Saturday, November 18, 2006
No Deed Unpunished
Well, it happened again.
Several weeks ago I got my annual Kaiser pamphlet. You know the ones you always get around this time of the year -- enrollment re-up time of the year? The pamphlet listed a discount for Kaiser users who wanted to take aquarobics classes. This sounded interesting to me. I knew I needed some form of exercise. I was feeling yucky a lot lately. Lethargic, weak, claustrophobic.
I have been fighting a yeast overgrowth since September and it was just wearing me out. I thought, if I get out and get a little exercise, I just might feel better. So I called Swim Atlanta, found out when the classes were for old ladies and turned up at 8:45am on Wednesday morning in my old swimsuit and hair down to my waist. What the hell. I took the hour long class and it was great. I felt really good afterward and turned up again for the Friday morning class. I used up my two free classes and it was time to make a decision. -- pay up or look around for a better facility and classes at an easier time of day.
Monday came around and I felt like shit and I had not made up my mind so I skipped class that day. That night was 'family dinner' night and I talked about my decision to Christine. She mentioned the county aquatic center nearby and we agreed that after voting on Tuesday, we would go by the center and get some information.
We voted, and then drove with the kids to the center. I went in and saw that it was a modern, very clean facility and they had a flyer on their classes. I saw that they had a 11am class M-W-F that would be perfect for me. The cost was only $2/class vs $4/class at Swim Atlanta. I giggled, got in the car and determined that I would get into these classes.
The center required a doctor's referral, so I called my Kaiser advice nurse and put in a request for Dr Seidel to fax over my permission by Friday.
There I was, making the right moves. Getting out, exercising, being a good little girl, eh?
Swiftly comes the Hammer of Punishment.
I napped on and off Tues night, watching the election returns. About 4am I got a handful of dry almonds to nibble on. I chewed. They clumped.
By 7am I was in agonizing pain right where my stomach meets my intestine (bile portal around in there, too). The nuts were packed and it felt like glass cutting me. I tried every position to lay and get comfortable. No dice. By 7:30 I was vomiting. I tried to stay down. I tried to sit up. I tried to just lay my head down on my desk. I vomited. It went on and on and on.
Finally, about 1 pm I called upstairs to Michael to ask him to take me to the hospital. Christine was at the dentist. He had the kids. We had to wait. She got home, I got shuffled off to the van and we were off. I almost made it to the hospital free and clear, but suffered one more vomiting attack before we got there.
We got to the hospital at about 2pm. They did their ER admit routine and shuffled me off to X-ray to ensure I didn't have a pin sticking me or something. They took blood and popped me some morphine to cut the pain. I got wiggled around in X-ray, moving from chair to gurney to chair to gurney.
They decided they needed a Cat-Scan so at about 4:30pm they started me drinking the banana barium elixer they use for intestinal viewing contrast. I explained very carefully that I have panic attacks inside Cat-Scan machines so that I need some benedryl to calm me down. (Several years ago, I got stuck under my house, and could not move around until I wiggled my way through a tight hole in the foundation. I don't like small enclosed spaces encircling my body anymore.)
They put me in a back room and forgot about me until about 9pm when they decided to give me another bottle of barium to drink for the Cat-Scan. Meanwhile, the barium is breaking up and moving the nut blockage. But I am sore as hell from the 'cutting' feeling it caused.
By the time they get me to the Cat-Scan it is 1 am. The nut blockage has worked its way through and all they see is a 'weak' spot on my large intestine, and they snap diagnose that I have been having a diverticulitus attack in my colon. Beep! Wrong answer. Thank you for playing. Please move along.
Things start to get complicated now. I start to have real trouble getting my breath everytime I move. I am getting O2 ok (95-97%), my heart is pumping a little hard to get it (127 bpm), but the minute I move I am gasping, in overload, hyperventilating. Working really hard to calm, get breath -- breathe, breathe, breathe. Hello COPD. Here I am. I am the poster girl.
Blood work says -- rip roaring urinary tract infection, rip roaring yeast infection and blood sugar off the scale (480 when 100 is normal).
I think -- Wow! Surprise, hon, you are sick. You are down right sickly and you let things get out of hand.
They push me into a double room, find me a fan to blow some of my heat off and Michael slips on home -- he is beat. The fan helps my breathing -- the air moving on my face shuts up the gasping reflex a bit. I get some nap time and the barium continues to move through my system. Whoopee.
The woman in the room's aunties come in and out all day. They wear perfume. I am panting almost constantly, but my numbers look so good -- 97 and 127 -- they give me a couple of respiratory cocktail treatments -- no help.
They decide to move me to a separate room late on Thursday afternoon. All day long on Thursday I was really depressed -- sniveling, crying and just feeling sorry for myself. I keep thinking of poor Christine having to help this old lady (me) wipe her ass and feed her applesauce. I worked myself up into a good pity party. By the time Christine, Michael and the kids came in to visit that night, I just wanted to be hugged and told it was going to be alright. Christine obliged. I was hugged and reassured.
On Friday they started the diabetes training, deciding to watch me for a day or so before they let me go home.
By Friday night, my respiratory distress was so obvious, they decide I should go down and get a chest x-ray. Janel is with me. They brought in a gurney to move me downstairs for the pictures, but I just couldn't get enough air to move on my own. They pulled me onto the gurney, but I am gasping, gasping, gasping, scaring everybody. So they decided to bring up the portable X-ray to my room, I slid off the gurney on my own, landed face down back on my bed. They got me turned over and tried to put a gas mask on my face -- I panicked, the respiratory therapist tried to talk me down to get the mask near my face. They gave me a shot to calm me and I promptly passed out.
Janel had been pushed into the bathroom when they were trying to move me to the gurney. They pulled it out of the room and she says she came out of the bathroom to see me laying in the bed -- my face and hands all black. They got her out of there fast.
I woke up with EKG electrodes glued all over my chest and breathing a little easier.
Janel was gone. I was woosy and lightheaded. I asked the nurse what happened and they told me that the X-ray might be showing that I had pneumonia and that they were giving me some more antibiotics and some steriods for that.
Hello steriods. Hello clear breathing. I popped right back, started to feel really great, just like I always do when I am on steriods. Love that Prednisone. So bad in the long run, so good in the short term. I could breath, my mood lifted, I chirped.
They taught me how to give myself insulin shots, how to give and read my blood sugar tests. They piled on the antibiotic prescriptions and sent me home on Monday afternoon.
Here is what I have learned --
I can have sucrose in small, small small doses (my A1c is 12%, need <7% -- so I am working on it)
I need to watch my feet and eyes. No sores in feet, get eyes checked often.
I need to exercise to retrain my muscles to use my own insulin. I make plenty of it, but it is just not being used, even my liver wants to help so I need to retrain things. A future without shots is a possibility for me.
Let no pain/hurt/discomfort go unreported -- keep on top of things with the doctor. It is so easy for things to slide into a crises mode when you have type 2 diabetes. This is going to be the hardest for me. I am a stoic. I tend to want to blunder through things on my own, hoping for the best, not being a whiner.
On that fatal Tuesday, I had made the commitment for the aquarobics class. I logged into Lane Bryant and ordered three (3!!!) swimming suits. They have come, they fit well, I will look swell as the silver-haired dolphiness floating around in the pool.
The Hammer of Punishment may have smacked me a good one right in my blackened face, but I still have some bounce in me and I have paid for 40 lessons. Let the games begin!!!
Several weeks ago I got my annual Kaiser pamphlet. You know the ones you always get around this time of the year -- enrollment re-up time of the year? The pamphlet listed a discount for Kaiser users who wanted to take aquarobics classes. This sounded interesting to me. I knew I needed some form of exercise. I was feeling yucky a lot lately. Lethargic, weak, claustrophobic.
I have been fighting a yeast overgrowth since September and it was just wearing me out. I thought, if I get out and get a little exercise, I just might feel better. So I called Swim Atlanta, found out when the classes were for old ladies and turned up at 8:45am on Wednesday morning in my old swimsuit and hair down to my waist. What the hell. I took the hour long class and it was great. I felt really good afterward and turned up again for the Friday morning class. I used up my two free classes and it was time to make a decision. -- pay up or look around for a better facility and classes at an easier time of day.
Monday came around and I felt like shit and I had not made up my mind so I skipped class that day. That night was 'family dinner' night and I talked about my decision to Christine. She mentioned the county aquatic center nearby and we agreed that after voting on Tuesday, we would go by the center and get some information.
We voted, and then drove with the kids to the center. I went in and saw that it was a modern, very clean facility and they had a flyer on their classes. I saw that they had a 11am class M-W-F that would be perfect for me. The cost was only $2/class vs $4/class at Swim Atlanta. I giggled, got in the car and determined that I would get into these classes.
The center required a doctor's referral, so I called my Kaiser advice nurse and put in a request for Dr Seidel to fax over my permission by Friday.
There I was, making the right moves. Getting out, exercising, being a good little girl, eh?
Swiftly comes the Hammer of Punishment.
I napped on and off Tues night, watching the election returns. About 4am I got a handful of dry almonds to nibble on. I chewed. They clumped.
By 7am I was in agonizing pain right where my stomach meets my intestine (bile portal around in there, too). The nuts were packed and it felt like glass cutting me. I tried every position to lay and get comfortable. No dice. By 7:30 I was vomiting. I tried to stay down. I tried to sit up. I tried to just lay my head down on my desk. I vomited. It went on and on and on.
Finally, about 1 pm I called upstairs to Michael to ask him to take me to the hospital. Christine was at the dentist. He had the kids. We had to wait. She got home, I got shuffled off to the van and we were off. I almost made it to the hospital free and clear, but suffered one more vomiting attack before we got there.
We got to the hospital at about 2pm. They did their ER admit routine and shuffled me off to X-ray to ensure I didn't have a pin sticking me or something. They took blood and popped me some morphine to cut the pain. I got wiggled around in X-ray, moving from chair to gurney to chair to gurney.
They decided they needed a Cat-Scan so at about 4:30pm they started me drinking the banana barium elixer they use for intestinal viewing contrast. I explained very carefully that I have panic attacks inside Cat-Scan machines so that I need some benedryl to calm me down. (Several years ago, I got stuck under my house, and could not move around until I wiggled my way through a tight hole in the foundation. I don't like small enclosed spaces encircling my body anymore.)
They put me in a back room and forgot about me until about 9pm when they decided to give me another bottle of barium to drink for the Cat-Scan. Meanwhile, the barium is breaking up and moving the nut blockage. But I am sore as hell from the 'cutting' feeling it caused.
By the time they get me to the Cat-Scan it is 1 am. The nut blockage has worked its way through and all they see is a 'weak' spot on my large intestine, and they snap diagnose that I have been having a diverticulitus attack in my colon. Beep! Wrong answer. Thank you for playing. Please move along.
Things start to get complicated now. I start to have real trouble getting my breath everytime I move. I am getting O2 ok (95-97%), my heart is pumping a little hard to get it (127 bpm), but the minute I move I am gasping, in overload, hyperventilating. Working really hard to calm, get breath -- breathe, breathe, breathe. Hello COPD. Here I am. I am the poster girl.
Blood work says -- rip roaring urinary tract infection, rip roaring yeast infection and blood sugar off the scale (480 when 100 is normal).
I think -- Wow! Surprise, hon, you are sick. You are down right sickly and you let things get out of hand.
They push me into a double room, find me a fan to blow some of my heat off and Michael slips on home -- he is beat. The fan helps my breathing -- the air moving on my face shuts up the gasping reflex a bit. I get some nap time and the barium continues to move through my system. Whoopee.
The woman in the room's aunties come in and out all day. They wear perfume. I am panting almost constantly, but my numbers look so good -- 97 and 127 -- they give me a couple of respiratory cocktail treatments -- no help.
They decide to move me to a separate room late on Thursday afternoon. All day long on Thursday I was really depressed -- sniveling, crying and just feeling sorry for myself. I keep thinking of poor Christine having to help this old lady (me) wipe her ass and feed her applesauce. I worked myself up into a good pity party. By the time Christine, Michael and the kids came in to visit that night, I just wanted to be hugged and told it was going to be alright. Christine obliged. I was hugged and reassured.
On Friday they started the diabetes training, deciding to watch me for a day or so before they let me go home.
By Friday night, my respiratory distress was so obvious, they decide I should go down and get a chest x-ray. Janel is with me. They brought in a gurney to move me downstairs for the pictures, but I just couldn't get enough air to move on my own. They pulled me onto the gurney, but I am gasping, gasping, gasping, scaring everybody. So they decided to bring up the portable X-ray to my room, I slid off the gurney on my own, landed face down back on my bed. They got me turned over and tried to put a gas mask on my face -- I panicked, the respiratory therapist tried to talk me down to get the mask near my face. They gave me a shot to calm me and I promptly passed out.
Janel had been pushed into the bathroom when they were trying to move me to the gurney. They pulled it out of the room and she says she came out of the bathroom to see me laying in the bed -- my face and hands all black. They got her out of there fast.
I woke up with EKG electrodes glued all over my chest and breathing a little easier.
Janel was gone. I was woosy and lightheaded. I asked the nurse what happened and they told me that the X-ray might be showing that I had pneumonia and that they were giving me some more antibiotics and some steriods for that.
Hello steriods. Hello clear breathing. I popped right back, started to feel really great, just like I always do when I am on steriods. Love that Prednisone. So bad in the long run, so good in the short term. I could breath, my mood lifted, I chirped.
They taught me how to give myself insulin shots, how to give and read my blood sugar tests. They piled on the antibiotic prescriptions and sent me home on Monday afternoon.
Here is what I have learned --
I can have sucrose in small, small small doses (my A1c is 12%, need <7% -- so I am working on it)
I need to watch my feet and eyes. No sores in feet, get eyes checked often.
I need to exercise to retrain my muscles to use my own insulin. I make plenty of it, but it is just not being used, even my liver wants to help so I need to retrain things. A future without shots is a possibility for me.
Let no pain/hurt/discomfort go unreported -- keep on top of things with the doctor. It is so easy for things to slide into a crises mode when you have type 2 diabetes. This is going to be the hardest for me. I am a stoic. I tend to want to blunder through things on my own, hoping for the best, not being a whiner.
On that fatal Tuesday, I had made the commitment for the aquarobics class. I logged into Lane Bryant and ordered three (3!!!) swimming suits. They have come, they fit well, I will look swell as the silver-haired dolphiness floating around in the pool.
The Hammer of Punishment may have smacked me a good one right in my blackened face, but I still have some bounce in me and I have paid for 40 lessons. Let the games begin!!!
# posted by Dornar @ 2:42 PM 
