Hospital

Hi friends.

Well the hospital is not really a place for sleeping. I was sleeping really well last night and then the nurse came in to come find a pulse in my feet or something strange. Woke up at 6 for good. Read Deut. 8:1-5, "Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land that the Lord promised on oath to your forefathers. Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you."

Let's see, then Dr. Maynard came to see me and said the neurology team would come by and ask lots of questions and poke and prod and decide what kind of tests to run. He started me on Cymbalta since he thinks I'm depressed and thinks it might help with pain (nothing has so I have my doubts). He such a nice guy, I just love him. Leilani came by since she works at Vandy and BROUGHT ME A BALLOON! Props to Cuyler for that. She said to make sure he got credit.

Then it was a revolving door with neurology residents and medical students and nurses asking questions and examaning me. It wasn't terrible but I was super dizzy the whole time. Like I had to keep closing my eyes. They gave me 200mg of Topamax last night so I don't know if that's the problem, or the Cymbalta, or just my general mystery diagnosis...so hard to tell!

Then Mom came and Dad took a shower and went to work. I showed Mom my clogging videos and started feeling super nauseous and then I actually threw up! After two months of nausea! Unbelievable! I'm glad I didn't eat any more than I did for breakfast and hadn't eaten lunch. We told the nurse and she said she was waiting for orders for medicine to be called in...I got sick three times and then there was nothing left. Finally an hour an a half later the nurse came with some compazine. In the meantime, the neurologist came and brought the neurology residents back (one of the was a Bama grad - how comforting! She liked my Alabama pajama pants.) They ordered an MRI of my head and neck with contrast dye to look at my blood vessels and blood flow and then the lumbar puncture. So that's what's going on this afternoon. I'm glad. This looks like progress to me. Then I'm not sure if I'll stay here tonight or go home or what. We'll see.

Life Interrupted

Oh finally - Internet! Well let's see...we got home Saturday night at 9:30.



Sunday - stayed home from church, my siblings came over for lunch, which was great. The good thing about brothers is they marry sisters and they brought me long sleeve shirts since I left all mine in AL. Got to see my nephews. Sweet babies, I love them so. Then we went to see Bucky and Granny. It was a long day.



Monday - Laid on the couch. Watched movies and Big Bang Theory. MacLaren is my hero.

Tuesday - See Monday. Got my lab results back from blood drawn on Friday, and they were all normal.

Wednesday - So today I had my appointment with Dr. Maynard who is really Bucky's doctor. He's great. He took me seriously and he saw how we've been through the wringer trying so many things in the last month and how tiresome it is and how I can't wait any longer for an answer. He said, "It looks like your life has been hijacked." EXACTLY! So anyway, he's a great doctor and he asked lots of questions and spent a long time looking in my eyes and such. He really wants to rule out pseudotumor cerebri which is basically increased intracranial pressure which causes symptoms that mimic a tumor. I don't have of the visual symptoms, but it's our last best guess for the relentless headache that's not responding to anything. So anyway, he got me admitted to Vanderbilt so that I could be seen by a neurologist, have some tests run, and get stuff done, real quick, which I've been wanting for at least a week. Yay!

So I haven't gotten a balloon yet.... just so you know.

Going home

I'm pretty much done being big and brave. Mom and Dad are on their way here to come and get me and take me home to Fairview. Since none of the doctors here know what's going on, we're going to start over in Nashville where there's at least a bigger pool of doctors and hospitals. I don't want to think about starting over, obviously, but at least we know more than we knew a month ago - we know all the meds that don't work, and we know the MRI was normal, and we know what the neurologist said, and we know that I should have lab results back on Monday.

My mom told me to make sure I have some dress clothes and shoes too in case we have to have Bucky's funeral soon. That's my grandmother. She's not doing well. Obviously she hasn't been since her knee replacement surgery followed by heart attack over Thanksgiving, but all the sudden this week she's gone gotten worse apparently. The hospice nurse told them to make funeral arrangements. We'll see.

I'm upset about leaving. I don't want to leave my friends. I'll have my family, but my friends are here. :(

I don't know when I'll be coming back. I don't know what will happen. I'm tired. I won't have internet at my parents' house so I won't be able to update the blog. Just keep praying. Thanks.

Tried really hard to get in the hospital this morning. I just didn't want to go through the ER because I didn't want to waste my time and energy. So I went to my doctor's office. My doctor wasn't there today, but I saw the other guy, and he said I didn't need to go to the hospital to run tests unless I fell off a building or something (I feel like I could jump off one...does that count?) but he did do blood work to check my hormones and blood counts and thyroid and all that good stuff, so hopefully by Monday we'll have some answers on that. He gave me some worthless prescriptions that I have no intentions of filling. Other than that, no news. I took another sleeping pill just because I don't have anything better to do until they tell me what is going to stop my headaches besides sleeping. Great. So you know where to find me if you need me. If you have a gun, sneak up on me. :)

Running Downhill Fast

This is getting stupid. DRAW MY BLOOD. LOOK SOMEWHERE ELSE. PAIN PILLS DON'T WORK. In the meantime, let me sleep. That's all I care about.

I don't believe I have migraines, I don't believe that at all. Look outside the box before you look inside it for the hundredth time, and don't freakin give me anything else with acetominophen in it or I'm going to throw it in your face.

Why is this taking so long? Why does everyone make it sound like rocket science? Just make my head stop hurting, that's all I want. Please. Don't make me start over. Don't make me wait any more. Don't make Julie have to drive me all over creation and waste her life too.

In case you wondered, the neurologist thinks I have chronic migraines and wants to try these injections for the next three days as well as ramping up the Topamax real quick, and if that doesn't work then she suggested being admitted to the hospital for further testing. Great. Fantastic. Might as well. I'm wasting my life away anyway. Might as well get some testing done all at once. And some sleep. And a balloon. If I go to the hospital, somebody please bring me a balloon. That's all. Thanks. I love you all.

Two months

Yeah I need some therapy today. It's been two months of headaches. I'm at the end of my rope. I just got an email from my dad that said "Hang in there." Yeah. Well. I'm ready for someone else to hang for me, I'm tired. I'm tired of telling my story a hundred times. I'm tired of spending money on meds that don't work. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of hurting. I'm tired of being sick.

Here's the update, for what it's worth:

Woke up with a killer headache yesterday. Took the last 150 mg of Imitrex that I had. Missed church. Julie took me to urgent care. Dr. was nice and more talkative than my regular guy. Tested my blood sugar since I hadn't eaten - it was normal (we can strike out diabetes, for those who are keeping score). He had concerns about my blood pressure being high (it's been all over the place recently, from what I remember, and I think it might have been high yesterday b/c of the Imitrex, but whatever the case..) so he gave me two prescriptions (yes you may laugh - the number of prescriptions I've had in a month is a JOKE) - one for a water pill, so that if the blood pressure is the issue, I should see some relief, and bupap which is a tension headache medicine - similar to the first medicine I had - epidrin. Oh and he was also going to call the neurologist and try to get me moved up the list (I have no idea how long I'll be waiting for an appt..I'm trying not to freak out about that). And he wasn't concerned about my hormones but said if I wasn't feeling better by Wednesday I could come back (which was at least better than my dr who always 6 weeks which is a JOKE) and they would draw them then and do a full panel of stuff.

So then we went to track down the meds..Sam's pharmacy was closed; Publix had the water pill but not the bupap, CVS didn't have it either, so we came home and Julie called a Kroger and they had it so we went there. Pause - praise the Lord for Julie! She's taken care of me, and I made her do all the talking yesterday at the doctor's office b/c I'm tired. I would be dead already without her! Play - ok so we got it and I took two doses last night but I didn't feel any relief. I did end up taking a tylenol PM before bed (don't worry we made sure I wasn't ODing on acetominophen) and I slept well.

This morning woke up with a headache and nausea, blah blah, same song, one millionth verse. I'm emotionally drained (see top). Made it to BH and got some work done this morning. My headache's gotten progressively worse and the bupap I took hasn't touched it, so I'm going home to hopefully sleep and feel better. :( I CAN'T STAND NOT BEING AT BIGHOUSE! It is killing me.

I really wanted to run today

BigHouse - we had 14 kids and 8 volunteers at Kids' Night Out on Friday. It was lots of fun. I think the parents had a good night too. :) We have such sweet kiddos and awesome volunteers!

My headache went from bad to worse Friday night and I ended up taking an Imitrex at 10:45 since the pain was keeping me awake, and then took a 2nd one at 12:45 b/c I didn't get any relief from the first one. Finally slept from 2-6AM. :/ I'm down to 1 1/2 Imitrex. Not enough to stop a bad all-night headache, so the next one's going to send me to the hospital I think. I'm out of ammo.

My plan is to go to the urgent care clinic after church tomorrow that's going to do lab work for me (so I don't have to wait for a gynecology appointment - yay!). Julie set that up for me. The urgent care is near her house and she talked to the dr on facebook the other night - cool! I'm really curious to see if they're weird stuff going on with my hormones/blood sugar/iron/red cells/white cells/whatever else they can see in your blood! And if all that comes back normal..well..maybe this doctor will have other ideas about what might be going on. I'm also hoping maybe he can give me something besides Imitrex that will stop headaches while we're waiting on the Topamax to build up in my system (which will hopefully prevent them). Since I can't get a refill of Imitrex for another 3 weeks anyway! Still waiting on the neurologist to call me with an appointment - I might die waiting on that!

So basically...I'm really hopefully about tomorrow, and that's going to get me through tonight and tomorrow morning!

Today was pretty good. I got to see Heather! She and Adam came to Opelika to celebrate her birthday along with Micah's. We went to the Irish Bred Pub and then played the game I got her called Funglish.

K I'm going to bed b/c 4 hours of sleep last night is just not enough. C-ya.