zeptember

This is the THIRD time this month that I’m sick. >:(

Last night I went to bed and immediately my stomach began to hurt. I thought, “oh great, I took pain meds on an empty stomach and now it’s killing me.” So I got up and ate a bite of a protein bar, and chugged some water and went back to bed. However, the stomach pain remained, and I even had low-grade nausea.

Woke up this morning to minor george pain in both front and back, but still barely bleeding. And the stomach ache was dulled but still there, as was the nausea.
Late in the morning, my man was on Internet chat and told me he’d be coming home early from work because he felt achey and was slightly nauseous.

GREAT.

That’s when it occurred to me that this was not george up to new tricks - I could actually be sick again.

Pissed off, I sent an email to as many people as I have emails for, who I could remember were at the party on December 25th. There was a household of about 17 of us.

SEVEN of us are ill as of last night or this morning.

It can’t be food poisoning - none of us have diarrhea and we’d have gotten sick sooner than 72 hours after hanging out. Only one person has puked so far. The rest of us have the achey bodies, stomach ache, and are VERY tired/run down. A couple people have been coughing.

Blah.

First I had a bacterial (sinus) infection with george at the beginning of the month. Then it went away. Then it came back and I took antibiotics for it. Then george came back (on time, 27 days later) and a virus hit me.

DECEMBER IS FIRED FOR HEALTH HAZARD.

This makes me not want to go out at all from November to January ever again. :p

On the george front, the bleeding ramped up today. It’s moderate and manageable. I’ve been medicating every 4-6 hours, alternating with Ibuprofen 600mg and Tylenol 3, so the pain too has been manageable. This means that should I become re-employed, I still have to take time off work because of the heavy medicating. That’s okay with me though, but just sayin.

Oh, and I made $100 today for doing charts for a family. And I spoke with a business contact in town, who wants to coordinate advertising with me. And yesterday I emailed a local independent bookstore about linking to them from my biz site. I’m feeling positive about my astrology business.

And now… more sleep.

On December 25th, we slept in. When we finally dragged our asses out of bed, we had breakfast and opened presents. As usual, my man got me more presents than I got him - I think I just have to accept this as a fact of life, heh.

I got him “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier”, and a DVD of “The Shield - The Complete First Season”, as well as a HUGE book called “Tour:Smart: And Break the Band” by Martin Atkins. And, to add to his Badger altar, I got him a tin of Badger Balm. It’s SO cute! The badger is scowling on this tin as he fights off bugs!

My man got me several astrology books for my business, the fifth season of Absolutely Fabulous, a documentary from the 1970’s called Harlan County, U.S.A. - but it’s the criterion edition, woo! I’m drawn to this documentary because my gramma was a coal miner’s daughter and grew up in Harlan County, Kentucky, where this documentary takes place. Although my family was not directly involved in the particular strike documented in this film, it is an excellent snapshot of the lives of people very much like my own family. And when they sang the striker song “which side are you on”, I knew the tune and lyrics, cuz my own Ma had sang it on the line when she was on strike a few times from her grocery store job.

And lastly, but most fun, for December 25th, my man got me Godzilla slippers:

Oh! And my soon-to-be father-in-law got us a SIX QUART crock pot!!! Lordy, it’s humangous. This is because we were so interested in his chili recipe last month, and I had my dad and his dad swap their recipes. Now WE can make these recipes, woohoo!

In more boring news, george arrived tonight around 7:16pm. I’ve been pre-medicating with Ibuprofen 600mg for the last 48 hours, so the pain was minimal leading up to the bleeding. I’ve had thigh/leg pain pretty bad this time around; it goes from the pelvic region, down the front of my legs to the knees. I always get the thigh pain but not always to the knees. It’s a dull, continuous deep pain associated with george. I took no chances when george arrived, and popped a Tylenol 3 when the bleeding did hit. I feel the pain, dulled, wanting to come forward through the fog, but it can’t. MUWAHAHAHAHA!
I shall have continuous doses of pain medication every four hours for the next friggin three days in an effort to keep the pain dulled, if not muted. That is my latest attack plan.

Regarding the Budwig diet and food in general, oh it’s all been out the window because of the holidays. There’s junk food out the wazoo here, and I have NO control whatsoever. My body is saying, “Hmmm, what could POSSIBLY be THEE worst thing I could put in my body right now, food or drink-wise?” And then my body drives my brain to go for it with gusto, no stoppin me.
So this is a bad month to see if the Budwig diet has any effect whatsoever. That and I reached Pill Overload and stopped taking EVERYTHING in the last two weeks. I was taking eight of the “Xue Fu Zhu Yu Wan” herbal pills twice a day for menstrual pain, taking eight of the “Xiang Sha Yang Wei Wan” herbal pills twice a day for my liver/stomach cleansing, and at night I was taking a calcium pill and a vitamin C pill. Then I got sick and was constantly drinking green tea on top of all the pill chugging, and popping cough drops. I tried Robitussin cough syrup for a total of two doses before firing it because a) it has CORN SYRUP in it and b) it tastes nasty. Then I went to the doctor and got on antibiotics, so I was taking one antibiotic pill per day.

PILL OVERLOAD.
Red lights flashed all around and sirens went off in my head, I swear.

Alas, pills are my life … on the advice of my surgeon when I spoke to her around the middle of this month, I decided that a few days before george, I’d try the premedicating route again. I used to do this about eight to ten years ago, but stopped. Don’t remember why - probably, like everything else, it didn’t work.
Yeah, yeah… try, try again, and this time I’m DOCUMENTING it.

Of course, it’d be nice if I could adhere to a diet without sweets or any kind of junk food, and adhere to no booze, for 6 months straight, in order to rule out whether such abstaining is also worthless to the onslaught of the pain of this disease.

Things that never stopped the Endometriosis pain for me:

• Taking up to 1000mg of Tylenol until I was told that doing that will kill me… but less of it didn’t work. Can’t remember if 1000mg was working, it’s already 20 years ago. I went to Advil instead cuz my doctor said it was safer.

• Taking up to 1200mg at a time of Advil as soon as the bleeding started - nothing less than 1200mg worked. Taking that much only worked for a few years. My body got used to the dosage and I plateaued, and taking more would not have any further effect, I was told.
• Exercise by bicycle, gym workout, stretches, just walking, etc… it makes the pain WORSE.
• Praying to God (I was raised Southern Baptist Christian Fundamentalist, and I listened to Coretta Scott King every week on the radio up through my teen years)
• Taking the doctor-prescribed amount of Naproxen as soon as the bleeding started (later it was called Anaprox, and later still it became over the counter in Aleve form, but it never worked for me for very long).
• Having sex to orgasm during the pain to stop the cramps (I swear, this idea is STILL pushed to this day by ‘experts’ and doctors) - I tried this on at least three occasions over the years and it does NOT work for me - it makes the pain WORSE.
• Going vegetarian for six years.
• Omitting corn syrup from my diet.
• Omitting yeast and gluten from my diet.
• Getting chiropractic care (for over a year and it didn’t help).
• Surgery (the surgeon removed what she could of the Endo, but there’s still some on the back of my uterus at the bladder which can’t be removed due to fear of puncturing the bladder. The fact that it’s ON the bladder and can’t be removed means that even a hysterectomy will NOT stop the pain of this disease).
• Smoking pot (I’ve tried both street pot and medical marijuana) - it makes the pain worse AND makes me extremely bitchy for the next three days.

I left off The Pill, because when I took it in 1990 and in 2007, it did stop the pain …but it made me a danger to myself and others, so overall it too has failed.

Soooo, this is a big, interesting puzzle, isn’t it? So I cock my head and say, “Let’s try it from THIS angle now….”

But you know, I have Godzilla slippers. And Tylenol 3. And kitties to chase through the house.

So it’s Christmas Eve and I called up my Ma’s house. I knew my brother, his wife and kids would be there, too. Got to chat with my oldest nephew (he’s 13), my Ma, and my brother.

At one point I asked my brother if he’d called up our aunt and uncle yet. He said no. I asked why not. He said he’s already been down the cancer road (he had melanoma a few years ago), and with authority, told me that people who are going through that just need time alone to deal with what’s going on with them, and to get their willpower up, and have no time to be bothered with useless outside gestures of sympathy.
I told him that our aunt and uncle actually need us now more than ever to show our SUPPORT, not sympathy, to let them know we love them and are there for them.

My brother’s reply? The same type of reply he gave me about our cousin A back in August, 2005. He wasn’t as harsh about it this time, but still sounded very dismissive. The answer rang familiar; “I don’t know them. I haven’t seen them in a long time. There’s no reason for me to call and bother them.”

HOLY CRAP. This family is SO fucked up. This is not an isolated incident. I ranted about the family’s treatment of cousin D back in September, 2004, who has end-stage HepC:

Excerpt:
Mom: well you still shouldn’t do that; he should take care of himself.

Me: mom, he can’t. he’s got hep c and he’s mentally ill.

Mom: he made himself that way. he needs to learn to grow up. he’s going to be 40.

Me: he’ll be that way for the rest of his life. he needs help. his family is mental; look at his mom; look at the fact that he lost his brother at a young age. look at the fact that his dad was an alcoholic.

Mom: we all have to learn to take responsibility for ourselves.

Me: yeah but some of us never get a chance to learn that!

Mom: the lord never left him, he knows that. he keeps going back and forth and all he needs to do is call out to the lord and just go get back with his wife and there won’t be a problem.

And I ranted about how the family handled THREE cases of Melanoma in 2004: “It hurts that in the past year, my brother, my father and my first cousin (dad’s brother’s kid) all had skin cancer, and that my cousin almost died from it, and nobody talked to each other when they found out about this - they all waited until it was over and then shared details because they didn’t want to upset the family. It hurts that they always have to operate like this.”

Happy Christmas.

All I can think of after that phone call is, “no wonder why I’ve not been home for the holidays in nine years”.
My friends take better care of each other than my biological family.

I’m going out to the goth club tonight to dance and get the anger and frustration out and enjoy the familial reunion with other people I know who I haven’t seen out in awhile. And tomorrow is a big family-style “orphan gathering” at a friend’s house for Christmas, complete with ham and all the fixins, women talking in the kitchen, men shootin’ the shit on the couch, and tots playing about the house.

THEY, as my adopted sister so far away in Michigan, are my real extended family.

I just spent the past hour talking with my aunt and uncle. They got the Budwig books, yay! Uncle B says Aunt B has been really reading through them since they got the books yesterday.
He says he’s keeping a positive attitude, and he sounds like he’s always sounded. His laugh is still hearty, too.
I told them about my friend’s sister-in-law, and how she beat the doctor’s death sentence by five years. Uncle B really liked to hear that, and said he’ll read the budwig books too.
The only bad thing though - Aunt B says their doctors have told them to AVOID fresh fruits and vegetables, because of all the contamination scares in the last couple years!!!
Aunt B says she’s afraid of not washing a fruit or vegetable thoroughly enough, and having Uncle B get even more sick from that.
*headdesk*

Kinda defeats the whole idea of the Budwig diet, I said. But she replied, “Well it’s something to think about.”

I know she’s saying it out of fear of losing him sooner. There’s no way to convince her that she will wash the vegetables thoroughly enough - the doctors know all, of course. And come on, this is Michigan. Even I grew up on canned goods. Fruits and Vegetables have always been wilted, half rotting and small in that state. Confirmed when I went back for a visit in 2004 - nothing’s changed. Unless it’s an apple - Michigan is known for its apples - the produce is crap. But you know, there ARE farmer’s markets there. Lots of people go to them. And again, you CAN be trusted to thoroughly wash the fruits and vegetables, honest.

Bah. Anyway….

I admitted I didn’t know what to say or how to act because our family and our culture is not equipped to talk about cancer for some reason. Aunt B told me it’s totally ok, she understands, and thanked me for my sincerity.

Here’s the timeline of Uncle B’s illness:
October, 2007: Began having stomach pains, so he’d run out to the store to get some Advil or other pain medication. The pain would go away, then crop up again in a different location a day or so later. This went on intermittently for about a month.

November, 2007: Went to the doctor when the pain wouldn’t go away. Was prescribed antibiotics and vicodin. Had a cat scan. Went back two weeks later for the results - they couldn’t find anything wrong so gave him more antibiotics and vicodin, and sent him for a colonoscopy and other tests.

December, 2007: Before finishing his second round of antibiotics, aunt B had to take him to the hospital because the pain was so bad. He had a second cat scan, and something showed up, so they kept him for observation.
While in the hospital (around December 13 - 15), he was given dilaudid but it didn’t work, so they put him on morphine, and then gave him his own button for it. Eventually they would give him a break from morphine and instead give him more dilaudid and vicodin.
They performed a biopsy of his stomach, and put him on an epidural for that. Uncle B really liked that a lot, hehe.
Uncle B wasn’t allowed to stay on epidural so they gave him a fentanyl patch, along with methadone and continued dilaudid.

When the test results came back after the biopsy, it was stage IV stomach cancer of an unknown primary, with six weeks to live.

Aunt B went through all the ‘what if’ stuff, and even got mad at Uncle B for not having gone to the hospital sooner. They were both totally sideways emotionally, trying to grapple with the news. Definitely normal and expected.
They talked with the doctors and the doctors told both Uncle B and Aunt B that they did in fact do all they could in a timely fashion, given the symptoms, and that there was nothing else they could have done. So that has set Uncle B’s and Aunt B’s minds at ease, at least that’s what they say to me and the family.

Uncle B got out of the hospital on Dec. 15 and has been home. Three of their four sons live in-state and have come home to be with their dad. I’m not sure if the fourth son has come home or is on his way.

So I’m feeling good because they’re feeling good. I told them to come visit California and start their world tour to live life like there’s no tomorrow. They liked hearing that and said they’ll see what they can do.

I’m sad but not devastated. I know Uncle B is in a lot of pain - he and Aunt B have told me so. But they sound so upbeat, so why should I be mourning - he’s having a good day today and that’s all that matters - the here and now - from moment to moment. And so I will be happy in this moment. It’s all good.

Regarding the Endometriosis, Aunt B says oh yeah, she definitely had that since she was a teenager. She went through all the symptoms (heavy bleeding, massive pain) and what happened to her (doubling over in pain, puking from the pain, actually passing out from the pain, sitting cross-legged and rocking and crying from the pain, praying for death, etc…), and I said “yep!” and we shared horror stories. We also cracked jokes about my Ma (her sister) being so callous to the pain we were in. I told Aunt B that my Ma once said, “I used to laugh at my sisters cuz I couldn’t believe they’d be in such pain, until you started having it”. But still, my Ma would tell me to shut up and take another Midol pill, and that it was part of being a woman, so she never even understood what I went through, either.
Aunt B understands and says “your mom was a bitch back then!” LOL
She was though! She had no clue. Aunt B told me that my Ma once told her about childbirth - she said “oh I had some lower back pain and I went to the hospital and I was in labour and I had the baby, no big deal.”
Aunt B says she called my Ma several names, hehehe

Though Aunt B says for her pain, she got on The Pill and that lessened the pain, and then later when she started having kids, the pain was reduced further. Aunt B says that from time to time, she would get really bad pain again but not consistently every month and to the degree that she did before getting on The Pill and then later having children.
I told her about her other sister J and J’s daughter, about her other sister M, and about her Ma - how they’d all told me in 2002 that they too suffered from really bad monthly pain. I wish there was a simple blood test that could confirm an Endometriosis gene, so I could map it out and rule out whether it runs in the females of families or what.
But for now, my gut says yes, they all did have Endometriosis. For most of them, childbearing helped. For gramma, it didn’t. It’s different for every woman.
But this info is good to know.

I won’t be passing this disease on to a new generation if I can help it.

My Ma called this morning and what was supposed to be a “hi how ya doin kid’” turned out to be a lecture from Ma to go to the doctor, heh.

OOOOkaaayyy fine.

Went to the doctor (hooray for same day appointments!) and here we have it:

Sinus/Bacterial infection.

Woohoo!

I’m on zithromax and still drinking my weight in green tea. Bought some Ester C, too.

The old lady 30-year-pack-a-day-smoker voice is AWESOME.

I’ve only puked once from trying to spit up SnotGlue™ …

But this shit will NOT continue for much longer. I am wielding pharmaceutical Do0m!