Please forgive my blogging absence since like last Tuesday I think?
Yeah, Tuesday.
Anyway, I've been battling an illness again, and this past weekend was pure hell for me and the teens.
I had a ton of stuff going on, I caught some sort of stomach thing that Mark had caught but in me, it mutated into the stomach thing spawned from the very bowels of hell, and it was also the "end of the month" pain medicine wise, so I was short a few days just like every month which resulted in my stomach being even sicker than the stomach thing that I was dealing with.
But I got the pain medicine taken care of by my doctor, but the stomach thing stayed and got worse, and worse, and worse as each day passed.
I was so sick that I was completely unable to eat or even drink anything at all for about 3 days, and if I tried to take even super small sips of water to wash down my pain meds and now some seriously strong antibiotics and phenergan that the ER gave me on Saturday to try and stop me from vomiting, I ended up even more violently ill than I was within just minutes of taking them.
All the vomiting and diars I was dealing with is not exactly the best weight loss supplement, but I did drop 9 pounds from Wednesday through to today.
Hey, weight loss is weight loss for this fat chick, it all counts to me no matter how I lose it.
But I was so ill that the teens got really scared for me and made me go to the hospital again on Sunday, and that was the absolute worst day of my weekend.
I only have brief recollections of actually getting to the hospital on Sunday, I know that my friend Mindy took me, that Sebastian called her, and I recall being put in a wheelchair, and then the next thing I remember is waking up on a hospital bed in the ER with an IV in my right arm and 2 doctors standing over me and talking about my high white cell count and a massive infection that they couldn't locate just yet.
While I was out, they drew blood and ran tests, ran a cath line and took urine samples, and they were talking about the possibility of cancer.
Again.
I have an unnaturally high white cell count, it's always been high, but it's been extremely high since my first spine fusion in 2006, but apparently it was really super high this time, and so they threw around words like cancer, again.
I've already been down this road, I've already had tons of cancer tests, but here they were, talking about it and I admit to getting, and still being, really, really scared.
I was in the ER on Sunday from about 3pm until almost 10pm, they pumped in bags and bags of fluids because I was so dehydrated, they gave me about 6 doses of Zofran because it was obvious that the phenergan hadn't helped me at all, and about 6 doses of dilaudid for all of the stomach cramping and pain that I was in, but I continued to be violently ill, so violently ill that they had to bring in a portable toilet for my room.
I know, TMI, and it was embarrassing and humiliating, and I hated every damn second of it, but being hooked up to an IV and getting sick so rapidly, I wouldn't have been able to make it to a bathroom if I tried.
Puking and the diars at the same time, ugh, and the nurses kept coming in to check on me and clean me up, and there was some sort of brownish liquid in my vomit that concerned the nurses, so they went and got the doctors again, and they kept calling the lab to make them hurry up with the blood test results so they could try to figure out what I had so that they could treat me properly.
By the time they released me, they still didn't have the lab results back yet, so they said they would fax them to my doctors ASAP, and then they sent me home with some more antibiotics and a script for Reglan which is another anti-nausea medication and it also "speeds up the the rate at which the stomach empties into the intestines."
They gave me that in the hopes that whatever this thing, infection, whatever the hell it is that is in my gastrointestinal tract, will get the heck out.
Yeah, Tuesday.
Anyway, I've been battling an illness again, and this past weekend was pure hell for me and the teens.
I had a ton of stuff going on, I caught some sort of stomach thing that Mark had caught but in me, it mutated into the stomach thing spawned from the very bowels of hell, and it was also the "end of the month" pain medicine wise, so I was short a few days just like every month which resulted in my stomach being even sicker than the stomach thing that I was dealing with.
But I got the pain medicine taken care of by my doctor, but the stomach thing stayed and got worse, and worse, and worse as each day passed.
I was so sick that I was completely unable to eat or even drink anything at all for about 3 days, and if I tried to take even super small sips of water to wash down my pain meds and now some seriously strong antibiotics and phenergan that the ER gave me on Saturday to try and stop me from vomiting, I ended up even more violently ill than I was within just minutes of taking them.
All the vomiting and diars I was dealing with is not exactly the best weight loss supplement, but I did drop 9 pounds from Wednesday through to today.
Hey, weight loss is weight loss for this fat chick, it all counts to me no matter how I lose it.
But I was so ill that the teens got really scared for me and made me go to the hospital again on Sunday, and that was the absolute worst day of my weekend.
I only have brief recollections of actually getting to the hospital on Sunday, I know that my friend Mindy took me, that Sebastian called her, and I recall being put in a wheelchair, and then the next thing I remember is waking up on a hospital bed in the ER with an IV in my right arm and 2 doctors standing over me and talking about my high white cell count and a massive infection that they couldn't locate just yet.
While I was out, they drew blood and ran tests, ran a cath line and took urine samples, and they were talking about the possibility of cancer.
Again.
I have an unnaturally high white cell count, it's always been high, but it's been extremely high since my first spine fusion in 2006, but apparently it was really super high this time, and so they threw around words like cancer, again.
I've already been down this road, I've already had tons of cancer tests, but here they were, talking about it and I admit to getting, and still being, really, really scared.
I was in the ER on Sunday from about 3pm until almost 10pm, they pumped in bags and bags of fluids because I was so dehydrated, they gave me about 6 doses of Zofran because it was obvious that the phenergan hadn't helped me at all, and about 6 doses of dilaudid for all of the stomach cramping and pain that I was in, but I continued to be violently ill, so violently ill that they had to bring in a portable toilet for my room.
I know, TMI, and it was embarrassing and humiliating, and I hated every damn second of it, but being hooked up to an IV and getting sick so rapidly, I wouldn't have been able to make it to a bathroom if I tried.
Puking and the diars at the same time, ugh, and the nurses kept coming in to check on me and clean me up, and there was some sort of brownish liquid in my vomit that concerned the nurses, so they went and got the doctors again, and they kept calling the lab to make them hurry up with the blood test results so they could try to figure out what I had so that they could treat me properly.
By the time they released me, they still didn't have the lab results back yet, so they said they would fax them to my doctors ASAP, and then they sent me home with some more antibiotics and a script for Reglan which is another anti-nausea medication and it also "speeds up the the rate at which the stomach empties into the intestines."
They gave me that in the hopes that whatever this thing, infection, whatever the hell it is that is in my gastrointestinal tract, will get the heck out.
Then today, well Tuesday, I had a follow-up appointment with my primary
care doc and my pain doc, and thankfully, they are both in
the same building and on the same floor and my appointments were about
an hour and half apart so it worked out really well.
It just sucked because it was so hot out today and I am still feeling like total crap, so yeah, it was a wicked long, wicked hot day.
My pain doc evaluated what happened to me this weekend to see if any of my pain meds were negatively interacting with any of the other meds that I was given so he could try to figure out if that was why the phenergan didn't work like it was supposed to.
It was supposed to stop the vomit, but instead, it increased the volume of it and the frequency of it.
He doesn't think they interfered with any of the other meds, so he told me to go to my primary doc appointment and have her send over the results of the lab tests that hospital did if she got them yet which she didn't.
But she had talked to my cardiologist because on Sunday at the ER, they ran like every test in the medical bibles, and my blood pressure and heart rate were extremely high, the EKG showed some minor issues, not a heart attack, but some things that previously hadn't been there before.
She also told me that when I got home, that I needed to call his office and schedule an appointment so he can evaluate my heart and blood pressure issues, as well as my blood clot issues. She told me that he said he may want to put me on a blood thinner like Coumadin because of the frequency and severity of my blood clots, and he also had talked to my surgeon about the Vena Cava filter in my right femoral artery and whether or not they are going to replace it and when.
So he had her write me a script for a new and stronger blood pressure medicine because he knew that he has no appointments for at least 3 weeks and he wants me to start taking it right away so that when I do go in, enough time will have passed where he can determine if it's helping me or not, and she also wrote me a script for the antibiotics that the hospital gave me on Saturday. They had only given me a 3 day supply right out of the hospital supply, so she had to write a full script for that, and neither the new blood pressure med or the super serious strong antibiotic are covered by my insurance, so I spent almost the entire day in a state of panic trying to come up with the money to pay for all of my medications that I had to pick up today.
In total, I spent $389.78 out of pocket on medications today.
Freaking ouch man.
That was for the antibiotics, the blood pressure med, and my monthly supply of pain meds.
Every single medication all had to be picked up today and I was in tears all afternoon over it.
I pretty much had a mental breakdown in my friend Brandie's car on the way home from my appointments.
I cried the entire way home, I was babbling incoherently, totally drenching sobbing.
I must have apologized to her a gazillion times for putting up with my crying baby butt all day, and I do mean all day.
My first appointment of the day was at 10:45am, I came home around noon to try and figure out what to do, how to pay for all of these meds, and once I got that sorted out, I had to call Brandie back to go back out and pick them all up.
We had to go to 2 different pharmacies because neither of them had all of my scripts, so it was just driving around, dropping off, waiting, picking up, and driving some more all the while I'm crying and babbling because the doctors at the hospital threw out the damn C word.
I hate that word and I hate those damn tests for it!
They are long and some of them are very painful and I just don't want to go through any of them again!
I'm so sick and tired of being sick and tired!
I'm just over it man, just so totally over doctors, appointments, medications, tests, the time lost and the money spent.
I'm still trying to pay off my co-pay for the last cancer testing that I went through over a year ago, I think I still have about $600 left on that bill, and I do my very best to send them something, at least $10 per month sometimes, just to let them know that I am trying to pay my bills.
I hate bills!
I hate owing money!
I wish I could win the lottery but I will never win the lottery because I don't play it because playing the lottery means spending money on buying the lottery tickets, and to me, even a single dollar spent on a ticket if it's a losing ticket, is a dollar that I no longer have!!
Ha!!
So yeah, this has been my life since last week, and we still don't have all of the lab results back yet.
Talk about total frustration huh?
Hearing your doctors talk about the possibility of some form of cancer or a really super bad infection, and no one knows either because the lab tests aren't back yet.
====================
It just sucked because it was so hot out today and I am still feeling like total crap, so yeah, it was a wicked long, wicked hot day.
My pain doc evaluated what happened to me this weekend to see if any of my pain meds were negatively interacting with any of the other meds that I was given so he could try to figure out if that was why the phenergan didn't work like it was supposed to.
It was supposed to stop the vomit, but instead, it increased the volume of it and the frequency of it.
He doesn't think they interfered with any of the other meds, so he told me to go to my primary doc appointment and have her send over the results of the lab tests that hospital did if she got them yet which she didn't.
But she had talked to my cardiologist because on Sunday at the ER, they ran like every test in the medical bibles, and my blood pressure and heart rate were extremely high, the EKG showed some minor issues, not a heart attack, but some things that previously hadn't been there before.
She also told me that when I got home, that I needed to call his office and schedule an appointment so he can evaluate my heart and blood pressure issues, as well as my blood clot issues. She told me that he said he may want to put me on a blood thinner like Coumadin because of the frequency and severity of my blood clots, and he also had talked to my surgeon about the Vena Cava filter in my right femoral artery and whether or not they are going to replace it and when.
So he had her write me a script for a new and stronger blood pressure medicine because he knew that he has no appointments for at least 3 weeks and he wants me to start taking it right away so that when I do go in, enough time will have passed where he can determine if it's helping me or not, and she also wrote me a script for the antibiotics that the hospital gave me on Saturday. They had only given me a 3 day supply right out of the hospital supply, so she had to write a full script for that, and neither the new blood pressure med or the super serious strong antibiotic are covered by my insurance, so I spent almost the entire day in a state of panic trying to come up with the money to pay for all of my medications that I had to pick up today.
In total, I spent $389.78 out of pocket on medications today.
Freaking ouch man.
That was for the antibiotics, the blood pressure med, and my monthly supply of pain meds.
Every single medication all had to be picked up today and I was in tears all afternoon over it.
I pretty much had a mental breakdown in my friend Brandie's car on the way home from my appointments.
I cried the entire way home, I was babbling incoherently, totally drenching sobbing.
I must have apologized to her a gazillion times for putting up with my crying baby butt all day, and I do mean all day.
My first appointment of the day was at 10:45am, I came home around noon to try and figure out what to do, how to pay for all of these meds, and once I got that sorted out, I had to call Brandie back to go back out and pick them all up.
We had to go to 2 different pharmacies because neither of them had all of my scripts, so it was just driving around, dropping off, waiting, picking up, and driving some more all the while I'm crying and babbling because the doctors at the hospital threw out the damn C word.
I hate that word and I hate those damn tests for it!
They are long and some of them are very painful and I just don't want to go through any of them again!
I'm so sick and tired of being sick and tired!
I'm just over it man, just so totally over doctors, appointments, medications, tests, the time lost and the money spent.
I'm still trying to pay off my co-pay for the last cancer testing that I went through over a year ago, I think I still have about $600 left on that bill, and I do my very best to send them something, at least $10 per month sometimes, just to let them know that I am trying to pay my bills.
I hate bills!
I hate owing money!
I wish I could win the lottery but I will never win the lottery because I don't play it because playing the lottery means spending money on buying the lottery tickets, and to me, even a single dollar spent on a ticket if it's a losing ticket, is a dollar that I no longer have!!
Ha!!
So yeah, this has been my life since last week, and we still don't have all of the lab results back yet.
Talk about total frustration huh?
Hearing your doctors talk about the possibility of some form of cancer or a really super bad infection, and no one knows either because the lab tests aren't back yet.
