not what I had planned

On Friday I was so happy for the weekend… I was looking forward to getting some things done, enjoy nice weather and down time…

Instead I found out about some bad blood work results that someone close to me received, which basically, if the person doesn’t change some of their ways could lead to some serious health issues…

Generally most people would be able to deal with it pretty easier, just a lab result that has the possibility to be changed… but for me, it just triggers way too much from when dad got sick…

The hardest part is knowing that dad had tons of warning signs and didn’t do anything about them… and this person is getting some additional warning signs and yet not making all of the efforts that they should…

After two days of getting severely depressed about this whole thing, I finally made the comment today that I would not bury another person close to me… took all i had not to break down…

I’m proud of myself for being able to identify all of my emotions and not running away from them… and this time i’m not just going to sit back and watch someone die… whether they like it or not…

needless to say, i can’t wait to go to work tomorrow, it will be a welcomed distraction…

miss you dad… wish i could have done this when you were still here…

Why I haven’t been blogging

I think a picture says a thousand words and here it is:

Those are my DAILY meds that I am currently on in some form for my migraines…

I had an emergency appt on wednesday with the specialist because it was to the point where I couldn’t function, was missing 1-2 classes a week, having to work from home for at least one day…

Not to mention I was so irritable and feeling miserable and fatigued…

So the results of the appt, I weaned down off of one med – will take me an entire month… I am ramping up on a beta blocker/blood pressure med not because i have high blood pressure but because its an alternative treatment for migraines i guess… I take a med to shrink my blood vessels 3-4 times a day, some of the meds can’t be taken together, some have to be cut in half etc… its a hassle but I’m starting to feel a little bit better…

I wish this could have been done 2 months ago when I first called the office concerned about my side effects to my original meds… oh well..

But I haven’t forgotten about you guys, I’ve just literally been trying to get through each day…

not sleeping

Sooooo i’m not sleeping…. at all… its not like insomnia… because i can lay down… and start to fall asleep… but i wake up about every half hour, mind racing, thoughts all jumbled about health care this and demand for quantity that and solve for this and myocardial infarction that… its rediculous…

it started about a week and a half ago waking up every couple hrs, i figured it was because the weather was changing or because my stress level was upping a bit but now it is out of hand… i have just completely fallen apart… last night steve thought i was in the midst of a full on panic attack at 11pm because i was breathing so heavy…. thing was, i didn’t even realize it…

two mornings ago i when steve’s alarm went off i woke up sitting up right in the bed… like i was already sitting up and the alarm just made me snap out of whatever delirium i was in… like seriously this cannot be healthy for me…

my suspicion is that getting home at 8 pm, eating late, doing homework until 10pm and then going straight to bed in an effort to get 8 hrs of sleep (HA) is giving me no time to let my brain slow down and just relax…. but the problem is… when else do i do my homework… some i can get done on the weekends, but some doesn’t get assigned til a tuesday and is due on a thursday… and worse yet… i THINK i’m doing my best time management by spacing out my work based on due dates and yet i’m still scrambling on some things last minute…

so here i am running on maybe 1-2 hrs of real sleep over the past 3 or 4 nights and its killing me… i calling it quits before my night class which the prof puts his lecture online and i can listen to over the weekend… and at 3pm i’m heading out of the office picking up some real food and doing my finance hw before it gets dark out… and maybe just maybe i’ll get a few more hrs of sleep tonight…

otherwise i’ll be seeing a doctor at the health center on monday… because this isn’t a life… i don’t know how ppl can do it…

exposed

My office is directly across the street from the old Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh in Oakland… and as pretty much everyone in the city knows, the hospital has moved to a new location in Lawrenceville.  For a while it was up in the air what UPMC planned to do with the building but a month or so ago heavy construction equipment rolled in and then the demolition started. 

sorry the pic is so small i need a usb cord so bad for my camera…

The rumors I hear now are that it is going to made into a green space… which would be wonderful of course, but it is still bittersweet….

Here’s why…….

9 years ago when I was 16…. (holy mother of lord I’m getting old)…. I spent a little less than a week in one of those rooms they’re tearing apart across the street…. Unable to breathe, swallow, and pretty sure that I was just going to not wake up the next morning because no one could figure out what was wrong with me…

I remember in my fog the doctors bringing in a group of about 10 residents and saying “this patient is a prime example of someone we have been unable to diagnose so we are just attempting to keep her stable at the moment and keep her as comfortable as possible”

I had spent the last two weeks in and out of the local hospitals in my hometown (40 min away) getting IVs over night, holding down food for a day and getting sent home… two days later right back in… eventually i couldn’t even swallow and the doctor said she’s got to go to children’s… so in we went…

They plugged another IV in me…

and my clearest memory of that entired stay was sitting in the ER before I was admitted and a little girl across from me and she had no family there… I’m not sure how she got there or why she was there but staff kept coming in to sit with her and read to her and the other patients parents kept taking turns talking to her and keeping her company… and though my mom and I were having a bad go of it at the time I remember thinking

1. How glad I was to have her there and
2. How great it was that these parents who were in a state of crisis of their own were all coming together for this poor little girl who had no idea what was happening to her… people in Pittsburgh really are just a breed of their own…..

 

After four bags of fluids the doctors told me technically I could go home… but I would be right back in there tomorrow getting another set of IVs… they were recommending that I be admitted… so zip zoom up to a room I went…

I got worse and worse… not to be graphic and sorry if I gross people out but I was stuffing gauze up my nose and my mouth because I was bleeding from my nose and from my mouth and I couldn’t stand it… the nurses would come in and yell at me for it… and as soon as they left I’d stuff it back in again…

The scariest moment was when I was at the worst I could be this sweet nurse came in and took down tubes from the walls and explained that my breathing was getting really bad and that they might need to put a tube down my throat that night and she wanted to show me what it looked like so that if I woke up and saw it I wouldn’t be scared… I appreciated that she took the time to explain to me how bad things really were getting…

Luckily I made it through the night and late the next day the final round of blood work came back and I had epstein barr – plain and simple… mono… all of that because of mono!!… because the mono had gone undetected for almost a month I had contracted severe tonsilitus and sinusitus… I was put on steroids, antibiotics and kept for two more days until I was strong enough to go home…

It took me six months to recover fully from everything… but I credit the wonderful people at Children’s Hospital for putting a scared 16 year old girl who thought she was one tough cookie at ease and let her know that she was going to be ok… and for getting me on the path to being healthy…

Its sad to see the building disappear now… though I know their work continues…

How I will always remember it – though not the best picture oh well… THANK YOU

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