I'll start with my health stuff--
For the past week I've been feeling icky and it's just been getting worse. I've got plenty of tummy problems, nausea, migraines, trouble breathing, pain, etc. I've been sleeping 10-20 hours at a time, which I really hate (I would rather being doing something and I'm already disoriented enough). So, today we called my family doc to see if anything looked weird on the blood test results from a couple days ago. Besides being in anemic and having horrible liver readings there was nothing that jumped out to the doctor, I guess. However, when I talked to the nurse on the phone she decided that it would be best if I came in and saw the doctor, so I'll go in on Tuesday.
Of course, I always get the sickest and have emergencies on the weekend when all the doctor's offices are closed, so I made sure I had a few things in order in case I needed to go to the hospital and wrote up a list of all my symptoms. I wanted to call UNMC right away even though we would just be able to talk to a liver doctor on call. I guess I was feeling pretty desperate. I'm not in a whole lot of pain, per se, but I am extremely uncomfortable. There's so much going on at once that I feel completely overloaded. Anyway, I guess we'll wait until Monday to call UNMC unless we really have to call sooner. I mean, there's not much they can do except look at test results, so...
However, I gave my list of symptoms to my mom and she started thinking about how I first started showing signs of feeling like this when I started a new antidepressent that was also supposed to work for pain control and hot flashes. The first sign was that I started getting lots of migraines. Naturally, I took my Imatrex (with is a triptan drug) to take the migraine away. Well, turns out the Pristiq (the new drug) interferes with triptan drugs. Makes sense since I had noticed that on the days I took my migraine med I would start seeing things (like I could swear that stationary objects were moving, for example), I would get really dizzy and I would have these shaking episodes. Most of my other symtoms were listed as side-effects for the Pristiq (nausea, fatigue, etc.).
Mom called my psychiatrist's office and so now I'm supposed to wean myself off the new antidepressed and back onto old faithful (Lexapro). I really, really hope it works.
In much more exciting news-
Those of you from Lincoln who get the Journal Star may remember this article from a couple weeks ago: http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2009/02/12/news/local/doc499379d8b141c557920173.txt
When I read about Sam I just felt this sort of calling, like I should meet with him and his family and encourage them. I guess I saw something of myself in Sam. That and I had all sorts of oragami to give him!
After emailing the author of the article (whom I already knew) and getting in contact with Sam and his family we were finally able to meet yesterday at my house. The journalist and photographer came as well to do a follow-up story. It will appear in Sunday's newspaper.
Sam is such an amazing kid and his enthusiasm is contagious. I'm so glad I had that light in my day before I started feeling so much worse. I can't wait to meet him again and also his sister Taylor. I know Natalie wants to meet her as well so she can pass on her wisdom about being the sister of a chronically ill person :P
In sad news-
Our rat Shirley finally passed on in her sleep today. Shirley was over three years old (ancient for a rat) and could hardly move on her own. We had been hand-feeding her nutritional shakes for a couple months and she was always so grateful and loving and happy. She would brux (when rats crunch their teeth together to show they're happy) as much as she could when we held her for feedings. She was quite the inspiration and will be sorely missed.
I adopted Shirley about three years ago from a family who's pet snake had rejected her as food. She spent her life here stashing food in my desk drawers and chewing my iPod cords. I got her name from a cashier at Wal-Mart who, when she saw a rat on my shoulder, told me about how her daughter-in-law had just gotten a white rat named Shirley. I thought it was a great name and so my next albino became Shirley.
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