Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Three Stages of Hell (of sicknesses)

We all go through friends in our lives.  Some are there to  listen to our troubles and maybe even give some much needed advice.  Some friends are out to party like it's still 1999 and they are the ones that  just wanna get shit faced with you all weekend long.  Yet, there are the other friends we have in our lives.  Friends I bet you wouldn't of thought of to even call them friends.  
This is what my post today is about...
This post is about the friends that nobody thanks when the war inside of our bodies has finally relented.   You all know what I am talking about too.  Don't pretend you don't.  You certainly do...

Here it goes

Week One


"John, I am not feeling that hot.  I'm gonna go lay down for awhile and see if that helps."
"You mean that little car ride killed you?"  John says this with a little smile.  He knows how I am.  Disabled, sure.  But, usually a car ride doesn't do me in like the one we were just on.  A quick trip here, another quick stop here.  And then we're on our way home.  
I got home, looked back the hallway where my bedroom was and immediately went that direction.  No force in nature would have stopped me from doing that.  I didn't even bother removing my shoes as I flew myself onto the bed and stayed there.  In my mind, I was going to stay till John had dinner cooked and then I was going to get up, feeling refreshed and have dinner with my family.  That never happened.  
In fact, the next time I opened my eyes, it was 3 in the am .... I had slept from 4 pm to 3 am and, of course I had missed dinner.  
Not that I was feeling that hungry anyway.  At 3 am, when everyone (including Apollo) is out, there's not much to do except look for meds to try and make yourself feel better.  
Because by this time, I was certainly NOT feeling my hottest.  Knowing of my pharmacy in the bathroom and the slightly smaller pharmacy in the kitchen, I started to dig for something to bring my fever down, to make me stop shaking, and to make the cough go away, which was getting worse as long as I was standing up...
The usual find came in the form of  Nyquil.  That stuff rocks.  Especially taken with the right additives.  I was going to take my last dose of my Oxycode for the day with this shot of Nyquil.  That oughtta get the zzzzzzzz's rolling, huh??

And it did.  I slept rather good that night, despite being so sick.  The Nyquil was helping with the incessant cough, but it was also helping to bring my 103 fever down.  The Oxycodone was for the small fiber nueropathy that I experience on a daily and nightly basis.  Something that WILL never go away and something I WOULD NEVER WISH on my own enemy...
So, that is how the next week and a half had gone.  Crying for more Nyquil and Oxycodone and sucking on cough drops and checking blood sugars and checking to see how high my fevers were going.... 
Days and days of that.  Up and down numbers on my glucometer.... can't wait to explain that one to the endocrinologist.  I had watched hours and hours of TV and Netflix.  Both were useless because once my meds had kicked in, I was asleep within a half hour anyway...  not a fun week and a half.

But, the flu seemed to go away on it's own.  I slowly started to come out of my sickness funk and slowly but surely rejoined the land of the living.  I noticed their faces when they both looked at me.  
"Hi Mommy.  Feeling better?"   Well, as better as I am going to feel now anyway.  


Week Two

After the flu, I was really surprised that I had fought it off with things we have here in the house.  Hot tea, Nyquil (Gallons of Nyquil) and loads of cough drops.  Tylenol and Ibuprofen to combat any persistent fevers.  I was really proud that I had not once even called my family doc.  I mean, I call him and he always gives me the same stuff anyway.  And the stuff he gives me, I still have in my house.  So, I saved myself a frustrating call to him and decided to get better all by myself.  Which I did.  
Until....

That's when Bronchitis hit.  And that HIT HARD.
The flu was a freakin walk in the park complete with care bears and unicorns and rainbows.  This bronchitis was mean and wicked and didn't want to see me survive.  I could tell it's evil motives from within.  Don't ask me how.  I could just tell...

Bronchitis is a very painful condition that may or may not lead to pneumonia.  Seeing as I had just received both the flu shot (yeah, I obviously got one that I didn't get protection from) AND a pneumonia shot in the hospital during my two stays with them, I felt confident in my abilities to knock this bronchitis out without outside help as well.   The only thing I wouldn't mess with would be my blood glucose numbers.  If they started to go crazy and stay crazy despite all of my help, I would've went straightaway to the closest emergency room.  

I started to drink crazy liquids.  Water, hot tea, sometimes cold tea, and if the stomach started to hurt from nausea, a little bit of ginger ale was thrown in there as well...  light eating.  didn't have much of an appetite to speak of anyway.  It was as if my body was trying to keep me sick to lose weight.   I was not eating, I was really trying to drink, but nothing seemed to go as planned there either... 

With every positive step I took, I seemed to have made two or three in the opposite direction.  Quite frustrating.  So, this whole time, I am checking my blood sugars every hour during awake hours and peeing badly at night.  My sugars were starting to go in that dangerous direction of up, and not down.  A serious situation.  One that does require medical care immediately.  So, I told myself that when John got up the next morning and my sugar was still crazy high I would treat myself to a ride to the ER.  

That never happened.  I woke up with John, and I checked my blood sugar and it seemed to go back down to it's normal limits.  Surprise, surprise.  

The next day or so, I had started to feel like my old self again.  I wasn't crying all the time.  I was finally showering when I needed to.  I was doing light household chores.  

It seems as though I was on the way to recovery.  And I was going to stay that way...



Or so I thought....


The next few days went by rather quietly.  No real illness to speak of.  I remember telling my mom on the phone how sick I had been for almost three weeks and she felt bad but was wondering how I was feeling now.  Not bad, I'd say.  Not bad at all.  I was once again sipping on hot coffee in the morning, and john and I finally changed the germy sheets so we could cohabit the same bed again.  So, things were finally starting to look up...  I was catching up on all the TV shows I had missed while sick.  THANK GOD for DVR...


WEEK THREE


Ok, you can't call this next bout of illness week three, as it only hit over a long holiday weekend.  It seemed the germs in my body were not quite done with their attack on my body just yet.  They still wanted to rule the body, and my body didn't like it.  

Between the CONSTANT vomiting and even more constant diarrhea, this third and final illness wasn't going to let me go so easily.  No fevers to speak of.  And since I was so incredibly sensitive in the stomach area, I couldn't even take my pain killers for the neuropathy pain.  I was a mess.  Vomiting and diarrhea and my painful condition of small fiber neuropathy.... there were many many many many many many many many tears going on during this illness.  There's absolutely nothing I could do to help myself from this one.  This one was going to have ride it's course.  And I was going to be a miserable rider... 

My blood sugars, despite my body fighting this third infection, stayed normal.  Probably because of the lack of nutrients that was going in.  I did try.  A nibble on a cracker here, a sip of ginger ale there... but every time I ate or drank anything - no matter how tiny - the vomiting always reared it's ugly head.  
I was a freakin mess.  At one point, I looked in the mirror when I stumbled into the bathroom to wipe my face off, and I hardly recognized myself.  I really looked sick.  My hair was all curly but a messy curly that if you stared at it too long, you'd be turned to stone.  
And the face looking back at me looked so pale.  Where did all of the blood go???  And my face was so skinny too.   

Between the flu, having bronchitis, and this latest battle with a various stomach ailment, I may have lost a total of 25 to 30 pounds - no kidding...


So, there you have it.  The Wicked Three Illnesses that wanted to kill me.  But, it didn't.  These different illnesses weren't expecting an awesome man like John by my side.  (can I just add here, that John reminds me of Bruce Willis from Unbreakable, I mean he never gets sick!)  But, John stayed by my side, as long as he was not working and he helped bring me ice for my head, he cleaned out the puke bucket for me.  He would hold my hair back so no flakes of vomit would get into it.  He took care of all the household chores and really spent alot of time with Olivia so she wasn't bothering me for anything...


I think next time I have a trio of infection, the first thing I am going to do is INSIST I go to the nearest ER.  I am not sure I could fight anything off anymore.  I think I have had my breaking point.  The next time something goes wrong with me, I am just going to get a ride to the hospital...













Enemy
Friend
Enemy
Friend



















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