening, so no harm done other than some emotional scars.
By the 29th, this isn't too difficult, though I do still get winded fairly easily, and can't lift much. We have my followup and the doctor tells us how to tell what is low and what is high sodium for my needs. 4 grams of salt a day. Not too bad, since my diet is already rather low in the use of the stuff. Just means cutting a few things back. As I mentioned earlier, I cut my pop intake by about 98% already, so really its just a matter of being conscious while eating out, and making an adjustment or two at home.
Saturday Jan. 2:
I return to work. I work for 2 days and have 2 days off. I still tire really easily, and my body aches with the simplest of activities, but I manage to hold up.
Tuesday Jan. 5:
We go grocery shopping. I get very tired and very short of breath, and so much so that I end up numb in a few places. I come home and go to bed with the sniffles rather badly and a sore throat.
Wednesday Jan. 6:
I return to work and am doing repair work, so not a lot of standing, and very minimal lifting. I feel good for the most part in respect to the larger ailments, but my head cold is getting worse.
Thursday Jan 7:
I get sent home mid day with no voice and horrible sniffles and no energy whatsoever. My head cold is now in full swing.
That brings us to today, where I was able to go have some food out tonight and my cough is finally breaking up. I'm going to go to work tomorrow, as I have a ride in, and should be ok since I'll not be standing out in the cold waiting for public transit. However, I am still kinda upset. In retrospect, I should have taken a third week off. My body is still upset and not fully recovered, I think, from the hospital. They did tell me when I was in the ER that they were amazed I'd not had a stroke, so I must have been damn near one. My health insurance is putting me on short term disability for the time I was out and is paying me for that time, with a minor pay cut, which won't hurt too bad. I should have taken this week off, too. I can make it through the next two days, I think, but its going to be tough. Thank goodness I have monday-tuesday off again.
(whew)
Now then: the basics of this story are out, but the emotions aren't, really. Going through this experience is a real wake up call to how poorly I've treated my body over the past 20 years. Its bad enough that my teeth are in horrible shape and I've had to have 2 extracted and am slated to have another 2 taken out soon as well, but this is even worse. The second night I was home, I couldn't get "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing" by Aerosmith out of my head all night. I was awake a lot and very weepy. What if I'd had a stroke? What if I'd gone comatose? What if I'd DIED??? -_- This is very scary. This also makes me very clingy to my partner. And the fact that my body is taking forever to get back to normal also really upsets me. I know it is still recovering from the biggest shock it has had since being born, but damn it is so unnerving to realize that it takes so much more energy now to do the things I used to do every day and expending very little energy. And of course, the doctors are still trying to determine what caused it, but the fact of the matter is, they don't know. They likely won't ever really know for sure. I've heard a lot of theories, such as the stress of the year caught up with me and caused such severe headaches that led to high blood pressure that led to this incident, or that the high blood pressure led to the headaches which led to this incident, but again: no one knows for sure.
All I can do from this point is try to continue to mend emotionally and make some life changes, which I've already begun. A lot of it really isn't too bad, and most of it isn't difficult at all, actually. But there's still the fear of my own body in there, fear of how careful I have to be, and fear of what would happen to my partner if something worse were to happen. I'm not ready to leave her yet, and I know she feels the same way. We're both very nervous and scared but trying to keep our eyes on the silver linings. But it is a daily struggle. Work is distracting, but when it comes down to letting my mind wander, this stuff still lingers. Writing this entry alone is very hard, but I need to get some of this out. I'm sure that while they may be sporadic in nature, there will be more such entries. Don't get me wrong, my partner and I are talking more than ever, and spending most of our spare time very close to each other, and our relationship has gotten stronger in ways we never knew it could. But there's still a lot of personal sorting out and processing of feelings that I best express through writing. I promise that I'll try to keep you all updated as well.
In the meantime, thanks to all of you here, on facebook, online in general, and in person who have been so supportive. Life's quality really can be judged by the quality of the company you keep, and you've all been amazing company. Thanks again.
To begin at the beginning:
Sunday Dec. 20:
I was sent home from work in severe pain. I had horrible headaches, and 2 vicodin and 4 ibuprofen were not enough to get it to even diminish. I was very cold, and by this point very stressed out about it. I went home and went straight to bed.
Monday Dec. 21:
I got up in the morning only feeling mildly (but not much) better in the headache department, so I woke up and went to the washroom, came back, and immediately bolted for the washroom again. I had nothing on my stomach, but I vomited anyway. I wouldn't have been too worried if it weren't for the fact that more than 10% of it contained bright red blood. Not good. I call the partner and tell her that I'm going to the emergency room. She calls work and tells them what is going on, and with my roommate driving, we pick her up en route.
I get to the ER and am seen almost instantly. They take my blood pressure, and it is over 200/100, which is BAD. I lose my stomach contents again with the same results, and this brings the ER supervisor running. They pump me full of stomach stabilizers and things to make this stop, as well as a high dose of Morphine (which I detest, it makes me feel horrible despite taking away the pain), and I fall asleep for a little bit while they get my fluids up.
I wake up and they are prepping me for an EKG, sticking electrodes all over my front that do NOT come off easily (more on that later). I don't remember the results specifically, which I guess is good, because it must not have been that critical. So I find myself being prepared for a CT scan, and am soon wheeled downstairs to stare at palm trees in the light fixtures while they radiate my brain. I end up back in the ER and my BP is quite a bit more normal, though still a little high. The decision is made to determine if there is any blood in my spinal fluid, so I have to go through a Lumbar Puncture, more commonly known as a Spinal Tap (yes, you can make the movie joke.) Since they see no blood in my fluid after testing it, they take blood from me in general to test all the other things they test when taking blood. During all this time, the partner is updating both of our families to let them know what is up, as well as updating facebook and here for me. After a bunch of waiting, the decision is made to keep me overnight for observation, and order an MRI for me the next day.
I HATE HOSPITAL BEDS. I have a hard enough time finding a comfortable position in my own bed, but once I find it, I'm fine. Hospital beds? Forget it. May as well have been concrete impregnated teak wood. On top of this, I get hooked up to a heart monitor that has even MORE electrodes pasted on my front, and they have to keep adding new ones every 8 hours or so, because while they come loose enough to not give an accurate reading, they do NOT come off. And of course, I'm still hooked up to an IV, so I'm flat on my back. So do I sleep? NO! At least, not much. I think at one point, exhaustion took over enough to get me an hour to two between constantly being woken up to check my blood pressure and make sure that the heart monitor I'm on is working. When I come to the last time, my back, arms, and legs are aching horribly, despite the morphine that I'm on.
Tuesday Dec. 22:
I get taken of of the IV and prepped for my MRI around 10:00AM. I've managed to be able to walk myself back and forth to the loo without too much of an issue, though I get horrible chills whenever I do. But when I get back into bed, its too hot, and the sheets stick to me. Not to mention that if I stay out of bed too long, I vomit. I discovery WHY this is happening, but I don't think the doctors understood it when I tried to explain it. See, when I set myself up vertically, I would get this sinking feeling in my head like my brain is settling down on something rough. This makes me break out in a cold sweat, and leads to vomiting. I found out later that this was just because my spine hadn't completely reproduced all the fluids I'd lost during the tap. Basically it means that if I lie down again soon enough, I am fine. But of course lying down is an issue, because I'm aching so badly.
I get taken down for my MRI (and an MRA, too, they decide), which was horribly annoying. I really hated it, to be honest. And I'm such a nerd, too. What do I do for the 30 minutes while I'm cramped up into a tiny tube inside a giant machine listening to pounding and thumping and other horrible noises? My mind starts to recite:
"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."
This is the only thing that gets me through it. Those of you who know what that is from may laugh, because it does indeed emphasize my nerdiness, but it works. I get pulled out of the MRI so they can inject me with stuff that will make it easier to take high contrast scans of the last set. This again, makes me vomit as before. Once the scans are done, I get sent back up to my room. I am not put on fluids, and I can't sit upright for more than a few minutes because of that sinking feeling. They dump me on solid foods, or try to, and I can only handle small sips of broth for a while. And I finally say to hell with it and find a way to lie on my side, which allows me to sleep some.
About 3 I am told that my tests all came back fine and I should go home with a bunch of prescriptions and some other suggestions. The problem is, I have no energy. I force food down and sleep a bit more, and get dressed, but because of that sinking feeling, I can't stay upright for too long and vomit again. I wasn't dizzy or anything, just that feeling made me really nauseous. The doctors keep me until later that night and tell me that if I can walk around without vomiting for 5 minutes, I will be released. I manage to save up enough willpower to make this happen, because I know I won't sleep until I get home. I finally am released from the hospital around 7, come home (thank you so much for the ride, Tim!) and throw up one more time from the motion, and then go right to bed and sleep. And boy howdy do I sleep.
Wednesday Dec. 23:
The doctors told me to take my blood pressure twice a day, and put me on Amlodipine, Hydrochlorohyiazide for my blood pressure, and Protonix for my stomach. The partner goes out early in the morning to get my meds and a blood pressure machine, and keeps me on broth and water most of the day, and while I'm not vomiting anymore, I still am not able to be upright for long. I find I have to move the head of my bed away from the wall it is near, because the draft from the window is making my head hurt. I'm slowly recovering, though, and she manages later in the day to go do some grocery shopping to get me some more to eat when I'm feeling better. I begin to live on humus. Thank heaven for humus. I sleep off and on, and am finally starting to feel a little warmer and not feel like a shell.
Thursday Dec. 24:
I am moving around a bit more, and the sinking feeling happens less and less, though I find that I don't have the energy to hold my head up for very long; my neck is just too weak. I manage to force myself to take a shower, however, and get all the electrodes off of me and wash up for the first time in days (which was a wonderful feeling, washing all the hospital off of me) and come back to sit down. I soon find, however, that my hair is too heavy and is causing all sorts of issues, so the partner puts a towel down on my pillow and I lie down.
This is where I break down. I must have cried for at least an hour. The feeling of absolute helplessness really swoops in at this point and I am feeling horrible. I know I'd been through a lot in the past 3 days, but I've never had this severe of an experience, and my body has never taken this long to recover from anything that I can remember. I'm feeling very very scared at this point, and useless, and helpless, and a vast myriad of other emotions that I can't completely list here. But I am DEPRESSED.
Surprisingly, the breakdown helped, because later that evening, I was lying down in the living room, clad in layers and blankets, watching movies with the roomies and partner. I sit up when I can, lie back down when I get tired. Make it through 2 movies, which makes me feel good, despite myself. The partner, in the meantime, is researching the dietary restrictions I've been given by my doctor. And let me tell you, they are vague. VERY vague. "Low sodium, but not low nutrition. Be certain that you don't go too high or too low." Never do they tell us how to gage how much is too high or too low, we don't find this out until much later. I'm ready for more solid food, and the gang finds out that there's much lower sodium in a small Domino's pepperoni pizza than we thought, so I end up with a couple of slices of that. I feel a little more human.
Friday Dec. 25:
I'm still feeling weak, and still can't be very active, but I manage to rest up enough to have Christmas Dinner with the roomie and partner out in the living room. We watch a movie, though I dun remember what it is. I go to bed early. I've done the obligatory things this week, like calling family and work and letting them know I'll be off for a while. I have a followup appointment on the 29th, and we'll know more then.
The weekend is pretty uneventful, just more lying around trying to get better and able to be up for longer periods of time. Monday, we go out to Border's to look into low-sodium cookbooks. THIS IS DEPRESSING! Tons of NO sodium cookbooks, but only one that we find that is LOW sodium. I get VERY depressed and rather angry, and am so flustered that I dun even know what to get for dinner other than a salad that could possibly be low sodium. I settle on a 7 oz steak, a potato, vegetables, and a salad. I'd pretty much given up on more than 1 serving every few days of soda pop, so no big deal there, but the food... all the nutritionally balanced stuff is all based on cholesterol, not sodium/salt content. Fortunately, the dinner didn't change my blood pressure all that much that evening, so no harm done other than some emotional scars.
By the 29th, this isn't too difficult, though I do still get winded fairly easily, and can't lift much. We have my followup and the doctor tells us how to tell what is low and what is high sodium for my needs. 4 grams of salt a day. Not too bad, since my diet is already rather low in the use of the stuff. Just means cutting a few things back. As I mentioned earlier, I cut my pop intake by about 98% already, so really its just a matter of being conscious while eating out, and making an adjustment or two at home.
Saturday Jan. 2:
I return to work. I work for 2 days and have 2 days off. I still tire really easily, and my body aches with the simplest of activities, but I manage to hold up.
Tuesday Jan. 5:
We go grocery shopping. I get very tired and very short of breath, and so much so that I end up numb in a few places. I come home and go to bed with the sniffles rather badly and a sore throat.
Wednesday Jan. 6:
I return to work and am doing repair work, so not a lot of standing, and very minimal lifting. I feel good for the most part in respect to the larger ailments, but my head cold is getting worse.
Thursday Jan 7:
I get sent home mid day with no voice and horrible sniffles and no energy whatsoever. My head cold is now in full swing.
That brings us to today, where I was able to go have some food out tonight and my cough is finally breaking up. I'm going to go to work tomorrow, as I have a ride in, and should be ok since I'll not be standing out in the cold waiting for public transit. However, I am still kinda upset. In retrospect, I should have taken a third week off. My body is still upset and not fully recovered, I think, from the hospital. They did tell me when I was in the ER that they were amazed I'd not had a stroke, so I must have been damn near one. My health insurance is putting me on short term disability for the time I was out and is paying me for that time, with a minor pay cut, which won't hurt too bad. I should have taken this week off, too. I can make it through the next two days, I think, but its going to be tough. Thank goodness I have monday-tuesday off again.
(whew)
Now then: the basics of this story are out, but the emotions aren't, really. Going through this experience is a real wake up call to how poorly I've treated my body over the past 20 years. Its bad enough that my teeth are in horrible shape and I've had to have 2 extracted and am slated to have another 2 taken out soon as well, but this is even worse. The second night I was home, I couldn't get "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing" by Aerosmith out of my head all night. I was awake a lot and very weepy. What if I'd had a stroke? What if I'd gone comatose? What if I'd DIED??? -_- This is very scary. This also makes me very clingy to my partner. And the fact that my body is taking forever to get back to normal also really upsets me. I know it is still recovering from the biggest shock it has had since being born, but damn it is so unnerving to realize that it takes so much more energy now to do the things I used to do every day and expending very little energy. And of course, the doctors are still trying to determine what caused it, but the fact of the matter is, they don't know. They likely won't ever really know for sure. I've heard a lot of theories, such as the stress of the year caught up with me and caused such severe headaches that led to high blood pressure that led to this incident, or that the high blood pressure led to the headaches which led to this incident, but again: no one knows for sure.
All I can do from this point is try to continue to mend emotionally and make some life changes, which I've already begun. A lot of it really isn't too bad, and most of it isn't difficult at all, actually. But there's still the fear of my own body in there, fear of how careful I have to be, and fear of what would happen to my partner if something worse were to happen. I'm not ready to leave her yet, and I know she feels the same way. We're both very nervous and scared but trying to keep our eyes on the silver linings. But it is a daily struggle. Work is distracting, but when it comes down to letting my mind wander, this stuff still lingers. Writing this entry alone is very hard, but I need to get some of this out. I'm sure that while they may be sporadic in nature, there will be more such entries. Don't get me wrong, my partner and I are talking more than ever, and spending most of our spare time very close to each other, and our relationship has gotten stronger in ways we never knew it could. But there's still a lot of personal sorting out and processing of feelings that I best express through writing. I promise that I'll try to keep you all updated as well.
In the meantime, thanks to all of you here, on facebook, online in general, and in person who have been so supportive. Life's quality really can be judged by the quality of the company you keep, and you've all been amazing company. Thanks again.