Journal

Well, it has been a long time since I have been to DS. Oh, I stopped in a bit ago to do a spot check on friends but didn't do any more than that. I apologize for not being there for you all.  I tend to disappear for periods of time away from familiar things. I move on to another for some odd reason. I was always a gypsy in my life and maybe it has something to do with not being able to physically relocate that I do it online. I want you to know that all of you are always in my prayers. I generally pray before going to sleep every night. Sometimes, for some reason or another, I won't get to say them, but, if I realize in the morning my faux paux I say them at that time. You have not been out of my mind though I have not been here. I pray for your health and other things. So please don't think that I totally abandoned you. You are too precious to me for that.

Where have I been? Um...long story short...I got addicted to Facebook, LOL. However, I found that it takes so much of mind off my pain that it is really beneficial. When I am here I tend to get so involved with our, yours and my, problems that they are foremost in my mind. I had to take a break. I learned that one of my triggers is getting too involved with reading everything everyone else is going through, does that make sense? It made me dwell too much on my problems. I had to escape that for a while.

I have been fine. Really, I have been fabulous. I had my sleep study done and am now using a BIPAP machine and it has helped tremendously. I never thought I would be able to wear the head gear but when I was at the clinic and they put it on me in the middle of the night, it was just no problem. It was that nasal thing that freaked me out so bad. So, I use my BIPAP any time I am going to lay down and if I am going to even my mother's and think I may take a nap when I am there, I make sure and pack the thing up and take it with, LOL. I won't go to sleep without it. They said that I stopped breathing many times during the night. I believe it was 89 times but I could be mistaken as I forget things so easily. It was a high number though. I never realized that it was possible that I would stop breathing that many times in the short length of time I sleep.

About right at 4 weeks ago I had to take drastic measures to get what fluid I could off of me, barring going into the hospital. So, the doctor and I had a talk and he ordered a catheter for me and increased my lasix to 120 mg. I had actually stopped taking any of it because I have such a hard time getting out of my chair and to the commode. I would have accidents if I took the lasix, so I quit taking it when I got fed up with that. Well, I had the cath put in on the 8th of July and because the nurse who put it in wouldn't listen to me (the cath was leaking even before I got up off the bed when she was through inserting it, and it wasn't a bladder spasm, like she kept saying) I had to go back that night and have a different cath put in. The cath still leaked but just once in a while, which was very frustrating, but we coped. I went back to the doctor on the 11th because I was having pain in my right kidney. When he seen me I asked him if all the blood in my cath bag was normal and about all these blood clots I had in it. Come to find out it wasn't normal and he scheduled a ultra sound on my bladder. I did have a kidney infection and started the round of antibiotics for that and he did give me pyridium for the bladder spasms that I was having then. So, that night I am sitting in my chair and decided to watch a program on the TV, which is behind me to the left. I turned my swivel rocker towards it, without taking my cath bag with me, and then pushed on the arms of my chair to shove myself up and reposition. It takes a good shove to do that. Well, unbeknownst to me, my cath tube was caught under the corner of my chair as it had been pulled when I turned and all of a sudden PAIN! I am like what in the world, and OWWWW!, that is when I looked down and there was my catheter laying in the floor with the balloon still full. You know, working in the nursing home with residents who would always try and remove any type of tubing attached to them I would wonder what if they pulled their cath out? What would that feel like? Well, I am here to testify that it is not a pleasant experience at all, period, LOL. So, back to the hospital to have a new cath placed and different people placed it. After they placed that cath I had no more blood in my urine and no more new blood clots. I believe the lady who placed the first two did it wrong and that is why I had that problem and since discussing this with another nurse believe that the tube was not placed correctly into the bladder and may have been why that yank pulled the cath out. I didn't fare well with the cath. I had it 10 days and I had a reaction to the latex. Don't know why it took that long, go figure. I was hurting so bad that Friday night that it had to come out, period. I called the hospital and talked to a woman I went to school with and they agreed to give my husband a syringe to bring home so that I could remove it. So Gary left the clinic and went to the hospital to get it and bring it to me right away. I am so glad he works for the hospital and clinic here. I got that syringe and when I released the balloon and the tube came out it was instant relief. The nurses thought that the pain was probably caused by friction of the tube as I would move, but thank goodness I went ahead and made the choice to take it out and not wait because if it had been friction I wouldn't have gotten instant relief when it came out, there would of been residual pain, but since it was a reaction, as soon as the culprit was removed I was fine. I would of suffered needlessly if I had listened to them. It was funny when my home health nurse, for the skilled nursing, came last week and had to discharge me. She was going through her spiel leading up to why they had to discharge me and when she said non-compliance I just told her that I was all too familiar with non-compliance and laughed. I asked her what my doc said when she told him I removed the cath myself and she said he just said it was fine and to end services. I only got the services because of the cath anyway. I am also certain that my doc was not phased by the fact that I removed the thing, LOL. He knows me all too well.

...to be continued.

Love in Christ all,

Teri