Archive for the ‘life’ Category

Slammed

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

Wow. Depression set in today with a goddamn vengeance. I haven’t felt this way in quite some time. Tears are easy – spontaneous. I find myself thinking that I’m tired of life – living is an effort  – I think I want to be done with it all.  While suicide would never be a choice for me, I have options in checking out early – the hep C being predominant, of course.

I have no motivation. Planning or preparing dinner is a major chore.

Mother’s Day was OK but no one ever makes any kind of plans ‘for me’. I do for them in sending flowers or cards to mothers/grandmothers, but no consideration is expressed in my direction. I would just like a bit of recognition sometimes. Maybe on my birthday, or mother’s day?  I feel like I don’t matter. I’m just here to pay bills and keep things in basic order.

OK – this is enough self pity and indulgence.

DONE

Just stuff

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Sleeping habits are still way off. I’m still taking a pill to help me get to sleep and then getting in about 6 hours before I’m awake and just laying in bed hoping to fall back into dreamland.  Nausea is damn near constant now. I grabbed a slice of cold mushroom pizza this morning while the coffee was brewing – took one bite and threw it away. Not sure what this new symptom may indicate but its probably nothing good. Also having serious eye problems. The surface of my left eye in particular, dries out overnight and then takes many hours to rehydrate and feel normal. Last eye exam the doc said that I had scarring on both cornea’s because of what I just described. My mood hasn’t been that great and at this point I’m feeling as if I”m doomed.  I’ve also been watching for another damn menstrual cycle to begin because I’ve been having symptoms – and considering fragile emotions it’s probably inevitable. I wish the damn thing would just CEASE. Could all of these new/regularly occurring symptoms just be menopause? I suppose – and that would definitely be a welcome thing for me.

I need to call the eye specialist and get in – unfortunately, my access to a vehicle is going to be quite limited starting next Monday when DD starts classes. The only day I can do appointments will be on Fridays and my liver doc does procedures all day on Friday and doesn’t have office hours.

I feel like crawling back into bed and just letting loose – need to cry it all out… that’s how I’m feeling right now. TV sucks and doesn’t distract me. Knitting frustrates, no patience for spinning. Have thought about setting up jars with natural/organic dye-stuff and letting the colors leach into the liquid & mordant. The box that they arrived in still sits near the washer, almost a year after arrival, and remains untouched. So, I’ve been in this downward slump for a long, long time now.

I feel like DH & DD would be better off without me around. Been experiencing an increase in the palpitations/tachycardia and the duration of each incident can go on for many hours with me unable to get them to stop. Occasionally I get lucky and can make them go away by holding my breath, but that doesn’t happen often enough. I also have a feeling of pressure and mild pain in my chest  when this happens.  Medically, I’m a goddamn doctor’s nightmare, I think. How much is enough? How much more can I endure? This shit has been going on constantly since 1993. Graves disease, later diagnosis of Hep C, ectopic pregnancy, migraines, muscular degeneration. I’m so disgusted and tired of having to live with all of this piled on me.  Oh well.

DONE

Reversal

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

My sleep habits seem to be reversing.  While I still feel fatigued and do go to bed to snooze – sleep doesn’t come. For the past two nights I’ve had to take 25mg of diphenhydramine to put me out. As I sit here now, at 10:32pm, I’m not sure that if I do head in to the bedroom that I’ll just lay there awake.

Menopause officially kicking in? Seems like this may be the case. Hot flashes are much more intense than ever before. Holy shit!  I dunno… fuck it. It’s not like I have to drag my ass out of the house to go to work or anything, right? Right! Told the huz that he needs to leave the gate between the living room and bedroom open from now on so all three dogs can come in and snooze with me in the early morning hours. Otherwise, I wake very easily now as well, I’ll hear them going in and out of the doggie door, playing, barking at random nothingness.  If they all have the opportunity to sleep with mama, they take it above all else. My sweet babies! :)

I think I mentioned in a previous post that our daughter’s loan was approved to go and finish up her cosmetology training so she can get her license and then gather experience working in a salon. I hope that she can get into one of the higher end places. She’ll have to start out as an apprentice of sorts, but I know my kid – she’s going to do extremely well and will have her own chair in a place of her own choosing in a very short while.  Have to take her out next week to get clothes and shoes for her classes. I really think (hope) that she’s stoked to do this, too!  She’s had her time out of high school to raise hell for quite a while and finally decided that it was time to get serious.

OK – I’m gonna try to go to bed and hope that sleep doesn’t hide from me.

DONE

Spring?

Sunday, April 11th, 2010

Damn it’s early this year and my sinuses are rebelling in response. This is NOT good – I detest feeling this way. I’m going to try using some of the huz’s Nasonex at bedtime tonight to see if I can alleviate symptoms.

Lately I haven’t been sleeping as much during the day — while I do go into the bedroom to lay down and play an audio book I just don’t sleep. This may be good – it may mean that I’ve reached the proper therapeutic level with the Effexor to keep me going. Yesterday we all decided to get out of the house and I did have to push myself to do so. DD decided to not go with us, so it was just huz & I. We absolutely had to get dog food, so Milford was first. Due to severe traffic issues in the Matamoras/Port Jervis area we decided to avoid it altogether and headed up to Honesdale. Stopped at F’n W-Mart first so huz could get a container he needed and he also tried to get my British tea bags and 8 o’clock coffee – both of which were out of stock. WTF? Went across to Weiss and got ‘em there along with some other groceries and picked up four decent steaks to throw on the grill last evening for dinner. I also grabbed a pork loin for today and will pan sear it and then finish it in the oven with roasted potatoes. I’d love to have some fresh asparagus, but we’d have to travel to get it so I’ll use something from the freezer instead.

Huz is outside today building the gate for the newly established entrance into our yard. I would like to get out there and put morning glory seeds in – and maybe put the gourd seed in for around the edge of the porch. I also need to take cuttings from the bleeding heart that has come up so I have clones to put in where the old yard entrance was.

So much is blooming/budding outside – the walking stick bush is full of leaves, peach tree flowered, pussy willow bushes pushing out leaves, too. Of all of the stuff out there, the giant wisteria still hasn’t started to bloom and that is usually one of the very first to start showing that Spring is actually here. Also, the pink flowers on the dogwood tree are seriously stunted this year. They’re very small and pale. Maybe because the tree was so stressed by the heavy snow storm we had in February. Blueberry bush also has lots of leaves!

Not much to report on the Hep C issue this post – I haven’t seen the doctor yet. Might call him this week to set up an appointment so we can discuss options.

DONE

Hah!

Saturday, April 3rd, 2010

I am in a definite MOOD today. Smart assed, snide, snotty, up in the air, goofy – quite the combination. Read some tweets by a popular actor, one of my (former) very favorites and didn’t like what he posted so I basically tweeted back and asked him WTF his problem was. I imagine he’s offline now, so I’ll check back this evening to see if I get any type of response. He may have been tweeting in an altered state, so I’ll keep that in mind.

Dental visit on Friday was a FAIL. The DDS couldn’t sedate/numb the root of the tooth at all so I walked out with a temporary filling laced with an agent designed to either kill or sedate the root. Feeling some aching in the jaw now so I don’t think it worked. I go back on Monday to give the DDS another try at fixing it – root canal, of course. If they can’t get it sedated to the point where I feel no pain I’m not sure how we’ll have to proceed. I tried to encourage the dentist to pull the fucking tooth, but he wouldn’t do it. Said it’s too close to the front of my mouth and the gap would be visible with every smile. Can’t have that now, can we? SHIT

Anyway – this is a new dental office for us and I have to say that I really like the dentist they assigned to me. He was quite pleasant and funny, very talkative, older gentleman. Beats the damn assholes I’ve gone to over the past 10 years – those that want to fuck up my entire mouth and fill it with porcelain veneers. Bullshit! Those things look like goddamn chicklets and I have one in the front of my face to prove it. I hate that tooth with a passion. The new dentist said that he will petition the dental insurer to see if he can be allowed to replace it with something more natural looking. The temporary cap that I had there initially looked fine – blended in perfectly with all of my natural teeth. Why couldn’t they just leave that in there?  Dumbasses… Oh wait! I know why they couldn’t leave it! Because they wouldn’t have been able to collect the $850 fee connected to the veneer.

Feeling OK as of late – other than the damn tooth that has been acting up since March 18th. Alternating antidepressant med dosage day to day – some days I take just one, some days I take two. I’m actually supposed to take 3 each day. That’s way too much and made me feel more depressed than ever. Less is more in some instances.

Still haven’t heard back from the liver doc. This is OK since I’d really like to get this tooth mess out of the way before taking on major medical treatments/drug regimens.  I’ve recently read of two spontaneous remissions on a hep C board. If only I could get there.

DONE (for now)

Lazy

Monday, March 29th, 2010

Haven’t posted here since the biopsy. Lazy me. Anyway – after the procedure the huz & I were both contemplating what results might be and we were both thinking in a negative direction. While I mentioned how thrilled I would be to have shown some healing … maybe achieved stage 2 since I had been doing everything possible to eliminate toxins from my body that would use the liver to exit .. .no more hair dye, dropped artificial sweeteners, stopped purchasing items with even a trace of trans-fats, and so on … at the time it was a far reach. Deeper inside I was dreading results. Stage 4 – transplant facility intervention during treatment due to the extreme danger the treatment would pose; the potential for multiple organ failure – not just the liver, or beyond stage four – full blown liver cancer, definite need for transplant and the possibility of not being able to find the right donor… death.

When the doctor called with the results my stomach knotted up. He seemed to stumble over words on the phone and finally said, “this is very unusual – I have past results in front of me and those from your latest procedure. Your liver shows that you have gone from stage 3 to stage 2. Highly irregular, I can’t begin to understand how this has happened.”  Needless to say, I was floored, still am. I’m very happy to know that the condition of this organ has improved and will continue to take supplements as I have been doing. I’m not going to fuck it up — adding fish oil is the only difference at this point and I did that because the oil is being run in clinicals to see if it has the effect of eliminating fat from the liver. The condition of steatohepatitis (fatty liver) is proven to lower chances to achieve remission with standard interferon therapy with ribavirin.  If fish oil can get rid of that fat, I’m taking it!

So now I plan to try and be more active on the Facebook Hep C page and see if I can learn more from others that are fighting this virus. I’ve also set up an additional Twitter account to separate business stuff from health related. I was happily surprised to find that there are multiple groups pertaining to hepatitis C.  If you’d like to follow me http://twitter.com/laurie.traverse

Toothache hit the night before my birthday. Say goodbye to my DelMonico steak, asparagus spears and stuffed mushrooms. There was no way I’d be able to chew that dinner with a bad tooth. Huz went and bought stuffed flounder fillets and made rice pilaf for me instead. It was very, very good … but still wasn’t that big assed, bloody steak I crave. SOON!  I will have that steak. Dental appointment this Thursday and I hope I can convince the dentist to pull the f’n thing.  I’ve been taking antibiotics since March 19th but still have pain with the stupid tooth. Sucks.

Also, I’m sorry that I’ve had to restrict the blog and force readers to register if they intend to reply or whatever. I got so much friggin’ spam before imposing the restrictions. I don’t understand why these people waste their ‘valuable’ time in sending trash over the net.

Guess that’s it for now…

DONE

Creepy

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Yesterday was an off the wall, plain old creepy friggin day. Creepy doctor, blonde bimbos working the hospital – felt like I was stuck in a bad goddam movie. That’s PJ for ya, I guess.

Today, post biopsy, I’m extremely sore in my right side including my right arm & shoulder because I had to keep my arm over my head for the procedure. Due to past damages to that arm, not an easy task, and I’m now wracked with pain from the upper arm, shoulder and neck. FUCK me… figures. Norco & me, best friends today once I get back to my bed cave… Bed cave because of the black curtains up on the windows. Curtains which I will soon remove, wash & stash since the huz will no longer be working nights and have to sleep during the day. I can put the florals back up in there. Those, with a new quilt for the bed.. yep, a good thing.

Federal tax deposit hit the bank today. BFD. Nothing I really want. I do have a list of stuff that huzbeast wants so I’ll get to placing those orders tomorrow for him. Ummm… trying to think of what else to add here but I’m drawing a blank. I’m now going to take my coffee into the bedroom, turn the TV on and rest or sleep the day away.

I did it

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Yes, I did. I got my lazy ass showered and dressed and got to the damn hospital to have blood drawn. I thought I’d just be able to walk into the lab as the nurse directed me to via phone, but nooooooooo — I had to go and sit and wait to friggin’ register. Four people ahead of me. Damn!  I was hoping that waiting until late afternoon would get me in and out quicker. No such luck.

Went shopping in Matamoras’ Price Chopper afterwards. Spent enough to come away with a receipt for accumulated purchases that now grant us $1.60 off each gallon of gas at a Sunoco station for up to a 20 gallon purchase. MUST take one car to a station before the allowance expires and take advantage.

Spent too damn much on groceries, but we’ll eat, so screw it. Bought a beautiful top round roast – it’s HUGE, and I’ll prepare that on Sunday for the huz. Him luvs him some roasted beast and gravy.  There’ll be lots of leftovers. Pepper steak with mushrooms & onions over rice, maybe some sliced up really thin for cheese steak sandwiches. Yep – leftovers are a good thing sometimes. Hit the seafood section and was amazed to find flounder at $3.99 per pound. WTF? Mistake? I questioned the fish monger, he stated they got a great deal on it and that he had already sold over 500 pounds of it so far this week. I bought 4 pounds, had him split it up and tossed some in the freezer. I bet I won’t see that price again for a long, long time.  About 6 months ago I went specifically to buy flounder and it was $16.99 per pound. We bought orange roughy instead.  I also once again bought swiss cheese and mushrooms to make quiche. Now I’ll hope that I actually get to it and not let the mushrooms shrivel up to unrecognizable states again. ;-)

Sit here looking at my damn hands. Christ – looks like the paws of an 80 year old!  OK, so I know I’m slightly dehydrated, need to get some liquids into my system, but … yuck, old lady skin. Moisturizer would help, too, I suppose.

Since my sweet, darling daughter also shopped with me we have extra goodies in the house. Wonder how she’ll feel when I start buying stuff only allowed as per e-diet lists. I haven’t chosen the diet program from the site yet, but will do so very soon. We need to stop with all of the rich, wonderfully indulgent foods, the huz & I, and start eating stuff that’s very good for us. I wonder if Doctor Oz might have some kind of plan up on that site?  I heard him mention recently that he eats blueberries every single day. That they are like the most superdy dooper anti-oxidant fruit, so I bought some. ’spensive suckers, too!  What’s fucked up about that is … that I plan on making home made pancake mix and using the blueberries in them. LOL  We love blueberry pancakes here. Ohhh so yummy… and we mix butter with maple syrup, nuke it, and ladle it over the cakes. OMG, heaven indeed.

So, that’s about it for now. Probably update more on Monday after I get home from the biopsy. I know that I’ll have to stay in the hospital for several hours afterward to be sure my liver doesn’t hemorrhage from the procedure. Have to be sure my iPod is fully charged so I don’t go crazy waiting to be discharged.  I recently loaded the most recent J.D. Robb book, Fantasy in Death to listen to, so that will help me deal with the waiting.

DONE

Doc

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Went to see Doc Korsakoff today for blood work results. Liver enzymes up slightly, as always; thyroid off – have to see regular doc to have meds increased a bit; viral level was 69,100 three years ago, its now 130,000 – just about double from 2006. The increase in viral level is not really significant. Most people have levels that are in the high hundreds of thousands or many millions. This is a good thing for me at this time.

I’ll be waiting on the resource center from the hospital to call this week to schedule my liver biopsy. This test will be the one that will decide exactly how we move forward – routine therapy if I’m still in stage three with Doc K OR if he believes we can wait until next year when Telaprevir is released, that’s what we’ll do.  Routine treatment gives me a 40% chance of success. Telaprevir will give me an 80% plus chance at reaching remission.  IF I’ve reached stage four fibrosis we will then have to arrange IMMEDIATE treatment with Doc K and a transplant facility because the risk of total liver failure that most stage four patients end up experiencing.

We talked about the LIVE donor program and Mt. Siani hospital in NYC does offer this option. If we have to do the latter treatment, Blace will be thoroughly tested as my potential donor. If liver failure happens and I have a successful transplant then there is a huge chance that I’ll achieve total remission and will live the remainder of my life free of the hep C virus.  The only downfall would be that I’d have to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of my life.

So, that’s about it for now!

DONE

. . .

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

This virus is: insidious, sneaky, nasty, tormenting, incurable, devastating. . .

Feel free to comment and add your thoughts about this fucking monster.

DONE