Emergency Room Blues

Ready To Start Feeling Better

Went to work today.  I had been undermedicating The Legs because I wanted to be clear headed to talk to my boss about my inability to travel and my declining health and work.  I did take some "minor" pain medication this morning (trammadol) even though it makes me very very nauseous because I don't think I could have been able to take the pain of driving to work without it.

I got to work and got busy very quickly.  I trained the new guy on how to fix some things in the system, and with a few people on several projects, and spoke with the clients up in Michigan.  They are very nice people up that section of the country.  If it wasn't so durn cold I would be tempted to move there!  I made a mistake by hitting ENTER too soon and then was able to show the new guy "Look this is what happens when you aren't paying attention and this is how you fix it!"   I don't think database maintenance and pain killers are a good mix.  I suspect if I checked the information the pharmacy gives me with my meds it would be there under cautions:  "Use caution when operating machinery or when working with large groups of data".

I had a talk with my boss.  (Did I ever mention how much I love my job?  My bosses (three active and two retired) are a big part of that.) I explained about how I just am not able to travel anymore, and how I don't feel I am pulling my weight, or doing my part.  I stated that I am disappointed in myself and feel that because I cannot tell from day to day sometimes how I will be able to function I am letting the entire company down.

The Big Guy let me know that he thought that I was doing pretty well despite my misgivings.  He said that he would make sure I did not travel this year, and that it was time for the Junior Varsity team to step up to the big time with traveling.  I said I could travel if they absolutely needed me to, but that he would need to expect that I would miss work recovering from the trip after I got back.  He said, no I could stay back at the office, and just be available to them on site by phone.

I told him I could not say what the future holds with my declining health, and that I could not even say to any certainty what kind of schedule I could handle.  He said to just do what I can and that would be good enough for them, and he would let me know if it wasn't.  He said he was satisfied with my work even if I wasn't, and that I was always able to keep going at what he considered a great level of quality.  I guess I'm glad I'm not my own boss because I would be chewing my butt right now because I just feel like I'm struggling.  By the way, have I mentioned I love my job lately??  Well, I do!  And it seems like I will be keeping it for awhile longer...and I won't be traveling.  Big sigh of relief!

I guess all my worrying and doom and gloom was for naught.  I just have awful luck (as you can tell from all my health issues) so I was just certain that my ride was over at work.  I could not concieve being able to continue working at my reduced hours.  I just felt like I was not able to think and perform at the levels I am accustomed to.  I tried to lay it on the line warts and all and was told let's just take it as it comes and do my best, and that my best was generally much more than they expected.  That was so nice to hear because my morale really needed a boost.

All my coworkers were glad to see me too, even when I feel my abscences put much more pressure on them.  I don't want to work anywhere else - I want to be able to retire from here.  I was ready to do it today if my boss felt it was time. I'm glad I can hang around a little while longer  because there is always something new and challenging for me to do!

I worked seven hours today but didn't really feel well.  Driving home this evening I was still in town when I felt like I couldn't breathe.  I pulled over and tried to breathe slowly.  If felt like an asthma attack.  I had several cold induced asthma attacks in Michigan, and this felt like that also.  My PCP had thought that I may have had pneumonia with the flu a few weeks back but had gotten over it.  My chest and ribs hurt in addition to the pain I was already having with The Legs and The Belly and The Head.  I decided to go to the emergency room to make sure I didn't have pneumonia because the pain didn't seem to be decreasing.

Once you have had cancer every time you go to an emergency room they are going to run blood work and possibly x-rays.  Once you have chronic pancreatitis every time you go to an emergency room they are going to run blood work for elevated enzymes, especially if you are having abdominal/chest pain.  Giving a health history is time consuming and tiring.  I have noticed that the electronic medical records used by my in-network emergency room has eliminated some of the repetition. 

I got an IV set installed, although I did not receive an IV.  The nurse listened to me after the first dry hole and used a pediatric set in my wrist and it went in the first try!  Then she did a trick I had not seen before to get the four vials of blood for the labs ordered.  She pulled the tops off the vacutainer tubes (what they put the blood in) and took the end off the IV lock and then let the blood pour out of the unrestricted IV site.  Mine didn't really pour out but she was able to get three vials, and then used a syringe to suck the rest out for the fourth vial.  She said you need to twirl the vacutainer as you spill the blood into it since vacutainer tubes are coated with an anticoagulent on the inside.  She said she worked with babies and this is how you had to do it with them if their veins were too tiny.

I wasn in more pain than I realized. The Legs were especially bad at the jumping can't keep still stage.  My blood pressure was 168/96 when I arrived and soon climbed to 208/102.    This makes the automated blood pressure cuff monitor alarm start beeping.  It beeped for almost three hours! That caused The Headache pain to increase and the position I was on the ER bed made The Belly pain worse.  Augh!  Finally the pain overload I was experiencing started to decline and by the time I left at midnight my BP was back down to 170/86.  The doctor offered me pain medication and I told him that I had plenty of pain medication at home but it doesn't work if you don't take it.  He said maybe I should review my pain management strategy as my blood pressure was proof that not medicating was a bad idea.

The end result of a nuclear lung scan, blood tests, and a chest XRay was a diagnosis of bronchial spasms and a bronchial infection.  I came away with scripts for new inhaler medication and antibiotics.  I am sure this will help me breathe and feel more energetic.  I had a borderline high test called D-dimer which is why I had the nuclear lung scan to make certain I did not have a pulmonary embolism.

I made it home, and I did take some dilaudid in addition to my regular evening meds.  I am now tired, but in less pain.  I think I am going to bed soon.  Hope you all have a great day today!

Shark Bait

Swallowed Whole

I am icky and yucky and erpy tonight kinda like the bait they use when fishing for sharks. The Belly is giving me fits, and I am broken out in hives in several places tonight.  The Legs are dancing, and The Headache has me wandering around in brain fog.  I am trying to cut back on medication for The Legs so I can actually get to work on Monday to talk things over with my bosses so The Legs are very very VERY unhappy tonight.  That  might have to do with everything else feeling worse too.  It is hard to tell when everything is just a mixed up mess of chum.

My health problems are like a great white shark, and my future is being protected by a little fishing boat. I can just hear that Jaws theme getting faster and faster as the shark comes after my sorry slow shark bait rear.

I think I need a bigger boat.  Sigh.

Communication

Conversation Started

I let one of my bosses know how disappointed I am in my current ability to work and contribute.  I said I committed myself to seeing the business through the stream of installations and conversions last year, I am just very unsure how I can do that again this year.   I am not sure yet what I am going to decide, but I know that The Legs are my major obstacle right now.

I hope to talk with them next week, and see what they want to do and let them know what my limits are and if that is still acceptable for them for work.  I have thoroughly enjoyed my work with them.  I love their company, I love what I do - or rather did since I have cut back this fall.  I believe in their vision and feel that it is just going to take a little tip forward and things are going to take off even better than last year, which was a very good year for them for new business.  If my bosses think that we need to make a parting of the ways I will be sad, but they have been more than fair to me. 

I just can't in good conscious continue to be so unreliable and so illness prone as an employee.  I have ended up ill or unable to walk after the last two trips and have missed a couple of weeks of work each time.  I ended up in the hospital last summer probably as a cumulation of not taking care of The Belly properly while doing installs.  Not only do I feel bad about missing work, but it costs me money and it costs my employers money especially with insurance premiums and for lost man hours.  I hate that I have just gone from one illness to another the last few years; I had gotten a clean bill of health before I started this job nine years ago.

Incapacitated by this or that during the last seven years I have been injured financially also.  Co-pays, deductibles, out of network deductibles, travel to specialists, medication costs, missed wages have worked together to ruin whatever little credit I had.  I am lucky because my home has no mortgage, but even paying real estate taxes has been a struggle.   Not only do I have my own financial medical issues, I have my mother's also, and have been helping my brother pay for his prescriptions. 

I am terribly whiney tonight.  The lower dose of neurontin is not helping The Legs very much, and I am reluctant to keep supplementing with pain meds.   Feeling tired and woozy, think I will sign off and go to sleep!

Fighting The Inevitable

Time to Throw In The Towel?

In boxing, throwing in the towel means you give up, you've been whupped, you are not able to continue, you concede the fight.  I feel I am almost at that point. I get to this place just to revive myself and fight onward for another round or two.

I am so fatigued right now I fall asleep sitting up and it is scary to drive.  I am in enough pain from so many sources that I am almost willing to give up what little coherent thought I have left for adequate pain relief.  I can't digest food.  My incontinence issues are not improving. My ability to walk continues it's worsening path.  I want to quit trying to keep my forward momentum going.

This is probably just late night pain talking. I had a reality check today that started me down this path again.  The roads are still ice and snow covered around here.  I decided to go to work this morning waiting until noon so the roads would be at their optimal cleared levels for the day.  I only made it 15 miles, and then exited the interstate and headed back home.  I used to love driving, no matter the conditions.  Today the pain levels from driving were too much and my concentration and reflexes were too poor for the road conditions.  I feel like a dunce, a failure, a wuss. 

Where is the old Winny who would let neither rain nor snow nor dark of night stay her from her appointed work hours?  My poor health has drained my energy, stamina and strength for the last seven years.  I think it has drained my determination too.  Tonight I am debating what I should do.  I have been trying to delay any drastic decisions until I see Dr. House in April.  I just am not sure if I should wait.  I wonder if it is fair to my employer and my fellow co-workers and my company's clients, if it is fair to myself, to keep trying.  I love my job, I love my work but I don't even have the brain power to think right now to be effective.

I'm going to have to give myself an old fashioned pep talk.  I think I need Burgess Meredith from Rocky to tell me to "eat lightning and crap thunder".  On second thought, for someone with incontinence issues this may not be such a good idea....but I guess it would make me a "very dangerous" person!

Snow Storm

Blizzard Conditions

Having a bit of snow today.  I live in southwest Missouri.  Our major weather problems are tornados and ice storms.  We really don't know what to do with snow.  People who live or grew up in more nothern areas (as I did) can find it hard to understand that everything here comes to standstill with TWO inces of snow, so when we have 18 inches of snow in one day it is major league chaos.

I did not try to go to work.  Have had some issues with the internet today and phones (I am on a DSL) going down and back up, so I didn't even try to work via the internet.  Everything seemed closed today including the interstate I use to drive to work.  Apparently Oklahoma closed the interstate going westward, then the traffic started backing up into blizzard territory in Missouri, so the Highway Patrol closed the westward bound I-44 lanes from Springfield Missouri to the Oklahoma line.  Since that would have been my homeward route I am super glad I did not try to go to work.

I have a personal way of know when to not drive around here.  Three cars or trucks off the road and I pull off and wait or turn around and go back home.  That many vehicles off the road mean that people are driving in conditions they are not prepared or experienced in driving in, and I don't want to be on the road with them either. My understanding is that there were trucks and cars sliding off everywhere.  Sigh.

A nice neighbor cleaned our road and my driveway after dark this evening but I am pretty sure it will be drifted right back by morning.  Of course it should be melted in a day or two but those will be a miserable couple of days.  My outside dog is in her insulated dog house and we have her heater going full blast.  The cat asked to go outside and we saw him sneaking inside the dog house too!  I guess Bingo will have a full house!  I wish she would come inside or go in the garage but she won't stay in a building with the doors shut.  Her house should be very warm and kitty cat will make it even warmer!!!

My dachshund is very sad about the snow as his legs are not very long and he can only navigate where we have scooped the snow away.  He definitely does not like snow or cold or ice.

I am now on a lower dose of neurontin.  I was supposed to get the prescription Monday but I came home from my PCP to wait on the perscription and fell asleep sitting up in a chair.  I woke up around 6 PM - I had somehow during the day wandered over to the couch and knocked out there.  Don't remember anything other than sitting down in the chair.  Guess I'm still not over the flu.  Didn't get the prescription today because of the blizzard. 

I am taking 300 mg of neurontin now because that is what I have on hand, but the script is for 400 mg so maybe that will help the pain a little more. The 300 mg dose is not doing much.  My PCP said I will have to balance my tolerance for side effects against pain relief.  I said I really wanted to double the neurontin, but the diarrhea is just not workable as I am getting dehydrated.  So less neurontin, more pain, less diarrhea, less dehydration.

Going to bed soon, The Legs are not happy at all.  Not sure if I will be able to sleep.  To tell you the hard truth, some nights I simply lay curled up in a ball and cry when the pain gets too bad, especially the pelvic pain.  Why pain gets worse at night I don't know.  I suspect it is because there is less to distract me.  I will have to practice my deceptive distracting ninja skills in order to perfect this as a pain relief strategy.  If only I had a grappling hook, because my nephew in Florida told me that if he had a grappling hook he could become a ninja.  I think I could too, at least a ninja of distraction, or at least grappling WITH distraction!!