But wait, there's more!

Life is strange. All things happen for a reason, but occasionally I wish God would send me an email and spell it out. "Vicki, you twit, that's not what I want you to do, do this instead!" I'm pretty hard headed. It usually takes a couple of whops to get my attention. I guess I've had those this month. So Lord, I'm listening. Just for your entertainment, here are a couple of pics from the hospital. One is of Stephanie, one of the lovely ladies that made my stay at Casa Cox South bearable. The other is of me doing what I do. Work on my computer and look yellow (Atabrine folks, makes the skin look yellow but my eyes are still white, no liver problems here). Me and my Mac are not soon separated. Note the stuffed kitty. My momma loves me, she got me a kitty because she knew I missed my babies. I probably have that goofy morphine look. Oh well. I think you can see Spike and Buster off to the left, just hanging out like the gang should be.

The arm is doing better, the second clot was up around ye old armpit but the pain is better. I did end up having to take Lovenox shots in my stomach for 6 days and they doubled my rat poison intake. Evidently I must have sludge for blood. They wanted me to give myself the shots and, after I woke up, I said I didn't think that was a good idea. Luckily I have an awesome friend in the medical profession who was kind enough to give me my shots. The most comical setting was the Sunday shot at the hospital (no, it wasn't me in this time, but my grandmother). My friend came over and visited with my parents, sister and I and then we adjourned to the restroom to get my shot. We had my friend's Dr. ID in case someone came in and saw us shooting up in the girls room. There was lots of giggling going on. Luckily, we had no witnesses. I thought my Sunday shot was my last one (it started originally with 3) but after bloodwork on Monday, we got another round of 3 plus a double on the rat poison. Guess I'll be on that for a very long time.

For those of you who want a piece of me this week, forget it. I'm booked. I'm living at Ferrell-Duncan all this week. Everyday. Doctor hopping. Bloodwork schmoozing. Everyone knows me by name at the cashiers desk and lab. They are all very nice, too. Of course, since Hobby Lobby has a 40% off coupon this week, I printed 10 or 15 of them and I use one a day and hand them out to everyone I see. It makes the trip to the southside of town worth it. After I found out I had the blood clots, I called my husband and told him, and of course he was upset, so I told him I was so depressed that I needed to go spend some money at a couple of craft stores. I was hoping I could squeeze three out of it, but I evidently didn't work it hard enough. Opportunity lost. Bummer. Dumb bean counter...

Clots R Us

Just when you think things are getting back to normal, there always seems to be something to throw off your game. A normal day for us is to get up, clean up the midnight cat yak (someone ALWAYS yaks during the night—5 cats, 4 long-haired, they groom each other, ya know where I'm goin' with this...). Since I've come home from the hospital, things have slowly progressed to normal, I can now sleep to 6:30A, I can eat something besides Cream of Wheat (Tuna Helper is my friend), still can't do soda (THAT is 6 weeks and counting without Code Red, another two weeks and they'll have to lock me up), and I am getting used to that whop that liquid hydrocodone packs. In fact, I thought to myself on Monday, "Self, I think you can now do without momma's little helper, you're doing pretty good." Well, nothing like a self-righteous statement to give you a little kick in the patootie. I wake up Tuesday morning, start working on my computer and think, "wow, my left elbow hurts, I wonder what I hit it on?" As the day wore on it started hurting more like a toothache in my arm. Still, I'm a pretty clumsy ditz, so I figured I had clocked it somewhere along the way and didn't think much more of it until I went to bed. By then, it hurt for my clothing to touch it, and needless to say, there is no comfortable way to sleep in bed when the inside of your elbow hurts except for flat on your back with your arm up in a swastika move on a pillow. By Wed. AM, me and momma's little helper are connected at the hip and I called the Doctor. As if I hadn't had enough of that this month. Upshot is, one "venous doplar" later and I have two blood clots in my left arm. Who knew they hurt? Dang, it's a real buzz kill. I need a slave to carry my arm around for me. Just the weight of it stretching those poor little veins is enough to drive me to drink Code Red. So, now we get to add another pill to the cadre of medication. I have officially eclipsed my Mom on the number of pills taken together at one time, which I thought was a complete impossibility (she has Rhuematoid Arthritis among a host of other things—Lord lover her, she's a trooper). So, my arm now comes with instructions, "don't rub it, don't put heat on it (but it hurts mamma, please?), just don't use it unless you have to." Duh. Run that one by me again. Don't use it... Nothing like an IV to give you a few blood clots. And just when I thought all the real fun was over...

Home Again

Home sweet home! Ah, never a better cliche than that! But now that I'm here, I just a bit ticked off. First, I wake up every morning at 5:30A (blood taking time), expect someone to bring me my pills and stuff when I need it (hey, getting waited on, even by the institution is nothing to sneeze at--no pun intended), start looking for breakfast at 6:30A (and I never used to eat breakfast, if you call Cream of Wheat breakfast), and then the finger-poking (blood sugar), vitals every hour it *seemed*, and then there's lunch (soup, pudding-like stuff, jello), and then more drugs, a nice nap or chatting with the nurses and the PCA's (GREAT bunch of folks there on 9 East), read a bit (morphine really inhibited my ability to stay focused for more than three minutes, so I am sure I read the same thing over and over and over... Then there's supper, more vitals, more poking, more pills (slid down courtesy of viscous Lidocaine--great tasting stuff with a texture to die for...), Cliff came over, watched me pick papers and gnats out of the sky (hey, I'm telling ya, that morphine stuff makes things seem REAL! I could have been the Velveteen Rabbit!) and then some TV. Now, here I sit at home, no one to tell me when to take my pills, feed me Breakfast, Lunch and Supper (I really miss the part where they brought my food tray and I had to tell them to take half of it back because it did meet the dietary requirements PRINTED ON THE SHEET!) For example, soft liquid, bland diet, no acidic or spicy foods. What did I get? Orange juice (insert other fruit juice here too), tomato soup, stuff with chocolate, bulky foods, etc. So now I have to figure all that stuff out myself. Bummer. The worst part? No one to talk to but the cats. I really enjoyed talking to the nurses and PCA's. I really miss them. They made what would have been a very crappy two weeks into something with fond memories to go along with the "what the heck is going on with me?" memories. I tried to take pictures when I became lucid enough to realize I should make a mini-book or something about this event. I'll try to get some posted.

I had some really great friends stop by and see me, I was really surprised. I'll apologize now for anything I said that didn't make sense. Everyone was so thoughtful, I had some beautiful flowers and cards, and my friend Rebecca brought me this most wonderful bag full of goodies and 2 (and I said TWO) scrapbook magazines to read--and TWO I hadn't read. I am sure I read them three times but as I look at them now, I don't remember a thing...

I'm still here....

Yep, still sitting in the hospital but doing much better. I'm off my morphine pump and off the IV and various other bags of stuff they hung up on old "spike" (my name for my IV pole). Buster is gone too (so no more urges to go wee wee in the wee hours of the night). Buster was my saline/potassium bag--I figure he'd bust if he got dropped, so he got named Buster. The rest of the little bags (there had to be 50 if there were 4) were referred to as "the gang". I had more infusers going, bleeping, ringing, etc. Now I just have a port and I get anything I need by IV, they use the port. So I am wire/tube free. There's nothing worse than needing to make your bladder gladder when you have to unplug two electrical plugs for the infusers, gather all your tubing and morphine dosing cord and get you and Spike to the bathroom without peeing your pants first. Too much anticipation. I'm looking around the room for some Depends (geez, they have everything else in here!), but no luck. I made a suggestion on the form for Cox to sell them like tampons in gas stations. I don't think they listened.

When they pulled the old port last night (we tried to do an IV infusion and the vein was blown) that was a pretty painful experience. Not much you can do when they are pulling off all that tape. I thought there was going to be a fight as it I was wriggling all over the bed like a worm on hot concrete. Cliff's watching like a 3yr old in gross fascination. Luckily Jeff was very good at getting in a new port in my other arm, which I probably only need for today. Seems silly. Like waiting here for doctors to show up so I can go...

Well, I hate to say this post is coming from not my favorite place. The one place I have never been before. The place where you Willa probably see lots of typos because the Morphine is messing with my head and fingers. The dreaded HOSPITAL. Yes, I've been a guest of the Hotel Cox Guest Room 913 since last Friday. Not sure when I getting out. The colonoscopy on Tuesday seemed to go well. They took two biopsies to make sure there was nothing there. I ate the next day and out it came thirty minutes later! But I don't think that the colonoscropy is related to what is going on now.

Since Wednesday was a no go for food I though Thursday would be better. With that in mind, I got a sandwich. So to my surprise, I couldn't even swallow it or the drink it came with. Several years ago I was diagnosed with Achccalcia, but it seemed this one was different, I couldn't eat or drink last time, this time I couldn't eat, drink or swallow without excruciating pain. But like a dope I kept trying to eat and drink and it got worse. I sat up all night and when Cliff got up Friday at 5A. I told him to take me to the ER. And so it begins,,,''

One endoscopy later and I was escorted up to floor 19. Evidently my esophogus is very inflamed, they took some scrapings and biopsies. They don't know why it is so inflamed, so they put me on an antibiotic and an antiviral, along with some morphine to control the pain. And I've been on a saline drip the whole time because I was very dehydrated. They came in to weigh me a while ago and OF COURSE since I haven't eaten REAL food to eat since Saturday A WEEK AGO (courtesy of the Colonoscopy that was done Tuesday) I figured it had dropped but NOOOOO, that wasn't the case. I had lost down 12 lbs and gained 10 lbs back in water weight. THAT totally sucked! So here I sit, Sunday evening and still don't know how much longer I'll be in here. I brought books but if you knew how long it took me to write this, you'd know reading is a loss.

Well..that's it for Sunday...the day of rest...