November 27, 2008
Thanksgiving Day.
I have much to be thankful for in the year that has passed. But I have much to look forward to as well. However I feel the need to hit a few of the highlights.
1. The people at Drayer Physical Therapy who worked like crazy to get me in the best possible shape, even though walking continued to elude me.
2. Dr. Dubal who made walking possible by putting shots in my spine that killed pain I'd had for ten years.
3. My cruise with my friend Tamera. A life changing experience in so many ways and on so many levels.
4. My Oldest Son was able to finish his year in Japan early and is due home in one week. I pray he arrives safely and finds me waiting anxiously, post op from the surgery I desperately need to get over and done.
5. Watching my Youngest Son grow, both literally and figuratively. He is such a deep thinker, though he doesn't always talk about it, therefore he is constantly surprising me.
6. Seeing Daughter feel better due to a simple change in medication from one that costs over a hundred dollars a month to one that is a four dollar a month kind.
7. Husband who has stayed by me thru thick and thin and the feeling I was not going to make it.
8. God's little surprises.
My dear writer friend, Jean, told me once that the greatest gift you could give someone was to allow them to feel needed. I received that gift on this Thanksgiving which could have been maudlin and difficult because Baby Brother is headed to war. Instead, I was given a blessing. Now I ask, God, that you don't let me screw it up.
I wish anyone who reads this a Thanksgiving blessing, no matter what day it comes. Being needed is always something to be thankful for.
November 21, 2008
Day Five of Five Doctors In Five Days has been long, frustrating, and not fun.
Day Four involved shots inside the spine and was spectacular! I got even better results than the first time! Next time, Rhizotomy! They will do a procedure that should give up to one year of relief!
Today, however, involved shots of nuclear medicine and waiting periods and long times with my arms over my head in a dentist like chair, except not as comfortable. The doctor was to call with results this afternoon...and of course, she didn't. And she's going on vacation.
So I continue to wait to find out if I'm having surgery or a heart cath.
On a positive note, our new furniture came and it is very pretty.
LOL. Kind of bizarre entry, I know. Welcome to my life.
November 19, 2008
Well, well, well, aren't we having a fun week? I'm seeing five doctors in five days.
The cardiologist repeated my EKG to find it equally abnormal to the pre-op EKG. Looking on the bright side, it wasn't any MORE abnormal. However the echocardiogram showed a left ventricular hypertrophy which is basically a thickening of the wall of the heart. Might be caused by hypertension, though I haven't had it for very long, or it might be vascular (we're not wanting that), so Friday I go and have a four hour test where they will give me a drug to make my heart work hard and see what it does. If there is the tiniest abnormality, the cardiologist will do a heart cath (we're REALLY not wanting that) and the internist said she might want it regardless. (frowns)
On the plus side, tomorrow I get my second set of shots in my back! WOO HOO! That means walking and scooting anddoing all kinds of things. Very exciting.
On the neg side, I have to go 38 hours without an Ale8. *gasp, back of hand to forehead, pitiful look* How will I go on? I'll think of it tomorrah, at Tara! (cue GWTW theme).
Now I'm on iron medicine and potassium. My numbers were two points from needing a transfusion. On the plus side, a week ahead of time, I can have lots of people go donate blood for me and I'd only get their blood.That's good.
Next week Younger Son gets partial braces then the next week Older Son returns victorious from Japan! WOOOHOOOO~ Something positive to focus on.
November 13, 2008
I am emotionally numb.
I'd *Dared* to have the thought that once the spinal pain was gone, I'd be in a position to go down on my medication because the seizure threshold would be raised because my body wasn't in constant pain.
I should have known better.
Today my brother looked at me and told me not to get upset, he had something to tell me.
Okay. I wasn't upset. I mean hey, it's Brother. There's nothing upsetting he could have.
Oh how wrong I was.
"I've been recalled."
The words sat in the dead silence while an invisible fist punched every bit of air out of my gut. Brother is in the navy. He's already been to war. Already done his time. He was reserves, got called up, did his time in danger. Our family lived its year in suspended animation of sorts, and gratefully he came home to us in one piece. Changed no doubt, but slowly, he became our Brother, Son, Father, Husband again.
My only brother. And this time, he's not going to be on a boat. He's looking at land duty. Somewhere in Iraq. Where those crazed suicide bombers await.
My government with its new and historic president elect, is sending my brother into Harm's Way.
The reserves are supposed to be just that. Reserves. Active duty people need to be doing these jobs.
Our national guard should NEVER leave this country. They are here for times of crisis. National crisis, within the nation.
And my brother already did his bit for God and country and he'll go do it again, as many times as they ask.
And those of us left at home will try desperately to remember how to breathe.
November 12, 2008
What is it they say about the best laid plans?
Surgery is cancelled.
EKG was abnormal. Have to see the cardiologist on Tuesday. Potassium was low as well, so am taking a potassium pill that is of a size that it doesn't seem possible to get it down. But that's not unusual, and the potassium wasn't low enough to get the rheumatologist in a fizz, however the gyn who also was the surgeon fizzed like Alka Seltzer and I'm glad for her. I know she will always go the extra mile to be safe and 3.1 might be acceptably low under ordinary circumstances, but for pre-op, it's not. Not for someone with my complications in any case.
So.
Got out of surgery, if not the weekend of hand wringing that I spent beforehand. I'll undoubtedly have to do that again. But that's okay. I'm good at it. :)
November 11, 2008
Perhaps my readers wonder why I had little to say about the elections.
They spoke for themselves.
I lived my own little drama while waiting for a new president, seeing specialists, getting their okays before scheduled gyn surgery. When you have a serious chronic illness, you have a specialist for just about everything and all of them have to sign off before anything serious, even something as simple as a D&C.
I was uncomfortable, in unremitting pain that has been with me for so long I didn't remember when I hadn't had it.
My rheumatologist, after months and months of physical therapy and achieving *every* goal except walking any significant distance, sent me to the Advanced Pain Clinic where Dr. Dubal, an anesthesiologist put 8 shots of novocaine in my back and then put 8 shots of a topical steroid in the fascia and in between the joints in my spine where arthritis had grown spiny things like bone spurs and synovial cysts had grown in between the joints.
Within minutes my leg pain had dissipated. By the next day I was pain free in my spine for the first time in at least a decade. The difference is truly miraculous and I cannot begin to express my gratitude to God for deciding that this was the time for me to have physical relief.
Oh, the procedure got the lupus to acting up a bit but it was *nothing* in comparison. Suddenly I was getting things accomplished left and right, then falling into bed by late afternoon for a three hour nap from utter exhaustion. Then I'd get up and do a little more, i.e. when I say 'doing things' I mean things in my world...paintings, quilts, glass, making holiday plans.
I will have another set of shots a week from tomorrow, as these are beginning to wear off, right on schedule. Then after that, Dr. Dubal will clip the nerve and I should receive relief for up to a year! Glory be! I cannot imagine.
Daughter said, "Mom! You're taller!" I really wasn't, I was just standing up straight for the first time in years instead of being hunched over in pain.
It feels good.