zeptember

I’m a stuck pig and bedridden. I’m currently on two Tylenol 3 and 400mg Ibuprofen because the pain would not quit.

The pain was slight Halloween morning, so I took it easy. By afternoon I was feeling better.

The pain ramped up the very next day (Saturday), and I wasn’t able to go out clubbing. I went to bed super early that night.

I swear, I can’t even remember Sunday.

Monday is when all hell broke loose with being emotionally assaulted by my father. I was drugged on pain meds, in pain, shuffling around the house in bedclothes. I did not deserve the treatment he gave me. All because I want to come home to Michigan after 4 ½ years because I miss family and friends.

I spent parts of Sunday and Monday reviewing the ballot for the election. I spent ALL day Tuesday finishing up my research for the ballot. This is the first time in my life that I spent this much time researching thoroughly every candidate, measure and proposition on a ballot. I wanted to be totally sure on everything. Everything. I felt like I was back in college, studying for final exams, there was so much material. I did all this from my bed, drugged to the gills on pain medication, taking frequent rests or all out falling asleep at the keyboard from the medication.

Tuesday night, my husband (HUSBAND! so weird and wonderful to say that word) took me to vote. I was feeling better, so I walked with little difficulty and voted confidently. We went to podle’s house to watch the election results come in and history be made. I wept tears of joy for Barack Obama. I’ll have another more to say on him later I’m sure.

Around 10pm last night, the pain and bleeding returned. My heart sank. I wanted to call my employer but it was already late. So I emailed instead. I took more meds, went to bed, and hoped to be pain free today.

I woke up at 6:30am, later than I normally would for a workday, but ready to go out the door if only my body would give me the green light.

At 7am, it was apparent that my body was not ready for me to be pain free. I texted and emailed my employer. I feel badly. I’ve missed three days of work, which means my employer has missed work as well. Hopefully not. Hopefully they have a substitute or can work from home.

I have no idea what tomorrow holds for me. I’ve only ever missed four straight days of work on one other occasion, and when I returned to work on the fifth day, I was fired. But then that job was different. They’d been harassing me for months.

The pain meds are at full tilt now. Time for sleep.

Ma is home from the hospital. She has anti-nausea meds, vicodin for the pain, and her daughter-in-law is staying there with her today.

Ma sounds more with it right now than I do. We joked that we’re both down for the count.

I called the hospital this morning and ma is still there. She was throwing up when I called.
She can’t stop puking this morning - says she’s still having trouble from the spinal anesthesia yesterday - says she was told that for some people, it takes longer to wear off.

I about cried right there. She’s having such a hard time. Puking is the last thing you need when you’ve had pelvic and bowel surgery.

:(

My sister-in-law arrived as I was talking to ma, so she’s handling the doctors and care for ma now. Good thing SIL works for one of the largest hospitals in the nation. Ma’s in good hands with my SIL directing her care. She works in the E.R. as a nurse assistant, IIRC.

Ma is doing well - the surgery only lasted a half an hour and the hernia was able to be pushed back in. I’m told it went so quick cuz ma is so tiny, heh. She received a mesh patch to shore up the area so she doesn’t get a hernia there again. A very small piece of bowel had to be removed. Ma is in recovery room / short term stay room now and will decide on her own when she is ready to leave. She is welcome to stay in the hospital overnight, and my sister-in-law is recommending it just to be on the safe side. But ma is pretty stubborn so we’ll see.

I missed the initial call, even though my phone was right next to the bed, so I panicked when I saw there was a message. But all is well. I await the next update and was told ma herself may speak to me.

Maybe today I can finally have that emotional breakdown I’ve been trying to have all week. I really need to just let it all out. Even now the tears are on edge but refuse to come.

12:46pm update: Just talked to Ma. She’s still in the hospital - just came out of the anesthesia fog a little bit ago. Her voice is deep and hoarse so I wonder if she was intubated. She says she was given a spinal anesthetic, so she has to lie flat on her back for the next 24 hours. She says the pain where the hernia was still feels like period pain (she’s had pain since last Sunday), only it’s worse, now. Both my brother and his wife are there, but of course my brother still won’t call me or answer his phone. That’s okay, I got the room phone, now.

When I told my ma about her having lost part of her bowel, she was shocked, and said her doctor didn’t tell her that. I told her the doctor would tell her everything soon enough, and reminded ma that she just came out of the fog. I was sorry for telling her what my sister-in-law told me, but then my ma said, “I had a premonition about that, last night.” She had a vision that part of her bowel would be taken. She of course thanks Gawd for the pre-cognition.
I told ma not to take anything I say as fact cuz her doctor will tell her exactly what happened (I hope - a lot of doctors think the less you know, the better, because they have no souls or social skills or bedside manners. :p).

Ma is waiting for a tuna fish sandwich and some yogurt, and complains that she drank her water too fast and is now feeling gurgly.

I hope for a fast recovery. I have the empathy pains, as I had pelvic surgery last year, and I don’t want ma to have to go through even a minute of this, even though she must. I’d take it all for her if I could.

There. There we go. There’s the tears. The release. Finally.

… and now the girl do0m sets in. I’ve called in sick to work.

There is good news today, I swear. My chosen sister’s biological sister K had a baby boy today and both she and baby are resting happy and well.

I babysat both my chosen sister and her little sister K growing up, but was always closer to H. Despite that, I still consider K as extended family for me, along with their parents and grandparents.

When K’s firstborn was about three, I cracked up at the recognition. She was the spitting image of K. It was surreal for me to be looking after K’s daughter at H’s wedding, and spinning her around, just like I used to do with K when she was that age.

Ahhh, memories…

H would kill me if I posted pix of her as a wee one.

The promise of a phonecall from my brother today never came true and I know you are all shocked and awed by this. :p

I called my ma’s doctor this morning and told her I’m the daughter, I’m in California, I’d like to come home to tend to my mother after surgery, and so I had questions about the diagnosis and procedure. The doctor was really rude to me, declaring first of all that no aftercare is necessary. She then told me that my ma DOES in fact have an incarcerated/strangulated inguinal hernia. I asked “isn’t that more of a risk to her health then?” and the doctor snapped at me, telling me my ma is fine, the skin looks fine, she has had no nausea or bowel obstruction, and the surgery is one of hundreds done daily and she’ll be FINE.
I asked the doctor about anesthesia and was told my ma gets to choose between a spinal where she’s kept conscious but drowsy, or to receive gas anesthetic. I thanked her for her time and can only imagine her saying the same thing to me as I said to her after hanging up:

BITCH!

I called my ma and left a message for an update. I called my brother again but it just goes to voicemail so I hang up at this point.

My man called to ask if I’d gone in to work and he noticed I left my packed bags at the house. I thought he was gonna take me to the airport with cheapest fare so I’d have to come home from work first and get my bags…but he told me he was late to work today so I was led to believe that meant he had no idea when he’d be home, which made it difficult in trying to choose a flight home.

But this didn’t dawn on me right away. I called my chosen sister and together we looked for airfare. Cheaptickets.com is like trying to play duck hunter. You find the fare you want, you click to purchase it and OHHHH! IT’S GONE! SORRY TRY AGAIN.
Fares on other sites seemed to be too expensive for a one-way ticket. And round trip tickets are well over $800. After about half an hour I gave up, upon realising that I had no way to get back to my house in time, get my luggage, and drive all the way back to SFO, which has the cheaper fares. And besides, it’s the first day back to work for the woman I’m nannying for, and I had no idea when she’d be home, so how could I book a ticket not knowing? The depression and the feeling of everything being such bad timing and out of my control has started to take its toll, and I was near tears all day today.

I want to take this opportunity though to thank my chosen sis for totally being there for me on a moment’s notice. You mean the world to me.

In the early afternoon, my ma called me back, and gave me an update. She’s had a day and a half bedrest and feels a lot better, she says. Being up walking and bending and such at work is what took a toll on her condition, so being off work the last couple of days alleviated the pain. She doesn’t have the nausea or bowel restriction going on. Says she feels fine. Said she saw the anesthesiologist but no decision was made yet on how they’d administer. She didn’t seem concerned. Ma urged me not to fly home for this surgery. She insisted she’s doing fine, and that she’d recover well. She told me she had surgery years ago for something and was told she’d be on bedrest for 6 weeks, and she was up and back to work in two weeks. Ma is confident that her body still has that strength and fast healing.

Long story short:
So it is based partially upon throwing my hands in the air at not being able to score tickets and partially because ma told me to please not come home and reiterating several times that she’s okay now and will be fine after surgery, that I made the decision to not fly home.
But I’m not unpacking my bags until the weekend is over.

Ma said she had to call between 4pm - 7pm Eastern Time to get her surgery time for tomorrow. Well, it’s 9pm her time now and I’ve not heard from her so I’m calling her now.

ok…Ma laughed and said she was just about to call me. She always gets a kick out of me doing this - she’s fundamentalist but believes she and I share a psychic link, heh..
Anyway, ma said my brother promised he’d be there at 7am tomorrow to take her to surgery, and promised to be there with her the entire day, even if she has to get admitted overnight. I hope he keeps his word on this one, or else I’ll fly out there just to stuff him into a steel drum and toss him into Lake Michigan. I’m sick of all his empty promises and lies. I’m beyond emotional and angry at him.

When I got home from work, I ate half a pint of ice cream, took 1mg atavan, 1/2 muscle relaxer, and three hours later I’m having a glass of plum wine. I’ve been working on this post since 5:40pm. It’s taken me 3 hours and 20 minutes to just try to focus even a little bit of the stress outwards via journaling.

I want to note for the record that I’ve been on anti-anxiety meds since August 1st because of the wedding stress of having to deal with my father, brother and father’s wife. I’ve been on muscle relaxers since August 27th. The muscle relaxers are because my bulging disks in my neck have started to act up again, definitely due to stress (and possibly also due to my job). When I worked for the computer industry, my neck/shoulders would go out four times a year from all the anxiety I endured. So I know anxiety sets it off.

On Friday I called my brother and found out that ma has a hernia. She called me the next day to describe it to me; said it’s in the crease where the leg meets the pubic area. She said it only hurts if she stands for long periods of time, so her work has been affected. She said she got the hernia from coughing too hard because she got sick from a co-worker (a bug is going around, everyone I’ve talked to in Michigan has a cough right now, tis the season). I can’t remember how long she said she’d had the hernia for. Could be a couple of weeks AFAIK.

This morning ma called to say she’d been to a surgeon, who had diagnosed her with what sounded to me like a strangulated inguinal hernia, and so she has to go for emergency surgery this Thursday. I say ‘what sounded like’ because ma couldn’t tell me the actual lingo. I had to go on where the location of the hernia is, her pain level and the urgent instructions from her doctor to come up with this diagnosis. A friend helped me pin ‘inguinal’ as the type of hernia.

Mayo Clinic says that “A strangulated hernia is life-threatening and requires immediate surgery.”
Under “Risk factors”, Mayo Clinic says “A chronic cough, such as occurs from smoking, increases your risk of inguinal hernia.”

Wikipedia says, “As the hernia progresses, contents of the abdominal cavity, such as the intestines, can descend into the hernia and run the risk of being pinched within the hernia, causing an intestinal obstruction. If the blood supply of the portion of the intestine caught in the hernia is compromised, the hernia is deemed “strangulated,” and gut ischemia and gangrene can result, with potentially fatal consequences. The timing of complications is not predictable; some hernias remain static for years, others progress rapidly from the time of onset. Provided there are no serious co-existing medical problems, patients are advised to get the hernia repaired surgically at the earliest convenience after a diagnosis is made. Emergency surgery for complications such as incarceration and strangulation carry much higher risk than planned, “elective” procedures.” (boldface mine)

My ma has been a pack-a-day smoker for at least 40 years, and began smoking when she was about 12 years old. Two of my ma’s siblings have Emphysema, with one of her siblings at end stage disease, on an oxygen tank, AND STILL SMOKING. My ma calls smoking her recreation and like her siblings, laughs when people try to tell her the risks of smoking.

Ma says she will meet with the anesthesiologist before surgery to go over how the surgery will be done. She couldn’t tell me if it would be local or if she’d be knocked out. I have no idea - I ASSUME she’ll be knocked out for this.

My question is, because she is an emphysemia candidate, would she be refused gas anesthetic? Would the surgery be refused altogether?

And because she is an emphysemia candidate, and because of her family history*, and this surgery is deemed more risky anyway, how likely is it that my ma might not make it through this?

*Her own mother died of Chronic Heart Failure (CHF) due to old age, she was not a smoker. Her father died of heart failure also, but I do not have documentation as to the actual diagnosis. He was not a smoker from the time I ever knew him.

I was of the mind to fly home ASAP to be with my mother, but spent the day talking with my father, my sister-in-law, my fiancé, my chosen sister, and a bunch of friends on the Internet…trying to figure out my head.

This evening when ma woke up, I called and was able to get her to tell me her doctor’s number, so I’ll be calling her doc in the morning. I found out that my ma drove herself to the appointment with the surgeon today - my brother did not accompany her as previously thought. As a matter of fact, he may not even be able to take her to surgery on Thursday - ma is thinking of taking a cab!?!@##$%

I asked ma again all the questions I asked her this morning. She told me that she has a ‘groin hernia’ (so yes, it is an inguinal) but that the bulging area is not discoloured (so no, it’s probably not strangulated). She said her surgeon gave her a booklet and said if she has any nausea, to go to E.R. (cuz that means strangulation). I asked my ma if she was told to get emergency surgery and she said no. This differs from what I was told between Friday and this morning. So I think she’s just softening the news for me to not worry about her.

I talked with my sister-in-law, who told me they wanted ma to come stay with them after surgery, but she refused, because she doesn’t want to leave her cats unattended!
My sister-in-law also told me that she can’t stay with ma cuz she works 12-hour days at another hospital and then has two sons who HAVE to go to football practice. And my brother can’t stay with ma cuz after 4 hours in that house of hers, he damned near gets an asthma attack from all the cat dander, dust and 25 years of chain-smoke in an ill-ventilated home. Ma keeps her windows closed and the air conditioner running ‘to clean the air’ inside the house. She also has HEPA filter fans but she’s never changed the filters on that or the air conditioner. You might just picture the ’sloth’ house from the movie Se7en and that’s similar enough to the house I grew up in.
Needless to say, ma is a bit mental. I’m a bit protective of her for this reason.

Oh, and after the whole ’sorry can’t help’ crap from my sister-in-law, and radio silence from my brother all fucking day, I get a text message this evening from my SIL telling me not to worry, that my brother and his wife will take care of ma, and that my brother will call me tomorrow.

How will they take care of her? They live nearly two hours away with their 12+ hour days and two boys who NEED to get to football practice. …

…

And he’ll call me TOMORROW? After not a word all day today? His job clearly takes precedence over our mother. And you know what, our mother takes this stance as well. She DEFENDED him when I bitched about not hearing from him all day today. Dad was waiting on him as well because of the whole ‘have to book plane tickets for the wedding’ - apparently my brother promised my dad he would go with ma to the surgeon’s appointment to get the official lowdown on her condition, then update our dad so he could determine whether or not to include ma on the flight out for the wedding.

While the wedding and travel plans for said wedding don’t fucking matter to me at the moment, I can understand why dad would be pissed off. Another verbal promise broken by another fellow family member. It’s the norm in our family.

I talked with my chosen sister, who said she would be able to look in on the cats if I can convince ma to go stay with my brother after surgery. But my chosen sister also has a family crisis of her own - her husband’s grandfather is also in the hospital - he’s critical - and her relatives are likely coming to stay this weekend. It’s all such bad shit right now.

If ma does not want to leave her house, then there’s no one to take care of her in the 48 hours after surgery. My ma is a hermit - she does not have any friends to come look in on her. Not even neighbors. She doesn’t trust the house key to anyone. She never leaves her house outside of going to work at the grocery store. She works the midnight shift and sleeps during the day.

Long story short:
I’ve decided that I’m going to go to work tomorrow.

I’m going to call ma’s surgeon from work and get the lowdown.

The only thing that will prevent me from getting to work tomorrow is if girl do0m comes for me or if ma’s condition worsens.

Depending on what the surgeon tells me, and whether or not my spidey sense is still tingling, I may hop on a plane by Wednesday night. That means I run the risk of not being there til after ma gets home from surgery. But at least I’d be there for aftercare. I don’t care at this point that I will also be in great pain from the girl do0m, which, if it doesn’t arrive Wednesday, will arrive by Friday. I have my drugs and heating pads, and I’m not afraid to call for backup assistance if it comes to me having to lift my mother. Whereas ma just doesn’t let people know how bad things are for her. I still know two neighbors in the area. I may even still have their numbers and if I don’t, I’m sure ma does. Of course, I’ll be knocking on their doors to give them a heads-up anyway…

So that is the plan.

Birds fascinate me. I got more interested in birds after moving to California, because I was so unfamiliar with the new sounds I was hearing. So over the years I’ve become quite interested in figuring out what birds are making what sounds.

This morning I heard a scratchy-throated bird sound.

It’s a Cyanositta stelleri, or Steller’s Jay (sound here). Probably in the tall pine trees the next block over. Now I’m also hearing Chestnut-Backed Chickadees (sound here) and Western Scrub Jays (sound here).

For the record, I can’t stand the noise that scrub jays make. I’d rather hear the blue jays from back home in Michigan.

Ever since moving to his new home in upper Michigan a couple years ago, my father has also gotten into birds. He enjoys bird sightings, whereas I enjoy bird sounds. His favourite bird is the red-headed woodpecker, and he takes 764756239532 pictures of them. I have a pic of a baby red-headed woodpecker eating out of his hand.

It’s still easier for me to refer to my illness as ‘george’ when I am discussing the illness, hence the subject line. It’s simpler to say ‘george is late’ than to say ‘i started bleeding later than expected’. It’s more polite in a way - people don’t want to go right into a conversation hearing about blood. But hearing about a person being late to something, that’s tolerable.

Tuesday, August 12: Warned the lady I sit for that I was feeling severely fatigued and achey and I didn’t know if I’d have to go home early or miss work that week. Started pre-medicating with Ibuprofen 600 as of Monday or Tuesday. One per day.

Wednesday, August 13: The lady and her husband were late to work because of me - well because of a misunderstanding. I told them I’d call IF I couldn’t make it in to work. I didn’t call, so I went to work. Still very fatigued and feeling crampy but less so than the previous day, so I went. Turns out they were just covering their asses and wanted to be sure I’d show up, so they waited on me. They didn’t appear upset with me.

Thursday, August 14: Got my energy back - took the baby on two walks that day. I started spotting around 10pm and was sure george would arrive full on by morning.

Friday, August 15: George is officially due but doesn’t arrive. But all day I was tired and had mild to moderate cramps again. I was still taking Ibuprofen but took 2 over the course of the day on Friday. I had very light spotting on and off.

Saturday, August 16: Woke up at 6am with severe low back pain. Decided to ride it out instead of getting up and eating some food just so I could ingest Ibuprofen (taking Ibu on an empty stomach causes me severe stomach pain - causes most humans stomach pain). Got up because of the pain every hour after that until 9am, when I got up for good, ate some breakfast, and took an Ibu600. More spotting and light cramping on and off. Pain ramped up a bit Saturday night, especially in the low and mid-back region. By about 9pm I took a Tylenol 3 rather than deal with the pain.

Sunday, August 17: Up again from back pain and this time uterine pain too, every hour from about 7am to 10am. Full on bleeding and cramps started by 10:30am.

So my question is, did george arrive one day early, on Thursday, or did he arrive two days late, on Sunday?

In either case, I’m happy to report that I still have a full week clearance around the wedding. If I continue to be good to my body, george will not be early in September or October, either.

I know a lot of women must fret a bit over the whole getting their period on their wedding day thing. But the general populous of women don’t outright panic over getting their period on their wedding day, because most women can just take birth control pills or the morning after pill to stave off the menstrual cycle, or they can just not even care if they get their period because it’s such a non-issue for them.

But for women with endometriosis, I’d wager a lot of us look at our looming wedding day in abject fear that it could be ruined, all because of the pain and heavy bleeding we go through.

It is because of my illness, and also because of my father and my brother, that I spend about half of the time not looking forward to my wedding day, and just want it to be over with.

The other half of the time, I promise, I really am having a blast with my man planning for our wedding. We’ve gone on several wine tasting excursions because we want to serve locally produced wine. We’re about to burst with anticipation because next weekend is a big sale on last year’s surplus Halloween stock at a local boutique, and the weekend after that are the Scottish Highland Games, where my man hopes to get the rest of his wedding ensemble put together.
We have worked together on creating our own wedding invites and reply cards. My chosen sister gave us a sinister idea for favours that we ran with like children squealing in the park. We tasted cake until we were bored with the ordeal, because nothing was appealing enough to us as the expensive cake we wanted. So we finally gave in to that. Funny thing is, the expensive cake wasn’t expensive for being a wedding cake (the dreaded ‘wedding tax’ just because it’s for a wedding) - it’s not a wedding cake at all!
It’s just that the design and shape of the cakes this particular baker does is so much work that she has to charge accordingly.
We can’t wait to show people what we chose for our wedding cake!!!!

Back to the reality I am in at the moment - bedridden from the Endometriosis pain and hopped up on Tylenol 3…
Because the pain and bleeding did not start on time last Friday, this has fucked with my weekend and at the same time denied me the upcoming work week.
Had the bleeding and pain started on Friday like it was supposed to have, then I’d have been bedridden Friday, Saturday, maybe Sunday, and feeling better by Monday, then returning to work as scheduled on Tuesday.

But no.

Now, with the pain starting today, I am bedridden Sunday, Monday, likely Tuesday, and feeling better by Wednesday but not sure if I can return to work Wednesday or Thursday.

When I only work Tuesday - Thursday right now, this means I lose pay this week. This in turn gets me pissed off at the company that fired me all over again, because although a settlement was reached, they still have not PAID it out. I am still waiting for these goddamned people. They still hold the upper hand and have the last word as it were. They are still harassing me in this regard. They are still abusing and taunting me.

And I want them to combust for it.

I hope they get caught up in a hostile takeover and then parted out.