Health Update

Hi everyone,

I know it's been a VERY long time since I've written a health update. Again, not a lot has been going on. I've had some really good days and some really bad days. A few days ago I was in the ER for a pain episode. It started at 8 PM so I loaded up on the heavy drugs and prayed they'd kick in soon. Well, they didn't and it wasn't long before I was puking my guts out as well. I tried so hard to deal with things at home, but it got to the point where I was severely dehydrated, exhausted and still in pain after copious amounts of narcotics. We weren't getting anywhere and it hadn't been worth the hours of agony to try and do things at home so around midnight mom and I headed for the ER.

Then we had the normal problem of getting an IV in me, made so much worse by my dehydration. Some IV goddess eventually came in and made it look easy as pie. Still, one of the most painful IV experiences I've had. I'm sure there were some people down the hall scared out of their wits by my screaming. I got lots of morphine and nausea drugs, not to mention glorious IV fluids (thank you God for IV fluids!) I was feeling a little better. Well, I felt well enough to stand for an X-ray and memorize the Spanish word for pregnancy. I was not thrilled, however, to see my X-ray up on a screen where my chest was more visible than I would have liked it to be for the elderly male X-ray tech.

Anyway, it was weird because usually the pain drugs worked and this time they weren't. They even switched me to the super morphine stuff and even that didn't make a huge difference. The nausea med did help, however and I was finally able to drink some water. I was eventually sent home since my X-ray looked normal. At home I continued to medicate through the night and was still in a lot of pain. I was able to sleep, though and that was a huge plus.

I was still sleeping a lot and having extra pain through to Thanksgiving. However, on Friday I seemed to be doing better. I'm still not tip-top but I did manage to clean the rat cages myself and even do some Black Friday shopping, so I'm pretty proud of myself.

More ER Fun

Hello all,

Today started out okay. I thought myself well enough to brave our normal Sunday morning routine of going to Barnes and Noble. After awhile, though, I started to have pain which quickly turned into a horrible episode. We left right away and my sister dropped my mom and I off at the ER. I was spared a CT scan because I've had so many and the doctor didn't want to up my cancer risk by exposing me to more radiation. I got an X-ray instead and this time I was full of gas! Lovely. The doctor said my X-ray looked just like the ones they see for really colic-y babies. So, after two doses of morphine and a heafy dose of anti-nausea med I was ready to go home. I'm to take Gas-X and do the catnip tea thing.

And that was my day.

Becca

Lazy Trees and Drug Comas

The trees are lazy today. Every now and then they give a slight shudder to show their quiet joy but mostly they’re like me: letting the sweetness of a nice summer’s day sink in.
I love trees. I see them as living souls. I’d be speaking literally if I said I was a tree hugger; I really do hug trees. They’re very comforting. The only other non-brained thing that speaks to me so is books, and I suppose they’re both connected in a way since most books are made of trees. What if it were the other way around? A tree made of books…now that would make an interesting picture.

The point is: The trees were lazy today. As for me, I’m trying to get things done. I’m nowhere near good right now, but I have been feeling a bit better overall these last few days or so. I’ve been trying to use my small spaces of time to get things ready for my surgery Thursday. Also, I know that the time of month when my ovaries start screaming at me is coming any day now, and when that happens I won’t be out of bed for anything.

My dad was in town this weekend, which was fun. We did the usual El Toro dinner on the first
night, pizza on the second night. I made him make me one of the steaks he used to make me when I was a kid. I’ve been anemic lately which means I’ve wanted to eat meat (I usually don’t have much of an appetite for it, being a vegetarian during “normal” times). He bought me an awesome printer/scanner/copier so be ready to see some scanned stuff in the future!

Whatever happened with the transplant list situation? Ah, well now, that is a downer. When we went to Omaha on Wednesday they didn’t have my appointment anywhere in their records. As it so happened, a random psychiatrist was sitting around the Multi-Organ Clinic because his own patient hadn’t shown up. So I saw him. Not knowing he should do otherwise, he of course did not attend the meeting that happened the next hour to discuss my, and others, addition to the transplant list. So on Friday, when we called the Transplant Center, this was explained to us. They said that it was all organized now and I would be discussed this coming Wednesday (the 16th) and put on the list then.

I finished reading The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I can’t tell yet if I liked it enough to read it again or not, but it was a very good book. If you’re a book lover, I would recommend it. For some reason, it brought to mind Inkheart by Cornelia Funke, so I’m now reading that for the second time.

In other news, Rayne posted a blog about her treatments and I was very excited to see a picture of the squeaky toy rat I gave her, sitting on her IV pole. I told her she was to use it to annoy doctors and the like but apparently after giving it one squeak she was told that no further squeaking was allowed. Also, that same day (Friday) I had one of my pain episodes (most likely from bile not being able to flow through the bile ducts that my liver disease is slowly killing) and so I, like Rayne, spent the entire day in a drug coma. Let Friday the eleventh of July be heretofore known as Rayne And Becca Drug Coma Day. Or a more creative title if you can think of one. Frankly, I’m just too tired.