Last of the Year

Not much to say.  I feel slightly better after 3 days in the hospital.  I have no defenses right now.  Bronchitis sucks too.  All I want to do is sleep but it’s different than the fibro fatigue.  This is the kind of tired that goes all the way to your bone.  Last time I was in (a few years ago) they didn’t want me to sleep all the time.  This time the doctor said, sleep as much as you need.  You’re exhausted.  I pulled the curtain around the bed because I didn’t want the Koreans staring at me.

I’ve slept off and on all day since getting home.  I had some cereal.  Maybe I’ll make an egg.  I can’t get past this food thing.

Now to take my meds.  Hopefully next year will start better than this one ended.

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Food and Friends

So Dr. P sent me to an endocrinologist to try to get to the bottom of the anorexia (symptom, not disorder).  Endo says I don’t have any friends to eat with that’s why I don’t have an appetite.  I think there’s some social psych evidence that people eat more in groups.  That’s fine. How many years have I lived and eaten alone.  No problems.  I’ve never had a huge group of friends to eat with, even at home.  No problems eating.

Plus, let’s not forget the taste perversion.  That egg ended up leaving the most horrible bitter taste in my mouth.

Endo felt I was also dehydrated.  Fair enough.  But he’s also doing some thyroid blood work.  I have to go back tomorrow.  I’ll probably get stuck again.  I swear this whole fibro, eating, depression thing is going to leave my arms looking like a junkie.  I’m easy enough to do a blood draw on.  My IVs are totally different stories.

So I’m chilling as best one can on a rock hard bed, but one the line between awake and asleep.  They wanted a glucose stick.  The nurse scared the hell out of me.  Nobody came running with insulin or glucose so I assume it was within normal range.  On a side note, the inject room closed at five.  So I had to spend the rest of the IV time in the ER.  I actually fell asleep.  Woke up about 8 by a poor little girl getting an IV started. She was not happy about the whole thing.  And that ER was dead.  Apparently people don’t use ERs.  Well that and there are no guns, so I assume that cuts down on ER usage.

So I’ll update tomorrow and see where I go from here

 

 

 

 

Scared

I’m scared that these side effects from which ever drug in the cocktail is doing it is pushing me toward an eating disorder.  Nothing tastes right.  Not looks or smells appetizing.   I ate a bowl of rice yesterday for lunch.  That was it.  Somewhere around 500 calories.  And I taught 5 classes.  I came home and took my meds (damn will phenobarbital knock the hell out of you), watched TV and went to bed.

I got up this morning.  Took the meds.  Went to see Dr. P who happens to have a nifty new toy.  It let’s you visualize (a very small part) of the vascular system.  It’s kind like shining a flash light through your hand (am I the only kid that thought it was cool it came out red?)  The use the tip of your index finger, right above the nail bed.  It was cool.  And guess what.  As usual it was fucked up.  There isn’t one body system that’s working right.  Well, I guess my skin is okay.  I’ll probably wake up covered in pimples tomorrow with my luck.  So looking at a bunch of pictures, he says it’s looking like a combination of chronic fatigue (duh, I’d bet anything CFS and FM are related), drug side effects (how ironic considering how many drugs I’m on), and a connective tissue disease (which one, who knows).  I don’t know exactly what test the rheumy ran, but he’s saying Fibro.

So I guess I’m going to go back to Dr. P and see if I can get printouts of the normal and mine.  Even I could see how abnormal it looked.  Instead of nice light pink, straight loops, I had dark red squiggle loops.  I also had more than normal.  That I can take to rheumy.  I know Dr. P is going to call him.

So I’m scared of that.  I’ve never been scared to google stuff before, but I don’t want to know what else might be wrong.  I don’t know if I should get a referral to a hematologist or what.  I’ve always wanted to be informed.  No matter how scary (don’t google fasciectomy or whatever that thing was that I thought they were going to have to do on my leg) I wanted to know.  Part curiosity.  Part control issues.

Back to my original thing.  Yesterday rice.  Today, nothing all day.  The rice was at noon yesterday.  I came home at 10 after 4 classes (and breaks, imagine that) and ate an egg.  Getting that egg into me was the hardest thing.   It’s not a classic eating disorder as such.  But there’s something wrong with me and food.  It left a bitter taste in my mouth.

My stomach says feed me (grumble grumble) but my brain and my nose and my mouth just scream no.

How do I move past this?  I used to love to cook and eat.  Part of this is the lack of  kitchen.  I have no counter space and a toaster oven.  I do most of my cooking in a crock pot.

It’s sad, but I have to blame part of this on the fibro.  There were weekends where I couldn’t get out of bed to go to the store if I wanted.  I have a short vacation.  I plan on spending tomorrow resting.  Trying to let my body heal itself.  At least a little bit.  If I can I’ll go to the doctors.  If not.  Then I’ll do what my body  tells me what I need.

It’s past my bed time, but I needed to get this out.  It’s not as scary.  But the unknown is crazy for me.  It’s a shame the science thing didn’t work out for me.  But in the end, all there is is the unknown.

 

Click. Of. Death.

Why me.  Not only is my body screwed up, my lovely mac mini (Apple, why did you put the power switch in the back??) is giving me the click of death.  So it gets shipped to lovely Ohio where my geeky brother can take it into the smart people. I’m not dealing with a third party who doesn’t speak the same language.

Permission? Ha!

Why do I always forget to ask forgiveness rather than permission.  It’s a work thing.  I plan to blow off the lack of permission as I totally forgot to ask you about that.  And then modify the activity to make it a little more educational.

Basically it was a culminating project for kids reading Mummies in the Morning.  I was going to have them spell out their name in hieroglyphics.  It just so happens I think I have a chart not only with the letters but with what they represent.  Bingo.  Writing.  Happy boss.  And considering the amount of writing and work they’ve put in on this, they deserve a little fun.

I can’t do it anymore.  I can’t push push push to memorize and finish every friggin page in the book.  We’re talking about 3rd and 4th graders here.  Let them be kids

Ho Ho Ho (sarcasm)

In some ways I hate Christmas.  The whole happy family thing.  When I was younger (yet kind of a big kid) I was heartbroken they dumped Christmas Eve on Sesame Street for the crap called Elmo Saved Christmas.  That incessant voice of his.  And his grammar.  No wonder kids can’t talk or have  trouble with grammar.  I hope to $Diety they don’t let that poor excuse for a muppet on Sesame English (their ESL version).

I went to do my Christmas shopping.  Why I decided to do it at 4 on a Saturday afternoon?  Beats me.  I’m logical like that sometimes.  And what did I forget?  Tissue paper, though I’ll probably use leftover wrapping paper for that (I’m not wrapping my coworkers gifts.  They’re going in bags.)  Oh yeah.  Tape.  Unless, I was to use masking tape.  I’ll have to dig through a drawer where there might be some.

Maybe I’ll just celebrate Festivus this year.

I’d actually watch some Seinfeld or MASH (RIP Harry Morgan) but my Mac throws a hissy fit every time I plug in my external drive.  Something about it not being able to be repaired.  Obvious OSX did something stupid because I shut it down (properly) and the next boot up it was complaining.

No, really I’m grateful for having someplace to go for Christmas.  It’s the whole shopping thing that puts me in a bad mood.

Saturday

Slept late.  Really late.  I don’t care.  I feel better.

Now off to buy Christmas presents for the friends I’ll be staying with.  I’m really thankful for A and R.  They’re a couple and they didn’t have to have a third wheel hanging around.  But they opened their home to me.  I miss them.  We used to work at the same school.  So I’m so happy that I’ll get to see them and for one of the first times in my life have a great Christmas.

Hello Blog, Is That You?

Remember me, your old pal KatM?  Things have changed.  New clothes for you.

Awwww, hell.

 

Tuesday and Thursdays suck.  I don’t get home until after 9.  MWF is better, but my old friend, fatigue is creeping back into my life.  I can’t even remember if I ranted about the territoriality of Korean doctors.  Thus, I’m off the meds that put me into deep sleep, which I haven’t been getting and up 2.5 mg of Valium at night.

Looking into new jobs.  The school I’m working at is circling the drain.  I have a good lead on a school in the southern part of the country.  By the ocean.  *sigh*  No more freezing winters.  Nasty little flakes of snow were falling earlier today.  The kind that looks nice coming down but you know it isn’t going to stick.

Apartment is pretty tidy. I think I’ll vacuum and mop tomorrow.  If anything, it’ll keep me warm.  Natural gas prices are crazy here.  I have a one room apartment and had a 250 dollar (won, whatever) gas bill one month last winter.  I try not to turn the heat above 18C (65F).  Just my opinion, but these in floor heating things here either suck or simply don’t heat more than 2 inches above the floor.

Laters

Neglectful

My poor blog.  It probably thinks I’ve gone away to leave it withering in the land of cyberspace.  But I haven’t forgotten about you.  I’m sick.  My temperature usually drops some when I’m sick.  I’ve never seen it drop to 95.

So, my little blog, I haven’t forgotten you.  I’ll be back when whatever beast I have goes on to the next person.  Maybe it’ll be one of my mouthy 5th graders.  That would make me feel better.

 

Bugger

I’m leaving my job after my contract ends.  Ordinarily I’d stay.  But my boss has cut our winter break from 5 to 3 days.  You don’t know how much I need those five days.  The franchise fed her some cock and bull story that hogwons don’t give five days in the summer and the winter.  That’s crap.  I’ve worked at two other and talked to other people.  You get 5/5.  I can’t believe my boss bought it.  AND she broke my contract.  If I were a vindictive bitch, I’d take her to the labor board.  I’m not.  I saw next year’s schedule.  I have even fewer hours.  I’m not working for half of what she put in my contract.  I should have insisted she put the original amount.  I let her put what I’m getting now.  So I’m going to try to get a job at the same school as some friends.  I like the franchise books, but once you’re out of their ESL course, they frankly suck.  They have some sort of online things for teachers.  There are twelve units in the book.  I’ve yet figured out how to get past unit 8 on the web site.  I managed to find the answer key for one of the workbooks and printed the chapter I needed.  There was like 90% overlap between the two.  Book used word A, key used synonym B.  There are more than the average number of mistakes in the books.  I can’t spell.  God knows I be up shits creek without a spell checker.  But one of the authors on the series is a native English speaker.  How you do miss dong for doing, two pages in a row.

Yes, I’m venting.  Before this shit hit the fan, I had to deal with doctor turf wars.  The rheumy gave in and took out the Prozac (which I was going to ask him to do anyway) and the sleep med he prescribed.  I had two blissful weeks of sleep.  Now I’m back to sleeping but not sleeping.  Psych has me on amitriptyline, probably enough to put a normal horse to sleep.  It’s not helping me sleep.  He has me on tiny amounts of Valium and Klonopin at night.  He said that whatever sleep med the rheumy prescribed had the highest abuse potential of any sleep aide.  Have I ever shown him addictive potential in nearly two years?  No.  And the man hands out Valium like it’s candy. I’m going to give it the weekend.  I’ve already spent the days sleeping because I don’t want to deal with the pain (and I wad tired as hell).  Yes, I have pain killers, but I’m afraid of tolerance (different than addiction, thank you very much).  I need to ask a doc about that.  It’s Tramadol + acetaminophen.  I don’t like the acetaminophen one bit.  But apparently it’s supposed to give the Tramadol a boost.

OK, I think that’s enough for one day.