still here

not that anyone probably thought otherwise. pastor jan stopped by around 2-ish and s got back into town a while after she stopped by to talk, so when she left after we all prayed, he took me outside to the rose garden. it's just little, but at least it was outside. and i've got my window open now.
they had my thermostat set at 80 last night & i thought i was in a sauna. it's bad enough that the pillows are plastic & make my head sweat. thank goodness s brought me his, so besides a nice pillow, it smells like him. they also woke me up at 4:30am to draw blood. wtf? yeah, no clue why that was necessary. sure, the doc wants to check my potassium level, but isn't it important that i get a full night's rest?
happily i'm on solid food, eating what i can of the general hospital diet at my discretion. i'm not gonna be an idiot about it and just scarf down anything they put in front of me. my stomach has shrunk significantly besides being used to mostly mushy, liquid food. spaghetti for lunch & it tasted so good. i think i get baked cod & sweet potatoes for dinner. i still want a corndog.

'roid rage or exhaustion?

i am so sick of flippin' people knocking on my door & bugging me today. maybe it's just the steroids that are making me upset, but i have had no less than 15 knocks on my door from nursing, dietary, housekeeping, gift shop, (1 delivery-2 visits-b's gift from last week finally arrived & they had to confirm m & t's gift got to me yesterday). my day nurse who's also on tomorrow is older & completely flighty & overworked. at 8am she brought in the medication they already administered at 6am. it took her until almost noon to bring me towels to shower after asking since 9am & she didn't bring me a new robe/gown, so i had to put on the old one. then she just came in & asked when i was getting my infusion, you know, the one i had yesterday. *sigh* i tried to take a nap for an hour & 3 people knocked on my door.i'll be taking ambien tonight just to try to get a full rest, i think.
perhaps this feistiness just means i'm improving. man, i want a cheeseburger.

redheads are difficult

at least that's what the admitting nurse, the same one from last week, told me last night. yes, i'm back in the hospital again. basically, after discharge on sunday, i spent all day monday at work in pain. the doctor was gone until wednesday & his colleague told me the standard copout answer 'go to the er' if it gets too bad. well, i toughed it out (almost did 3 full days of work, less one hour yesterday) & dr t finally got back to me just before 4pm on wednesday to tell me he wanted me admitted again. there's really nothing else to do for me with the pain, bleeding & weight loss but to be here for care. (from my admittance on the 19th to yesterday it looks like i lost 4kg. and i can tell because even my toe ring fell off inside my little hospital sock in the middle of the night!)
admission was a pain because it took them nearly 3 hours from beginning to end. i was in the room most of the time, but they ended up getting an obg nurse who sticks babies to put in my iv. and i've got an 80 year old roommate who needs gallbladder surgery, so i didn't get much sleep. she called the nurse every 20 minutes and for half an hour at 4am, she was constantly saying 'ohhh-ho-ho' 'please' 'mercy' & telling herself to be quiet, along with a nurse coming in 3 times. and i didn't feel like i could ask for a tylenol for my splitting headache while she couldn't have anything. they did give me a half valium before bed simply because dr t had to deal with me sobbing in his office. thanks prednisone side effects! but they do have my name in for a private room & once one is vacated the nurses will move me. it's not that i wanna be all greedy with a room to myself, but i like my privacy & when i have to run for the bathroom to be sick every couple hours, i don't want to disturb someone else. or heaven forbid, have them be in the bathroom when i need it!
right now it sounds like the doc's discouraging surgery for other methods that would mean i'd have to have expensive infusions every 6-8 weeks for an indefinite amount of time. he's going to have a surgeon come talk to me at some point, but no one in the area does the one step colectomy & reattach (not quite the technical term, but i'm not sure of the full name). and of course, i'd prefer to do that to having a colostomy bag for any length of time. it's not so much that i'm looking for a quick surgical fix, if you can even say that when it comes to the risks of surgery. it's just that i am open & willing to discuss that option, especially since removing my colon is the only cure for my condition.

on another note, my dad was supposed to get his biopsy results yesterday & when my folks went into the doctor, he told them to come back in a week. so upset!

the next day

tomorrow should be an interesting day. my dad will get the biopsy results back from the lymph node he had removed last thursday & my doctor will be back in the office to find out that i'm in the same, if not worse, shape than when he admitted me to the hospital last week. in the case of my dad, at least it'll be good to finally have a diagnosis, whatever the outcome. for my part, i won't be surprised if my next option is surgery. as scary as that is, it's the only cure for colitis-total colectomy. at least i'm pretty much healthy otherwise, so i might luck out & not have to have a colostomy bag or any other fun contraption like that.
i probably shouldn't have eaten the vegetable curry for dinner tonight, but dang, did i want to try some real food & it tasted so good. i'm too weak to be one of those people who will just take a bite, chew it to taste and then can spit it out. much the same with wine, another thing i can't have any time soon. obviously solid food is still a challenge. that's why i stocked up on enough baby food to last me a week. all the yummy fruit kinds. apple mango!
best take my half sleeping pill & go to sleep. the upstairs neighbor is 'walking' around, shaking my apartment again. it's the only way i'll get any rest.

irritable

so all these steroids they've been pumping me with intravenously for the past 96 hours (not to mention the oral prednisone i'd been taking for 2 weeks before my hospital stay) have made me insanely moody. i am bursting into tears of irrationability (is that a word? i don't care; it is now) at the drop of a hat. poor s has so much to put up with me. he just wants me better, but this is beyond a pre-menstrual gf moodswing. i did explain to him that it's a side effect of the meds & he's taking it with a grain of salt, but if i have to use his shoulder to blow my nose one more time, i think i may lose it even more. i love him for that more than i can express in words.
on a different note, fresh air, sunshine, a long shower without a handheld showerhead and 5 lbs lighter is so much appreciated. and i'm back on solid foods, though the riskiest i plan to get tonight is some mac 'n cheese. comfort food that is not broth, cream soup or a nasty can of ensure. yum!
now to take it easy on this 'day of rest' and prep myself to head back to a full week of work tomorrow. i left this place quite a mess.

me + hospitalization = boredom

i was hoping that maybe i'd get out of here by saturday (since i'd been planning a party for the past month), but the doctor is entirely uncooperative. he didn't like the looks of my tests this afternoon, though he's waiting on pathology results, so he told me that i'd likely be in hospital through the end of the weekend, if not for an entire week. blah! i'm bored already & it's barely been over 24 hours. i am so sick of a clear liquid diet, too. you see where my real concern lies? always food.

admitted

well, i'm now headed to the hospital to be admitted for an undisclosed amount of days. yay! so not excited & don't know if i'll have internet access or what exactly is going to go on. sort of a surprise, but not much choice. doctor's orders. blah!
and a big happy birthday to s! i guess we're not going out for dinner tonight.

inconclusive

after two weeks of testing at mayo, they came up with bubkus. absolutely nothing, besides confirming that my dad has neuropathy in his feet, likely a hereditary, age-related diagnosis. (apparently the ms diagnosis was a bit premature, because the full body mri would've caught any lesions.) the gi doc told him that true food allergies are so rare that it's pretty much impossible that he could be allergic to everything he claims makes him sick. not to be flippant, but he looks like a holocaust refugee. i wish he'd go see a dietitian and a psychiatrist. being ill, for whatever reason, is incredibly depressing, and believe me, i know because i'm out of remission now too. yay for digestive bleeding disorders! especially when aggravated by a bout of food poisoning. i lost 4 pounds in 5 days last week. almost halfway to the 10 i wanted to lose before my college roomie's wedding next month. (there's the flip for anyone who's looking. and i'm now on meds that have made me gain weight in the past, so that's just a pipe dream.)
all that aside, it was incredibly nice to host my parents in my apartment for the first time in 5 years, when they moved me in in 2002. and they got to meet s, which is very important to me. not the same as taking him home, but besides his complete lack of punctuality, i think he made a good showing. (helping build my new dresser goes a long way toward balancing out minor faults, says my mum.) maybe next time, the in-laws will all meet up.