Health – Page 4 – p i x e l s c r i b b l e s

This may be too much information

I was going to post about this on Twitter, but as I pondered how to put it I decided it might be too gross for some people, so instead I’m putting it on my Google-indexed blog.

The other day I thought I had a bleeding rash from riding my bicycle two days in a row. I treated the area with care and didn’t go biking for awhile. But it seemed to not want to heal. Sean took a look and said he couldn’t find anything wrong. I checked myself and couldn’t figure out where the blood was coming from.

It occurred to me that it might be a period. Several years ago when I first started biking and getting back into shape, before the whole heart failure thing, I got a period for the first time in five years. That was when I went to my first Augusta endocrinologist to get put on hormone treatments. After that, when I was on hormones I got regular periods, and when I was off I didn’t.

This time, I figured maybe, since I was getting back into shape again, my body would behave as it did before. But I couldn’t find any blood when I went looking. It only appeared every now and then when I wasn’t thinking about it.

This morning, though, it was confirmed. It’s definitely a period. It was just so light at first that it was hardly detectable. (And it’s still really light…wonder how long it’s going to last.)

This means nothing in terms of my fertility. Nothing. I’d like to believe that as I lose more weight, I’ll be healthier and my body will feel younger and stronger. But I refuse to get my hopes up about having kids. It’s just too painful when I’m disappointed.

Besides, I wasn’t magically fertile again the last time this happened. I had some random periods without hormones last year. And it’s happened before, too–just sporadically.

The only way this would be different would be if I got another period next month. But I probably won’t. This is probably just another menopausal dump. That’s what they all probably are. Here’s what Sean wrote about it back in the beginning.

But despite the fact that every time this happens I resolve to be logical, I can’t help but feel a little happy.

Sigh.

Fat-Free Blueberry Smoothie

At-home smoothies are ridiculously easy. We had strawberry-banana smoothies at work recently, with a 1-1-1 ratio recipe of strawberries, bananas, and skim milk. Today I decided to try it with yogurt.

I used one cup frozen blueberries,

one cup Activia Fat-Free Vanilla Yogurt,

and one quite ripe banana.

Put everything into the blender (or Magic Bullet, as the case may be).

Blend.

Enjoy!

Here’s the nutritional info.

WW Points

Item	Calories	Fat	Carbs	Fiber
Blueberries	106	0	25	7	1.5
Yogurt	150	0	27	6	2
Banana	121	0.4	31.1	3.5	2
TOTAL	366	0	81	17	7

As you can see, this wouldn’t be great for someone on Atkins. Even though it’s almost completely fat-free, it’s high enough in calories and carbs that the points are a little higher than I usually like to have for breakfast. I’d suggest halving the recipe, or making one recipe for two people.

One week down

My first week of Weight Watchers is over, and I’ve lost 3.4 pounds.

I’m at such a high weight, and my weight has fluctuated so much, that 3.4 pounds doesn’t seem like all that much. Most crap diets have you losing 10 pounds the first week. But I’m taking heart from this. First of all, Weight Watchers isn’t a crap diet; it’s a lifestyle change. I have been shocked by my eating habits this past week. I never really thought about how many times I feel “hungry” in a given day. This week I learned how to wait.

Secondly, 3.4 pounds is an achievement. I’ve actually been checking my weight every day, and it has consistently gone down this week. That’s not always going to be the case, but it has been helpful in keeping me going so far. It’s not really healthy to lose more than a couple pounds a week, and I want to do this in a healthy way.

I slipped up several times this week–there were days I went over my point limit–but Weight Watchers gives you extra points each week, and I didn’t use all of those up. My crowning achievement has to be last night, when I had enough points left for dessert, but decided I wasn’t hungry and didn’t have any. (!)

I really feel that this is something I can stick with, and that is largely due to Weight Watchers’ online tools. A few years ago I purchased Diet Power, and it did everything I could possibly want to help me diet…it tracked not only calories, but pretty much everything, and auto-adjusted based on weight loss and how much you ate and exercised. But it’s a desktop application, with no web version. To have it with you anywhere, you had to export your data and take it with you, then install the application wherever you were and import your data. I typically only used Diet Power at home, which meant that I wasn’t checking throughout the day to make sure I was on track. The software also took up a lot of processing power, so I’d tend to leave it off and then forget about using it.

Weight Watchers doesn’t track everything Diet Power tracks, but it tracks what matters. Maybe not tracking every single mineral is a good thing. I like that I can input foods with just three values: calories, total fat, and fiber. I don’t have to know, for example, how much iron there is. It’s something less to worry about. And the food database is quite robust; often I don’t have to add the item I’m eating, because it’s already there.

But the best part is, of course, that I can get to the site from any computer with internet access, which means I can stay on track all day. Weight Watchers seems to have many more online tools I can use, too, as I get adjusted.

I’m doing well so far with tracking points and sticking to my limit. I’m going to focus on that this week as well. But I’m also going to try to increase the number of times I work out. I only exercised a few days last week; I’m going to shoot for every day this week.

Every time I’ve tried to lose weight in the past, I’ve failed. But I cannot afford to give up this time. There’s too much at stake.

And I want to achieve this. I want to know that if I stick to a plan over time, I can accomplish great things. There is so much I want to do with my life, but if I don’t get over this fear of commitment I seem to have, I never will.

To defib or not to defib

It’s been about six months since I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and started on medication. Today’s the day I get my heart echoed again to see if it has recovered.

If it hasn’t recovered, then it probably won’t. This will mean I will have to have a defibrillator implanted in my chest, to restart my heart in case it happens to stop. With medication, I will still feel normal (as I have felt for the past few months), but my heart won’t actually be normal.

I am not sure if this is like a pacemaker, meaning I can’t be near microwaves and cell phones, or not. I basically put that knowledge off, because I figured there’s no sense in worrying about it if it doesn’t even happen. Of course, now the not knowing is bothering me.

If my heart has recovered, I will feel normal (as I have for the past few months) and my heart will be normal. Obviously I’m hoping for this outcome.

The ultimate work(out) station

I want a new desk for work.

This desk needs to support two monitors, one CRT and one LCD, an oversize keyboard, and a phone. Ideally it would also have room for a printer or two and a way to keep the CPU itself off the floor.

The work surface should raise and lower so that I can either stand or sit.

The desk should have one file drawer and one or two miscellaneous drawers.

It should also have a fold-out treadmill and a fold-out exercise bike that will retract into the desk when not in use. Ideally the controls for these would be built into the desk, as would retractable hand grips.

I can almost picture how this desk would work. It would have to be at least L-shaped, if not U-shaped. The arm or arms would contain the exercise equipment. There are already products that can raise a monitor and keyboard; for this desk they would just have to raise two monitors at once. I’d prefer it to look snazzy, so instead of a product sitting on top of the desk, I’d prefer the desk itself be adjustable. That would ensure that there would be space for the exercise equipment to fold out and lock in, as well.

Okay, universe, you have your assignment. When can I expect to see this desk in my office?

Hospital observation

In the hospital again! (And looking great, I might add.)

So, yesterday at work something odd and scary happened to me.

I was down in the studio with the chief engineer, working on graphics for one of the weather computers. I had gotten a bit flustered about a problem and was trying to make sure it got resolved before I went back to my desk. There were a few people in the weather center and all the chairs were taken; the chief engineer was crouching and I was standing up.

I got tired of standing so I knelt on the floor in seiza, the formal sitting position where you fold your legs under yourself–you’ve probably seen it in anime or martial arts. Your legs can easily go to sleep in this position. I wasn’t thinking about the poor circulation it would afford me and how that might not be so great since I’m on diuretics; I was just pleased that I could still sit that way.

At some point the weather guys were talking to the engineer. They were all standing up and talking over my head and I was sort of listening to them. All of a sudden, I felt myself falling forward. Then I felt myself catch myself. It was kind of like how you start to fall asleep and then jerk awake suddenly, except I was lucid the entire time. I could still hear everyone talking as blurriness filled my vision until I couldn’t see. I’ve had that sort of thing happen before, a lot actually, since I started heart medication, but it usually went away in a second or two. This time it lasted as long as it took me to finally wrest control of my muscles and stand up, a surreal passage of seconds during which I felt myself jerk backwards over and over uncontrollably.

I don’t know how severe it was or how long it actually lasted, but I didn’t fall down and no one even noticed. Their conversation continued as I was finally able to reach out and stabilize myself against the desk to pull myself to my feet.

“I just had some sort of seizure,” I said, for lack of a better explanation, “so I’m going to go call my doctor.” Everyone called after me in surprise as I strode out of the weather center and back up the stairs. I continued to be blase about it until I had gotten to my desk, made the call, and gotten the machine. As I described the problem my voice started shaking and then it was a huge struggle not to cry.

Once I was done leaving the message for my heart doctor I tried to go back to working, but I couldn’t concentrate and I was starting to feel freaked out. One of the directors came in to make graphics for her show, and she started chit-chatting with me, and I couldn’t do much but babble in response. Finally I said, “I’m not really coherent right now because I just had a seizure or something.”

“Are you okay?!” She started asking questions and I felt overwhelmed so I finally just said “I don’t know,” and she ran out of the room and got my boss.

My boss came in and I tried to compose myself and call my GP, since the cardiologist hadn’t called back yet. I got a machine there too and hung up.

“Do you want to go to the hospital?” my boss asked. The director had asked that too. I didn’t know if I needed to or not but I was scared.

“I guess so,” I said. My boss practically sprang out of the room and found someone to drive me over to the ER.

I wasn’t feeling any spasms or having any vision issues, just the normal slight dizziness upon beginning to walk that I have grown accustomed in recent weeks to experiencing, so I walked out to the car with the promotions assistant and she drove me to the hospital and stayed with me in the ER for as long as she could before she had to go pick up her daughter from day care. I explained my symptoms to a nurse, waited awhile, got registered, and then waited even longer.

I’m pretty sure it was 7 o’clock before they finally called me back. The episode happened at 3:20 and I’d arrived at the ER at 4. By then I was feeling all right and I had actually just asked the nurse if I could leave.

I was put in a room and had to wait some more. Then I explained my situation to a doctor and he ordered labs and urine and an EKG. These various things occurred at various times. I saw another doctor who pointed out that the way I was sitting probably set it all off. A nurse put in an IV and took me to a different room with a stretcher.

Then that nurse was taken off my case and a different nurse was assigned. He let me know that we were waiting for someone from upstairs to evaluate me and decide if I needed to stay. Another doctor came close to midnight to tell me I would be admitted overnight, given fluids, and observed. That doctor brought me something to eat; I hadn’t eaten or drank anything since around 2 o’clock when I had Wendy’s with Fichtel. My hospital fare was a diabetic sandwich lunch with sun chips and an apple, and it was delicious.

I waited a long time to be put in a room. There was no TV in the little ER room, so once I had eaten my dinner and taken some pictures I had nothing to do. My cell phone had no reception. I laid on the stretcher and tried to sleep, but the ER noises made it difficult.

At one point I was taken to the ER Observation area to be put in a room there, but the nurses said they’d been told I wasn’t to go there, so I ended up back in the ER room. It wasn’t until 5:30 that I was finally placed in a room upstairs.

Much to my chagrin, the people on the other side of the curtain from me were snoring in the loudest, grossest way possible.

Also much to my chagrin, nurses kept coming in to take vitals and check things and have me sign papers and set up fluids and set up a loaner CPAP. I was able to sleep until 7:30, when a nurse came in for vitals again, and then I took the CPAP off and resigned myself to staying awake.

The CPAP had blocked a lot of the disgusting snoring noise, but now I had nothing to protect me. I tried my television which helped some. Eventually my neighbors were awakened and I was relieved.

Breakfast was not good. It was so not good that I didn’t bother taking a picture. Fake eggs and tasteless grits. However, there was an orange muffin that was actually really yummy, and it was all served with orange juice and milk, which softened the blow.

Two different doctors came around one at a time after breakfast to hear my complaints and give me their opinions. Finally, right when I was starting to eat lunch, the whole cadre came in. They all agreed that I was reacting strongly to my heart medicines and I needed to cut back on the diuretics, which had dehydrated me to the point of renal failure. The fluids they’d been giving me all night combined with stopping the diuretics temporarily had brought my lab numbers back to acceptable levels, so I just needed to talk to my cardiologist about changing my doses.

After they were gone I ate lunch, which was even worse than breakfast.

I remember when I was hospitalized for leukemia, I couldn’t stand the smell of those plastic containers, and the orderlies had to remove the lid out in the chamber beyond my room so I wouldn’t smell it and throw up. At least it wasn’t that bad.

Sometimes I think back on my time at the Markey Cancer Center with nostalgia. I think that it was nice to be taken care of, to have my diet planned out, and to sit around all day goofing off. This experience reminded me of the reality: my life was dull and depressing and I lived solely for those fleeting blocks of time when I was allowed to go home, to see something different, to walk outside. Those moments were bookended by weeks of hospital stays. No, nostalgia, I do not want that life again.

After lunch I fell asleep watching TV. One of the doctors, a cute guy who was pretty flirty, came in and asked, “So, want to stay a few more days?” I fortunately knew he was joking, and responded, “No, I think I’ll pass.” Then he said I would be able to leave in about an hour, which was wonderful news. We shook hands for about the fourth time (and joked about that too) and then he said, “I’ll let you go back to sleep. Enjoy your nap,” but of course I was too excited about leaving to sleep, so instead I started getting my things together, tidying up after myself, and getting dressed.

Finally a nurse had me sign discharge papers and I was free to go. I didn’t bother waiting for Sean to come up to the room; I grabbed my stuff and strode right out of that room, down the hall, and into an elevator.

There was no dizziness and no blurry vision as I headed outside to wait for Sean to arrive. I tilted my head back and gazed at the blue sky above and felt no vertigo. I felt normal. It was nice.

Good morning!

Last night I went to bed at around 10:30 or 11. I was able to fall asleep with the CPAP on. Once I woke up with a horrible tickle in the back of my throat that made me keep coughing. I turned the humidifier back down to 2 and that seemed to help, oddly. Another time I woke up and took the mask off, then I woke up again later and put it back on. Finally I woke up a third time with my throat really dry so I took it off for the rest of the night. Since I was half-asleep most of the time, I didn’t check my clock, so I don’t know how long I actually wore the mask last night.

I started to wake up around 6, and dozed until around 6:30, when I finally got up. I just didn’t feel the need to be in bed anymore. This is remarkable because for the last week or so I have barely been able to get out of bed. Yesterday, for example, I stayed for as long as I possibly could–until 9:15, which is 15 minutes before I leave for work.

But today I didn’t want to sleep anymore, so I got up and read my webcomics and checked out a couple of blogs. Then the sun was up enough that I thought I might take a walk outside, so I did.

It was about 35 degrees out, so I put on workout pants that I thought were warm enough, a shirt, and a sweater. I did not wear my gloves, though I should have, and I don’t think I even own a hat anymore, so I went bareheaded.

As a result of being so underdressed (I’m not used to the cold anymore!), I wasn’t able to stay out long, just 15 minutes. But I felt like I could have continued, so when I got back inside I hopped on my bike, which is propped up on a resistance stand in the second bedroom, and rode for ten minutes. As I rode I thought about ways I could get a TV into that room so I won’t be bored stiff when I’m exercising.

It wasn’t a huge workout, but it was enough to build up a sweat, and I feel pretty darn good.

I’m going to try to keep this up all week. Also, since I’m taking my lunch today, I might see about a brief walk during my break as well.

For now, breakfast, then shower, then lunch-packing. Whee!

Danger, Will Robinson!

I’m getting tired of this ;P

I got a fever late Saturday night, and it kept coming back throughout Sunday and Monday. I took Tylenol Cold whenever it got too bad–i.e., I was freezing to death–and otherwise just tried to rest and drink juice. This morning I had a bit of a fever so I called my GP’s office for an appointment to see what he thought. He only had an afternoon appointment available, so I took that and then went to work.

I got caught up on a few things and realized the breadth of work that is still to be done, then headed over to see Dr. B. I told him my symptoms–neck pain, slight sore throat, occasional cough, throat and nasal congestion, fever–and that I had been sick like this a couple weeks ago.

He surmised that I have just had two different viruses back to back, but he took a throat culture and prescribed Penicillin just in case I have strep throat.

As we were walking out of the exam room, he asked, “Do you need a work excuse?”

“For yesterday?” I asked. “I’m working today.”

“You shouldn’t be,” he replied.

“…well, then, yes, I need an excuse.”

And he wrote me a note that says I can’t go back to work until Thursday.

Seriously. I have been out of sick days forever, and I have work that needs to get done, and I don’t know how I can expect to be regarded as a professional if I’m out sick every couple of weeks! This is really frustrating.

I went to Walgreens to fill the prescription, and I picked up some hand sanitizer and Lysol disinfectant spray. I’m going to try to be ridiculous about cleanliness from now on. I’m also thinking I’d like to see what sorts of HEPA room filters are available on the market and if I could afford one, or preferably two: one for home and one for work. That might not be possible given all the other medical bills (another reason I’d like to be able to work!), but it’s definitely worth looking into at least.

Bah!

Sleep study

It was a little before 9 when I arrived at the Children’s Medical Center, signed in, and rode the elevator up to the fourth floor. I’d been told to use the phone in the lobby to tell someone I was there, but a man was already guiding a boy and his mother back to the sleep study area, so he let me in too. We walked past a nursing station and down a long hallway, then turned into another hallway. The man took the boy and his mother into the first door on the left, and told me to wait by the blue chairs up ahead for someone named Chris.

I had barely arrived at the chairs when a man came out of a room across the hall. “Are you Chris?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m Heather.”

I’m so much more outgoing than I used to be. It still surprises me.

He stopped at a closet to pick up some clean linens for my room and then guided me back to where I was to spend the night. “This is like a dorm room,” I said, because it was. It was about like the hospital rooms I lived in at Markey Cancer Center, only it was bigger and felt like it was trying to be hip. There was a closet door that was completely covered by a markerboard, for example, and a long couch under what looked like a giant window shade. I assumed there was a window behind it, but that might not actually have been the case.

After I filled out a sleep survey, I let Chris know how tired I was and he said I could go ahead and change and he’d get me wired up. I put on my T-shirt and shorts and took my evening meds, but I forgot to brush my teeth, which would annoy me quite a bit later as I was trying to sleep.

I sat in a chair and watched an episode of Family Guy as Chris wired me up. I had countless wires coming off my head and face, then two on my chest and two on each leg. There was also a thin wire under my nose to detect my breathing and a wire against my throat to record snoring. Chris put a big hairnet on me to hold the wires in place on my head. Once I got into bed, he put one of those clips on my finger as well, to detect oxygen levels or something.

I had to start out on my back. The room was totally dark, but there was an intercom so Chris could hear me and a video camera recording everything I did. We had to calibrate before I could go to sleep; Chris told me over the intercom to hold my eyes open and stare straight ahead, close them and stare straight ahead, look side to side and up and down, hold my breath, breathe normally, and move my feet. After that I was supposed to go to sleep, but I was a little too excited to calm down right away. I thought that the whole experience was really neat and I was anticipating falling asleep, which makes no sense. Eventually I was able to sleep, fortunately.

About every hour and a half or so I would wake up having to go to the bathroom, and at the same time I would get severe leg cramps. I’d have to call Chris to come in and unplug me so I could stand up, use the facilities, and pace around to get my muscles to stop clenching. It wasn’t particularly restful. Mom says the cramps might have been exacerbated by how cold it was in the room; it was pretty freaking cold. Regardless, it wasn’t particularly pleasant. Plus, with all the wires on it was difficult to shift my sleeping position from back to side, so that was annoying.

Chris was fun though; he had lots of good stories and jokes and was just interesting in general. I guess you have to be to work in a sleep center, which is a weird and kind of spooky place.

The fourth time I woke up, Chris told me it was about one minute to 6 and we could just calibrate again and then I could be done. This was a relief, but it still took forever to calm my muscles down. Finally we finished up, and he pulled all the wires off and tried to clean the gunk away with some wipes–the gunk was like white oobleck, if you ever created that stuff in middle school. Then I changed into my long pants and cleaned up as best I could and brushed my teeth and took my morning pills, and I was out of there.

On the drive home I thought about being considerate and picking up some McDonald’s for Mom and Sean, but ultimately I decided to just go home and go to bed, and that’s what I did. I had a little cramping, but nothing too serious, and I was able to sleep until around 10:30 (although I think I did go to the bathroom somewhere in the middle).

It was an interesting experience, to be sure. I’d like to know what all they learned about my sleeping patterns, if anything. Hopefully the frequent bathroom breaks and cramping didn’t affect the results too much.

We should have the results in a few weeks.

Upswing?

Hi there!

So last night, around the time I should have been going to bed, it occurred to me that I felt better.

I had done nothing all day but read manga and articles about pop culture over at Cracked. For most of the day I was miserable, feeling tired and gaggy and dizzy when I stood up. I’d managed a few bites of my dinner–steak, from a Mexican restaurant–and was just trying to keep it down. But all of a sudden that wasn’t an issue anymore. In fact, I found myself hungry again.

I ate a little more of my food, and I also ate a bowl of strawberry mini wheats cereal, while I continued reading and chatting with friends. It was a lot of fun. I stayed up extremely late, just reveling in not wanting to die. I told Brooke, who by that time had awakened for her Sunday morning, that I was afraid that if I went to sleep I would feel bad again. But eventually tiredness won out and I crawled under the covers.

I awoke not feeling crappy. In fact, I felt good enough to actually do things, like clean up the sink area in my bathroom, load and start the dishwasher, and start a load of laundry. I have the gross taste in my mouth, and a bit of sinus pressure, but I don’t feel overwhelmed by it.

I read about Kimono Karen’s amazing trip to Hawaii and for the first time in weeks thought that maybe I will be healthy enough to do something like that someday. That’s pretty big given that just yesterday, when I was miserable, I realized I no longer felt like I could do anything I wanted to.

“Do I really feel better?” I wondered last night. “Or do I just think I feel better?” Then a better question occurred to me: “Does it matter?”

What the doctor said

Without running any additional labs or calling for any tests or procedures, my doctor decided today that I have acid reflux, which would explain the chest pain, why my voice is all wonky, and why I wake up coughing and have a gaggy feeling in my throat during the day. I asked him about the foot swelling, and he examined my feet and noted that there was indeed swelling, and said he thought it was because of too much salt in my diet. He said to take a double dose of the blood pressure medicine on days when I had swelling.

I asked him if being exhausted all the time was simply due to being out of shape. “Yes,” he said, “and also because you’re not sleeping well. I am convinced that you have sleep apnea.” So the sleep study is on for October 19.

He prescribed me Nexium and I went home and took one. I had some pain in my upper back on the right-hand side, in the muscle I use when carrying my purse over my arm, and it seemed to just keep getting worse and worse, so I also took some Advil, and then I went to work.

My voice was still wonky, and I was tired, but I felt okay. I ended up not eating anything all day, though, because I kept putting off my lunch break until it was suddenly the end of the day.

After work I went to Wild Wing Cafe with Gene, Chris T., Chris C., and Gene’s friend Mason, and eventually Kelsey and Shalah showed up. I ordered spinach dip, which was great, but the chips started to be too dry for my throat so I stopped eating it, and potato soup, which was terrible–it was like someone had pureed a loaded baked potato :P No one makes potato soup like Dad, I guess.

I was hoping to feel better as the night went on, but I just felt worse, and my back started hurting again, so I skipped out as early as I possibly could (our waiter was terrible and took his sweet time with my check). I picked up some dinner for Sean on the way home and crawled into bed almost immediately, trying to find a good position for my back. I called Mom and talked with her a little while before finally going to sleep.

I’m not sure why I’m awake now, but my back is feeling better, and I’m a little thirsty. I went ahead and did the football stuff for work that I have to do every Friday night/Saturday morning during the season, and now I think I’ll drink some water and go back to bed.

Makin’ it somehow

Twitter has been down all day, which is annoying because I like to use it to dash off quick complaints. Earlier, for example, I wanted to bitch about this production dude who decided to recite for me a complete plot synopsis of some anime he really likes. Yes, I enjoy anime, but you are boring the hell out of me. Shut up!

Time seemed to be moving awfully slowly this morning. It started when I was in bed waiting for my alarm to go off. The light coming in around the curtain in the bedroom looked the same every time I looked at it. I kept falling asleep and waking back up and still feeling tired but knowing I was going to have to get up “soon”. Finally at 8:30 I actually checked the time and got up.

The first two hours of work were like two weeks. Very tired, trouble concentrating, and later, mild abdominal pain. I took the opportunity to call my doctors and create a game plan for tomorrow.

Today’s symptoms include: coughing, nausea, gross taste in my throat, mild headache, mild abdominal pain, occasional burping, general feeling of tiredness. As usual, mild exertion exhausts me and I have to sit down for awhile to recover and catch my breath. When I woke up this morning, the wet raspiness was back in my throat and lungs. Also, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this at all, but I have had so much acne since this all started. It is driving me crazy. It seems like every time I look in the mirror there are five more zits.

Seeing my GP tomorrow morning to demand that he actually order some tests. Like a meeting with a cardiologist, and a chest X-ray, and more labs, and whatever else I can think of before then. I’m going to bring in my calendar with all my symptoms for this month written in it, to see if that will help him think of anything we’ve missed. I’m supposed to call my endocrinologist after that appointment and let them in on everything that’s happening, so they can decide whether or not I should resume hormones.

My boss is back from Japan. I had asked her to see if she could find me a protection charm for my car, but apparently she didn’t visit any shrines. She did, however, bring me a beautiful floral pattern drawstring bag and a cute bookmark with a paper girl sculpted on it, both handmade by her aunt, and she also brought me an adorable little desk ornament of an owl. It’s hard to describe the thing. There’s a big ball that sits on the desk, and out of that comes half a hoop of black wire, and then hanging off that is a smaller straight piece of wire, and on one end is the little round owl, and on the other are two colored balls to balance him. It’s neat and it moves around with the air conditioning or with any vibrations on the desk.

She came in to talk to me today and told me that health has to be my first priority, because if we don’t have our health, we don’t have anything. It’s a total cliche, but I know full well how true it is. I have never been so miserable in my life–well, maybe when I was hospitalized with cancer, but at least then I knew what I was in for and didn’t fight every day to get things done.

I’m really lucky to have such a good boss. I hope I can get all this straightened out so I can go back to being the kind of employee I want to be–the kind of employee my boss deserves to have working for her.

ER

This morning at about 4:30, I woke up with severe lower abdominal pain. It was probably indigestion, I knew. But it was the worst abdominal pain I can remember ever having, besides the time in the hospital nine years ago when exploratory surgery revealed that my appendix had burst.

I tried going to the bathroom, but while I was marginally successful in that effort, the pain didn’t go away. I tried relaxing my muscles as much as possible. I went back to bed and did my best to lie still and relax. But the pain just wouldn’t go away.

On my way back to the bathroom I suddenly realized I was going to throw up…and I did, and from the horrible burning I’m guessing it was mostly bile. I kept throwing up and it didn’t make me feel any better; the pain was still there and now my throat was raw and stinging. I was near tears as I left the bathroom again.

So I got dressed and asked Sean to take me to the ER. We went up the street to Doctor’s Hospital.

I was in pain for the whole ride, and as I walked in, and as I sat down and filled out the paperwork. But after that the pain started to subside, of course.

They took my blood pressure several times, and my temperature, and did something to my finger, and then they put me in a room and had me give them a urine sample. The doctor came in eventually and did a standard examination. Eventually it was decided that since the pain had gone away, he’d give me a prescription for pain and nausea and I could then follow up with my GP. We waited on the urine test results, which were normal, and then Sean took me home.

Due to the drugs they gave me while I was there, or maybe because I was just tired in general, I slept until 6:20 in the afternoon. I did wake up long enough around 9 o’clock to call in to work, fortunately.

While I slept I had a couple of bad dreams. The first one involved one of my side teeth breaking into pieces. In the second one, my cousin Carl was married and had a baby, and the whole family had moved to Iraq for missionary work, and they’d been killed there. I actually woke up wanting to call my mom to make sure that wasn’t true.

Since I slept past the end of the standard business day, I wasn’t able to call my GP to talk about my ER adventure, and I missed a call from my endocrinologist. Also, I need to contact the people who made my glasses about the weird imperfection in the right lens that refracts light from monitors and makes it seem like there’s a big fingerprint on the glasses. Kind of distracting :P

So I’ll try to get all my calls done tomorrow during my lunch break, I guess.

Another sucky thing about all this is that I was already out of sick days at work, which means I have two unpaid days this week. I could use vacation for them, but then I would have fewer vacation days…:P

My boss has been very understanding of all this so far, but I imagine she’s getting tired of it. I am too.

I just want things to go back to normal.

So, seriously, this boulder is not getting any closer to the top of the hill

I was hoping that this appointment I was scheduled to have today would magically light a path towards solving all my health problems. So it wasn’t exactly thrilling to hear upon arrival that my appointment had been canceled, and the ENT’s office was assumed to have told me.

Apparently this appointment was simply so the pulmonary specialist could decide whether or not I needed a sleep study, but the ENT had already decided I needed a sleep study, so the additional appointment was deemed redundant.

It would be nice if someone had explained this to me.

Well, at least it saved me the copay.

While I was there I arranged to have my most recent labs faxed to my mom, and I also set up the appointment for the sleep study, which won’t be until October 19 because my insurance has to approve it first. Grr.

So I have to wait another month for a clue into what the hell’s going on.

After that abbreviated visit I went to see Laurie, who recently left my workplace to become the executive director of a nonprofit. She’s very into heart issues, and when I explained my symptoms, she said she wanted me to see a cardiologist. She also said I should fire my GP and get someone who will really be an advocate for my health. (Laurie’s very passionate, which is why her nonprofit is going to go far.)

I left with a couple of names to look into, which I will. Feeling like crap all the time is starting to get old.

Before I went to the appointment that turned out to be canceled, I went through my blog and Twitter for the past two months to get an idea of my symptoms. It looks like I really only started feeling horrible in September. In August I was still functioning normally, though things were going downhill, and occasionally I would have the exhaustion/shortness of breath that has come to plague me.

It is definitely possible that the ridiculous heat and the lack of air conditioning at work compounded whatever issue I was already having. I know that for the entire summer I had been having trouble breathing, and I even had a time when I woke up gasping for breath, but it was an isolated incident. Maybe several things are all going on at once, feeding on each other as they work to destroy me.

Woo.