Recent hospital stay and resulting life changes - yet once again

I recently spent 6 days in the hospital due to my RBC being at 5. Apparently, that's not a good place to be on the blood scale. I received a call from my surgeon and he said to go to the Emergency Department and be admitted. Which I did.

After being triaged and taken to a room, an IV was placed and within about hour I was taken to a room in ICU, where I spent my first night. The next day I was transferred to the 3rd Floor (Med/Surg) and spent the next 5 days. 

Along the way I had a couple of procedures done (CT scans, an Endoscopy and a Colonoscopy), two blood transfusions, a PICC line placed in my upper right arm, TPN and no food for a couple of days. Once the colonoscopy was completed I was able to eat breakfast the next morning. I was out from anesthesia all night as the doctor heavily sedated me for the procedure. I slept 8 straight hours through the night finally waking around 5:30 the next morning. I did get woken up a couple of times but always went right back to sleep that night. I was discharged later that afternoon and came home to recoup. 

Now, here I am three weeks later, doing better, eating food, taking vitamins and drinking three protein shakes a day (High Protein Boost in Rich Chocolate flavor). I'm glad to be home and grateful the second blood transfusion took hold. I no longer eat only ice and crackers.

Things I like about Me challenge

1. My undying love my husband who takes care of me - now while this may sound sophomoric, I love my husband to pieces. It's taken me three tries to get to where I am and I am forever grateful to him for coming into my life when he did. Suffice it to say, now that I am not well medically and no longer employed - until after college and I have obtained my Sociology degree, or I find something less stressful to be gainfully employed, he takes care of us financially. He also attends college, fulltime, online. This is something we do together. He is a year ahead of me in college, but so what. That just means he'll graduate sooner and be gainfully employed before I am, which is how it should be anyway, shouldn't it?

2. My long strawberry blonde hair - I have been growing my hair for 12 years. It is past my waist now and I am not cutting it for anything. At my age, if I were to cut it all off, I would never get it back to the length that it is now and I (along with my husband and daughter and people who know me for my hair) would be very upset for getting rid of it. My hair is my signature feature. I am very attached to my hair.

3. Dedication to being there for my daughter - our daughter is 8 going on 31 some days. She is a very smart, artistic and talented little girl. She loves to sing, draw and video record her Littlest Pet Shop animals 'playing' veterinarian taking care of a sick or injured animal, or recreating a day in the life of her. Now that I get to be a stay at home mom again (something I haven't done since she was a toddler) I am going to be her homeroom mom in her 4th grade class this school year. I plan on making it a lot of fun for her to have me there and try not to embarrass her in front of her peers - although that will be exactly what happens anyway.

4. Living healthy, maintaining an ideal weight - while I have never been extremely overweight, I did weigh too much for my small frame. I have since lost nearly 25 pounds and want to maintain it. Eating healthy, taking the right vitamins and a walk around the block when the Arizona weather is cool enough.

5. Going back to college - online, full-time (see #1). I am enjoying online learning and prefer college education this way as opposed to attending a traditional campus. I have never liked being in a classroom, even when I was in school getting my primary education!

6. Being Honest - even when it hurts - I learned a long time ago to always be honest, no matter how much it hurt me or the person having to hear the truth. Lying or 'sugar coating' the truth when someone asks, leads me to believe that if they don't want to know the truth then they shouldn't ask for an honest opinion. But, you should give it anyway, even if it hurts.

7. Not judging a person until you get to know them - ever hear the saying, 'You never truly know someone until you've walked a mile in his shoes'? I don't know who said it, I looked it up trying to find out, but to no avail. Anyway, I like the quote and I think it's quite true. Until you've gone through what someone else has gone through, you can't possibly understand what life is like for them.

8. Getting back into going to church - for ourselves, for our daughter, for our lives.

9. How easily I make friends - I'm lucky because I have a few select friends I have kept in touch with since quitting my job. There are some people I occasionally chat with on facebook, sure, but there aren't all that many that I actually 'talk' to offline as well as on.

http://www.ciaomom.com/things-i-like-about-me/

Day Four of Spring Break

Yes, counting the weekend before and the weekend after, I have nine days of Spring Break from work. Not that I'm counting, but if I don't say which number day it is, it will get all muddled together and I won't have any idea where I was/am in the grand scheme of my vacation.

I haven't, in all honestly, done a whole heck of a lot while on break, but that's because I don't have to. Yes, I've helped make dinner, washed dishes, done laundry and played with my 8 year old, but not much beyond that.

I don't change out of my sweats and I wear my robe all day. If I go out, I do change my clothes, of course, but if I'm not going anywhere, I see no reason to put myself into clothes I'll just have to end up washing - this way my clothes stay clean.

Thanks to my pain medications, not only am I not in as much pain, but I also have little to no appetite. I'm not complaining, mind you and some people seem worried that I have a suppressed appetite. I am not worried. Ever since I first got sick back in September, I think I have steadily lost weight anyway. And, I promise, I do eat when I get hungry. When I'm not hungry, however, I don't eat just to eat.

It didn't happen right away, I had up until recently, pretty much weighed what I have for quite awhile now and until about a week ago or so, when I finally let the nurse weigh me, discovered I am finally under 150 pounds. Which works for me as I would like to be about 135 or so. My husband would probably like for me to weigh less - but what husband wouldn't want his wife to look and feel good?!

The only good thing about being sick is that I have had to cut down on certain types of foods I love to eat - cheese, red meat and junk food. I still eat these foods, just in lower quantities and not as often. I've also had to stop eating altogether, granola. Which is awful, but my fistula can't output the roughage and I don't need the fiber as much.

I had been thinking about having surgery in early June to have the fistula removed and the abscess taken care of, but have since changed my mind due to the fact that the possibility of losing the remaining 3' of my small intestine and perhaps some of my large too, which I don't want to have happen and have the quality of my life go from what it is now - which is wonderful - to less than wonderful because the likelihood of having to go on TPN - (a liquid diet which is fed through a major vein either in the arm or under the collarbone) which could quite likely cause me to become diabetic. Something I am NOT willing to have possibly happen.

No, I think I'll continue down the rosy path I am currently heading and not change things for now.

As you can clearly see

I have not been blogging every day like I thought I would be. Life has interrupted my blogging schedule (that means work, child, husband, father, etc., etc.) Now that it is Spring Break for me, I thought I would try to sit down and blog, on occasion, especially when the little one (my 8 year old) wasn't also vying for the computer to entertain her little self.

I haven't gone 'public' on here about my current medical situation, one because I've been trying to deal with it since September and two, as I said in my opening paragraph, life has interrupted. What's been going on with me medically is something I hope my worst enemy would never have to go through. It could have ended up being much worse than it is, but it is still bad enough that my life has changed significantly.

I developed (spontaneously I might add) a fistula in early- to mid-September. My condition was originally diagnosed as Cellulitis and my now previous primary care physician did nothing to take care of it, except prescribe antibiotics. Both he and his physician's assistant were thoroughly perplexed by my illness and suggested sending me for an CT scan, but never did.

Within two or three days of seeing him/her a couple of times, the Cellulitis spontaneously exploded during the night, spewing blood and pus on my night clothes and bedding. Of course I didn't notice it because I was asleep, but when I awoke the next morning, I discovered the mess and needless to say, was not very happy. However, I was expecting it to happen sometime soon as the site had developed a little balloon-like sore, and I just knew it was going to explode.

I ended up having a fistulagram, and two other nasty, invasive tests to figure out exactly the size and location of the now known fistula. The tests were awful, painful and very time-consuming. I had to starve myself and ended up throwing up some magnesium because something didn't set right when I took it. I'm sure the magnesium was fine, but I still puked.

About a month or two after the fistula, I was again diagnosed with yet another round of Cellulitis. This time I had a new doctor who, as was the first, befuddled and wasn't sure what to do, but instead of doing nothing but prescribing antibiotics, took action by getting a syringe, a local anesthetic and cut a small opening and extracted some pus, told me it didn't tract down very far and immediately sent me next door for a CT scan. Fortunately, this time I did not have another fistula but rather an abscess.

Now, here it is mid-March, my abscess is still an abscess and the fistula is not better, but it is not worse, either. I now wear two ostomy bags (otherwise known as appliances) to collect liquid waste and pus, and have to change them every three to four days, unless there is a leak. When that happens I have to change them immediately. Otherwise I empty them from the bottom whenever they get full (plastic velcro closure), seal them up and am on my merry way.

No one yet knows the cause of the fistula and abscess, and while most people would have surgery done to take care of them, I am not a good candidate for more surgery. Up til now, I have had 7 major abdominal surgeries (most likely these are the cause of my now medical dilemma). So...life goes on and occasionally I will find myself contemplating surgery to take care of this, but am also afraid that if I do, my quality of life will go from what it is, to less than good.

I could possibly lose the remaining three feet of my small intestine and have to go on what is known as TPN (being fed under my collarbone a liquid supplement) - which means no more food, water or anything delicious, ever again. Sorry, but I love food way too much to give it up entirely. And, the likelihood of becoming diabetic does not sound good either, so right now I am not willing to go under the knife for an eighth time.

My Wedding Day(s)

As you may notice by my title, I have had more than one wedding day. The first one happened when I was 19 years old and didn't really understand what marriage was all about. I got pregnant 4 months into the marriage and really didn't think about it much beyond that. 9 months later my first child was born in a teaching hospital in Iowa City, IA. We came home and started our family life together. I won't bore you with every detail, but suffice it to say 29 months later my second daughter was born as I was in the process of getting divorced from my first husband and starting a relationship with my second husband. My daughters are now 26 and 24 and are no longer in my life. We divorced after only 4 years of marriage.

I married my second husband when I was 27 and started life as a cop's wife and stepmother to three little girls. None of them really liked me much and again, without going into too much detail about it, I ended up divorcing him after nearly 10 years. I absconded with a vehicle and what possessions I could carry in the back of it in the middle of the night (literally), and left him a 3 page letter on the kitchen table without telling anyone in my family where I was going. I did, however, tell some trusted co-workers with express directions that they were NOT to tell him where I was or what had happened to me. I did not wanting him finding me as I was hoping to get divorced from him.

Now, 10 years later, I am happily married a third time, have an 8 year old daughter and finally enjoy my life and being married. Life is good to me and this is what marriage should be.

Had I known nearly 30 years ago how my 1st two marriages would have turned out, I would not have knowingly gone through them, even if it meant losing my first two children (I lost custody of them to their father when they were 6 & 8) because I don't have any contact with them anyway, and you can't miss what you don't know.

Life is much better for me now and there isn't one thing I would change about it, except maybe have two more children than I do. But, God blessed us with just the one and I'm not taking her for granted!

Sad and depressed

Ok, sad for sure, depressed? eh, probably really not. Sometimes I wonder what people are really thinking when they jump on a social networking site and blather away with profuse profanity. Seriously. I'm appalled and quite frankly disgusted with what people think is acceptable and then turn around and gripe because someone gets on there saying they're offended and the person using the disgusting, nasty, trash language says that if the person commenting doesn't like what's being said can just ignore it and doesn't need to comment. Well, excuse me, but when you type trash in all caps it's kind of hard to ignore. I mean come on, do you really expect me to just ignore the garbage that's up there on their page and not say something? Really?

Today is 9/11/10

It's been exactly 9 years since the World Trade Center towers, a field and the Pentagon were hit by jets. All those lives taken, all those beautiful things destroyed.

My husband and I were on the road driving for Swift as truck drivers. We had just gotten married on the 26 of August and couldn't believe our eyes and ears when we sat down to eat dinner at a truck stop restaurant in Kentucky. We had just been to New York the week before, seen the twin towers and thought how blessed we were to be able to see the countryside together.

We'd been driving all day, and quite by design I'd say, did not (thankfully) have the radio on. Which, in all honesty, is unusual for us, because normally we'd be listening to NPR.

Looking back at that day a few days later, I recalled noticing there were no jets in the air that day. Which when after hearing what had happened in NYC, made complete sense and I realized after noticing no planes, I didn't give it much thought beyond that.

Now, here we sat, numbly eating our dinner and thinking how lucky we were that we'd already gone to NYC and were not back there this trip. We finished our meal, paid the cashier and went out to our truck and Jack our JRT, hugged him, took him for his walk and then climbed back in the cab and got ready for bed. I don't think either one of us slept much that night for all the images in our heads and thinking about the lives lost.

Now, here I sit, 9 years later. I'm safely in my home in Arizona, I have an almost 8 year old daughter and my father has been living with us for the past 3 months. My daughter knows we are remembering those lost in the tragedy of 9 years ago, but not really understanding why. I'm still not sure a 7 year old is quite ready to hear all about it or that she will even completely comprehend what happened all those years ago.

I may tell her bits and pieces, let her ask questions and answer them, or find the answers as best I can. Life is good right now. I'm truly blessed to have wonderful family and friends and my health.