Medical

Don’t Go to the ER

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…I went to the ER.

I haven’t really posted through any of this Covid-19 stuff but after today’s events – I guess I will. We have been working from home for two weeks now and I have officially hurt myself while on the clock.

The story varies because one should not admit to many people that they were staining wood with a rag in-between phone calls when suddenly a sliver of wood penetrates my thumb and then breaks off when I try to remove it. Since we are on stay-at-home orders, I plan to fix this mistake on my own. Well – I ask a friend to kindly pull it out with tweezers which was easier said than done. We decided it must be cut out and I sent her to get the only razor blade that I could think of and as she returned, I fainted. I didn’t pass out once, but twice, so on to the ER we went. In the end I am left with realizing that for that $150 I could have probably just bought a new fish tank stand instead of staining my old one but if I ever get a compliment on that this – this story will come to mind.

If I get the virus – this little stunt may be the reason. With that said, I think I am supposed to shower when I get home and I did’t. I had to get a tetanus shot and the multiple shots of lidocaine were killer. I was screaming and cursing and it was anything but calm and collected. They were quick and nice. I was screened for covid-19 symptoms before I could even go inside. I didn’t see another patient the whole time I was in there.

It’s tearing me apart

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Tonight, I am up, watching my ex’s kid while she goes out with the new girl.  It was in the last year that I was diagnosed with PTSD, but it is also the first time I ever went to a psychiatrist.  I had my last appointment with him on Thursday.  He changed my medication from Lexapro to Zoloft.  Tonight, as I am reading about PTSD, I see that Zoloft is one of the four prescribed for it, so I can only hope that it helps.

Since I woke up this morning in a panic when Maddison came home at 6:11 AM from said girls house, I helped my brother by listening to him breakdown for a few hours and I can only assume that he is in there sleeping now.  I haven’t seen him in house.  I slept until about 4 PM and then eventually I went to dinner with Maddison, where she didn’t eat her food.  I spent my last $60 cash at Olive Garden and she bitched the whole time.  She wouldn’t hang out with me once we got back and then asked me to watch her kid so she can go out with this girl for a second night in a row.

She thinks I am being ridiculous and another word I can’t recall right now because I have turned my phone off.  I have cried so much in 2019, it is embarrassing.  There is this hysterical cry that I get into that makes my teeth feel numb from all of the air going across them – it was like that.  I don’t even understand why I care so much. I don’t know why it hurts so bad or why I feel so worthless all over again.

This morning when I was getting tacos and I started thinking about the fact that I couldn’t have been awake since 5:30 and that I must have been dreaming, I wanted to figure out how I woke up so awake and why I started crying so hysterically.  We watched “But I’m a Cheerleader” last night and they were talking about their root that made them gay. The movie is complete satire and I really want my hair like Clea DuVall all over again now, but anyway, it made me start to think about why I react the way that I do and trying to figure out what my triggers are.  I realized that I freak the fuck out anytime I go to bed while my partner, or in this case, ex partner is not home.  If I wake up in the middle of the night and they are not there, the reaction is both physical and mental in an extreme way.  I instantly imagine every possible, horrible situation.  The first time I really remember it happening is when Teal would go out with her co workers from Salt Grass and I would stay at home waiting for her to get home.  Once in a while I would fall asleep, and that was always worse.  I haven’t really had that many serious relationships, so besides Maddison staying out at the new girls house at all hours of the night, I don’t think that I have really had to deal with it too many other times.

When I try to figure out why this would happen, I keep going back to a memory that I can not even remember on my own.  Is it possible that a memory that you can’t even remember could cause awful PTSD issues?  I am sure there are more than one reason, many that are related but I’d imagine it all goes back to this one night, a night I have heard about my entire life.  It’s crazy how things like that can stick with you.  I can’t say the story is ever told in detail but it has come up several times in my lifetime.  It probably started with my mom hanging out with her work friends and partying.  I feel like she worked at a tool delivery company.  I don’t even really know what that means and one night she stayed out real late.  My dad couldn’t sleep and I was a young baby.  He slept on that couch waiting for her to come home and she never did.  That is probably the beginning of the end and may have a greater impact on my life than I had ever imagined.

I cried profusely when she made me take  her baby so she could go out with someone else.  I pro-actively went by a friends house to get enough green to last me though the long night ahead.  She texted me asking me if I knew where her black bra was, because I had helped her with her laundry.  That was twisting the knife that she had already stabbed in my back.  She lives next door to me.  I adore her children but I need to find a way to get away from her.  She manipulates me to the point that I am driving myself insane.  The psychiatrist asked me if I had any friends.  I felt like that was an embarrassing question, of course I have friends, tons.  The truth is, when I think about it, I know a lot of people.  A lot of people were sad that I got let go, but how many of them have come to visit or even messaged regularly?  She ran off most of my friends in the two and a half years that I was with her.  I don’t even feel like I like her as a person.  She doesn’t impress me and she constantly uses and hurts me – so why am I so worried about losing her in my life.

What’s a CB1 Receptors?

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There’s nothing that will motivate me to read like wanting to smoke a dang bowl.  I still can’t explain what a TRPV1 receptor is or really does – but I am pretty sure that’s where the heat regulation comes in and at least the gastric problems.  Most things I read say that my only option is to quit – or eventually get acute renal failure, which leads to horrible things.  Then I have found a few things that talk about using capsaicin cream to relieve symptoms.  There’s something that makes me laugh when I read things like extensive and chronic history of marijuana use – and well, maybe I do.  The first case was found in 2004 – I would have to assume the potency just wasn’t there before that – or medical awareness.  It has taken me this long to hear about it from anyone but then again, I am not always as honest as I need to be with medical professionals.  Think about all the thousands I could have saved if I figured this out years ago.  Now I just want to go take a shower.

Hospitals Scare Me

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I’ve spent the last few months trying to figure out why – about monthly – I wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, confused, dizzy and with extreme abdominal pain.  Every time, I go to the bathroom, try to take a crap and end up puking multiple times, stumbling back to my bed and sleeping it off.

My friends had convinced me that since it had been happening since I lived at my old house – can’t pinpoint when it started – but somewhere between 2011 and 2017.  So far the gastroenterology has had me take stool samples, which came out good.  Two weeks ago, I had an upper endoscopy where they reconfirmed I have acid re flux and gastritis.  I really wasn’t prepared for how expensive this addressing my puking issue could be.

This morning, I woke up and took some Mucinex Fast-Max cold, flu & sore throat before I went to work.  I took it right as I was walking out the door and as I was driving down Bishop St to work, I started sweating, had chills, started to get disoriented and extremely nauseous.    Since I take my job quite seriously, I continued on to work and had no plan of letting this top me.

I got to my computer, logged in.  Told my boss that I was not feeling well at all, told Kelli, me peer what had happened and just then I had to run off to the bathroom.  At this point, I was only throwing up mucus but I knew that it wasn’t over.  I noticed that I was extremely pale when I rode up the elevator, which says a little about how crappy I was feeling.  I went back to my boss and told him that I had to leave.  I called someone to pick me up within 19 minutes of my shift.

When I got home, I went straight to bed.  Sleep seems to be the only thing that gets me through.  Around 1 PM I woke up again, the cycle restarted and I was in the bathroom puking again but this time there was blood in it.  Every doctor always asked me if there is blood when I throw up and the answer is always no, but this was a first.  It continued for the rest of the day every few hours.

At some point during this, I realized that I should probably contact my GI to see if I should do anything specific.  Eventually I woke up to see the answer that I expected but dreaded it, I needed to go to the ER.  Now this was probably the second time that I had ever taken myself to the ER (well someone drove me every time), but as an adult, it’s just not something that I have had to do.  Actually, I don’t think I ever went to the ER as a child either.

The part where it takes forever when I am already feeling awful is the worst part.  Anticipating the bill before I had ever even been seen was the second hardest part,  While I was there, they started with a flu test.  No flu.  They gave me an IV and eventually I was given Dilaudid, which I have never had but at least I could go back to sleep while I waited. They ran labs on my blood and took a urine sample, did a sonogram and I had my first CT scan – which made me vomit again, multiple times.  Up until that point, I had not puked at the hospital yet.

Today, was also the first day that I was honest about my smoking habits.  I usually just say no or I have tried it before.  I never specify that I “tried it” 2 hours ago and every day prior for the last 15+ years… So tonight when the nursing staff asked about my recreational drug use, I said I smoked marijuana.  They asked when I smoked last and I said “Today, trying to feel better but it didn’t help.”  Then they asked how often I smoke, I said “Daily.”  I suppose the truth as to how much I smoke is – quite a lot.

The ER nurse told me that there was something called cannabis induced vomiting.  When I looked it up because I was like – THIS is exactly why I don’t mention this shit, I knew they would say I needed to stop smoking.. but once I looked it up, it looks like the technical name is cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome.  I am glad that they did not find anything seriously wrong with me, but this seems a little serious if it is really whats going on.

The more that I read about it, the more it sounded like what was going on.  Even on the Wikipedia page, it has the caption to the photo as “People with cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome often find some relief with hot showers” and that is exactly what I do.  I really don’t know why but it is the only thing that seems to provide any relief besides sleep.

Out if all my tests, the only thing that came back abnormal was my white blood count is high.  Yesterday, I took a half of a day off of work to watch my nephew.  He got to my house at 5 AM and we ended up sleeping until about noon when my sister came to get him.  Today, I slept nearly the entire day and now I am wide awake at 2 AM but feel like crap.  I am sitting here staring at this loaded bowl and I am afraid to smoke it.

I guess you never know

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I’ve always known that I was different, everyone has always told me that I that I think differently.  As of lately, I have been trying to determine what makes me.. some impossible sometimes.  At first I suspected that I could have Asperger syndrome.  Recently, I have met a lot of friends that have kids that have been diagnosed with it and the symptoms are all too relate able.   Just now I ended up reading an article about ADD and wondered.. what if I have ADD.  I feel like a lot of people have been diagnosed with this.  Either way, if it just a crutch to rely on pharmaceuticals to avoid having to deal with your situations on your own?  I often feel guilty, but remind myself how much it helps.

20 Things to Remember If You Love a Person with ADD

 

 

 

Amazing Things Will Happen

• by admin • In Medical, Words, Work •   0

The silence is always so loud in my head.  My sister left today and Ducthess, my pup, seems really sick.  Today in a meeting with my boss, she told me that I may not be able to tell yet but something really amazing will happen to me.  Shes not known for being caring around the work place so when she says positive things, its pretty meaningful.

People have been acting a bit strange around me lately.  It makes me wonder what my facial expressions or body language is saying.  Yesterday when I was standing in line to buy a sandwich, turtle food, fish food and dog food; an older lady that was standing in front of me turned to me and asked what time it was, after she had checked out.  For the record, it would have said on her receipt, but I looked at my phone and politely answered.  She thanked me very kindly, but it was the extreme eye contact and sincere smile that I found odd.  It felt as if she was trying to tell me something and it had nothing to do with the time.  She wasn’t the type of person that I would expect to talk to me.

A few days before that, a woman got out of her car at the gas station to walk over to me and give me a pamphlet on God.  It’s just been a weird week.  This entry will have to be cut short because my friend is in the hospital and has to get surgery in the morning.  She just called and wants me to go stay the night with her there.  I have never slept in a hospital before.  There’s always a first for everything.

Updated: 3/19/2018; image and title.