Name:
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Well, here I am.
I try not to overwhelm this space with news of my health and medical drama, but maybe today I'll just give in, since I don't have enough brain cells functioning to address much else.
When I came home from the hospital one week ago, it was with a PICC line, enabling me to get twice daily IV's of vancomycin to treat the infection in my hip joint. To make a long story short, that has created even more drama and headache but I was hoping we were getting past that.
Today, I had an appointment with the infectious disease specialist. What I thought would be a quick in-and-out visit turned out to be much more, shall we say, interesting than that. Several of my numbers from the latest labs aren't good (CRP, ESR, neutrophils for you medical geeks) and it appears the infection is not yet under control as they had hoped. So, instead of the treat of being tethered to an IV for four hours a day, I will now have the pleasure of just staying hooked up to it 24 hours a day (here at home, thank God), changing drugs to see if we can get a better handle on the infection. The pain has improved a little but I'm still needing a lot of "support" for that as well. (Read: continued fog.)
I told my pain management doctor today that I'd almost lost the ability to imagine myself ever flitting around a grocery store again or even standing to cook a meal...he was very upbeat and said, "Of course you will!" Silently, I wonder if it's really true and try to stay as upbeat as everyone else, but there comes a time after eight years of pain and immobility all due to hip and leg issues that it gets really hard for me to see any light on the other side.
When I was a little girl, I used to hear my grandmother say she couldn't wait for heaven so she wouldn't hurt any more. I always thought of that as something that old people say.
Guess I'm getting close to old.
I try not to overwhelm this space with news of my health and medical drama, but maybe today I'll just give in, since I don't have enough brain cells functioning to address much else.
When I came home from the hospital one week ago, it was with a PICC line, enabling me to get twice daily IV's of vancomycin to treat the infection in my hip joint. To make a long story short, that has created even more drama and headache but I was hoping we were getting past that.
Today, I had an appointment with the infectious disease specialist. What I thought would be a quick in-and-out visit turned out to be much more, shall we say, interesting than that. Several of my numbers from the latest labs aren't good (CRP, ESR, neutrophils for you medical geeks) and it appears the infection is not yet under control as they had hoped. So, instead of the treat of being tethered to an IV for four hours a day, I will now have the pleasure of just staying hooked up to it 24 hours a day (here at home, thank God), changing drugs to see if we can get a better handle on the infection. The pain has improved a little but I'm still needing a lot of "support" for that as well. (Read: continued fog.)
I told my pain management doctor today that I'd almost lost the ability to imagine myself ever flitting around a grocery store again or even standing to cook a meal...he was very upbeat and said, "Of course you will!" Silently, I wonder if it's really true and try to stay as upbeat as everyone else, but there comes a time after eight years of pain and immobility all due to hip and leg issues that it gets really hard for me to see any light on the other side.
When I was a little girl, I used to hear my grandmother say she couldn't wait for heaven so she wouldn't hurt any more. I always thought of that as something that old people say.
Guess I'm getting close to old.
Labels: Health
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