ER- Night and Day.

While some of you follow me on facebook, some of do not. Count yourselves lucky, while I vent on my blog, I sort of had two freak outs on facebook. I don't normally, but it happened. I have also been doing a few updates on my situation there. Anyway, I thought I should do an update here as well.

I did go to the Emergency Room, finally. It took a lot of pain, tons of bleeding, pure exhaustion, and Amanda calling my Mom, and having my mother order me to go. I was hesitant to go for three reasons. 

1. I don't like medical people touching me don there. I have mistrust from an event in my childhood. I was 5 or 6 and the tube between my bladder and kidneys was not closing and causing back was of urine and making me sick. A tech was doing a probe/ catheter sort of thing and got it stuck in my urethra and basically yanked it out. I remember my mother chewing her out. I remember the pain and sobbing over it. Later when I had surgery to correct the problem, the doctors wouldn't let my mom come with me or let me wear my underwear. It was terrifying, uncomfortable, has never left my mind.

2. I was afraid of how I would be treated. the last time I went for this, the hospital I went to was simply awful to me. 

3. Sometimes, I think, unconsciously, I need permission to do big things. I don't understand why and it is something that I am trying to work on.

Okay, so here is what happened. I went. The doctor who saw me was at first, a little skeptical. He explained what I already knew and I told him as much, and then explained that this was much worse than it should be. He decided to monitor my vitals every 30 minutes and run some blood work. He got a copy of my previous blood work as well, and had a little chat with an OBGYN at the OBGYN office I go to.  After a bit he returned to tell me that a normal persons hemoglobin is stupposed to be between 12 and 16 points. My intial blood work states that I was at 9 and anemic. My doctor had prescribed iron supplements to help. My blood work at the hospital revealed that I am not at 7.5 and that's really not good. The doctor was saying without saying "you're bleeding to death." He prescribed a different hormone regimen to slow down or stop my bleeding. Next he prescribed anti-nausea medication and some pain medication. I expressed that I have been taking Advil and it wasn't cutting it, but that I wasn't trolling for drugs, just something to make this tolerable. 

(you should have seen how my blood pressure went from high back to a normal level when the pain began to ease, it was fascinating to watch)

Now this doctor did some other things too. He insisted to the OBGYN he spoke to my OBGYN needs to see me this week, as soon as possible. He also told me that if the bleeding does not stop, if it gets worse, or if I feel woozy, dizzy, or unsafe, to get my butt back into the ER and he would hospitalize me to get the bleeding to stop and to stabilize me. 

This experience was so positive it really puts my previous experience that much more to shame. I was telling my Dad about both and he told me that the previous hospital I went to was used to junkies coming in and trolling for drugs. That shouldn't matter, I hadn't been. I just wanted to pain and bleeding to stop, and they treated me horribly. I am so much happier with the hospital I went to yesterday, you have no idea. Amanda and I both want to write "thank you" letters to the doctor and staff who saw me. 

As of right now, I do have an appointment with my OBGYN on Thursday. hopefully the ER visit will be the push to get my hysterectomy sooner rather than later. As for my bleeding- since beginning the new hormone regimen, the bleeding is down, I feel more awake and alive. I actually think I might be able to sleep in my bed tonight instead of sitting up on the sofa with towels beneath me. 

I do have a confession to make. When all of this is said and done, and my hysterectomy has taken place, I am getting cute underwear and cute pajamas! It will be so heavenly to have things won't have blood all over them!       

Street Fairs, Pretty Rocks, hematocrit is a bitch, and a week absent homework.

Let's start with hematocrit, since that seems to be the current health issue. I've been trying to donate plasma because, well I get paid for it. But I haven't been able to because my hematocrit has been too low. Basically that means that I am anemic. So I have been eating as much protein and other Iron rich foods as I can, where and when I can and also take an Iron supplement along with a daily vitamin. It's still not enough to really raise my number enough to donate which is frustrating because we could certainly use the extra income.

Next, I am looking forward to this coming week. I have week's break between terms and can finally do all the, well some of the things I've wanted to do but felt too guilty because I had homework and all that other depressing stuff going on. I have a couple of craft projects I want to do and some books I want to read, some crocheting that needs to be done.

I've had a friend up to visit for the last week and it's been nice having her, but I have to take her home tomorrow. Still, she and I went to the Garland Street Fair in Spokane, WA today. We mostly hung out at the IEPG booth and I had really wanted to help with set up or tear down but with taking and picking Skoora up fro work, that didn't really happen. I had also wanted to be more helpful when people came to ask about the Guild but I kind of clammed up and could quite bring myself to do so. But I did have a good time chatting with everyone. We also spent some time exploring the street fair. I ended up coming home with a book and some gemstones. I bought a Rainbow Fluorite stone that I can make a necklace out of, which is something I have been wanting to do but could never find a stone affordable enough to do so. I did today! I am also worn out and sore from all the walking and the mild sunburn I received. I didn't think about sunscreen because I thought I would spend most of my time under the pavilion, which I did, but with me it really doesn't take much for me to burn and I did okay for the most part, I didn't break out in hives. I did, however, get kind of dizzy, even when sitting down. It was probably because it's still a bit hot here. 85 degrees even with a breeze in the shade is hot to me.

There is probably much more that I wanted to write about but I am tired and sore. Oh and Narcisa just left the bedroom so I have a few minutes to crochet before I am simply too tired or my back tells me it's time to lie down.   

Skull for Skoora, pet cremation, and now I'm starting to panic...

Skoora is in love with skulls so the pic is for her today. I didn't used to like them, thought their empty eye sockets were creepy, but after having them around (fake ones that is) they don't really bother me.

Yoda is doing much better today. He actually went to the bathroom, drank some water, and then begged for some ice cream. He is still bloated and from everything we have read, it's kidney failure or at least the beginnings. And we just don't have the money to take him to the vet. When Yoda gets bad and is in pain, we'll have to take him to get put to sleep. I never wanted that for him, but it is what it is and I don't know what else to do. Skoora and I cried over this mess for quite some time last night. I know this shit happens, but why can't it happen to the people in my life who are rotten and horrible? Why does it have to happen to my cat? Yoda is my baby and he never did anything to anyone.

I was thinking about getting him cremated after he passes. But I am not exactly sure how much that will cost and of course the place in town that will do it, will probably want us to buy their urns, so it might just be better to bury him up on Skoora's families property in the mountains.

I am fighting the intense urge to take a nap today, even have a little mantra going in my head "you don't need a nap, you don't need a nap". Of course most of this is because I looked at my syllabus for both classes and immediately groaned then started to panic. I have some book work to do in my math class followed by a discussion board post and replies. But, I also have to choose a final paper topic and write a proposal and outline for it. The final paper has to be 10 pages long. I've already picked a topic and I might even have a back up if the instructor doesn't like it. I almost want to do the whole paper now but the college has it structured in a way that you have to turn certain things in at a certain time. Sometimes, breaking things up like that, makes it more difficult for me. Also, I really don't want to write a 10 page paper on math, I would have much rather taken algebra again instead of this class that was geared more towards writing. Shit, I made it to Pre-Trigonometry at ITT Tech (my credits didn't transfer). Oh and just so you know Math is not my favorite subject. I have a form of dyslexia wherein I tend to swap numbers and letters around. So 142 to a normal person sometimes looks like 241 or 124 to me. I've had lots of wrong answers because of that. Consequently, I also have trouble with spelling too.

Along side the annoyance of the math 10 page paper is another paper but this one in the WW2 class is also between 10-12 pages long. This one I think I might have a better handle on in some  respects because it deals with history. I've picked two topics from the topic list that I have an idea of, but I need to double check some things on one of those topics just in case. However, like the other class, this one is set up to have different parts turned in at different times as well. I understand that's to help the general student populace, but it's still really annoying to me. I think it's also to make sure people don't procrastinate (which is something I used to be and am still a little good at).

I am also panicking a little bit because it is week two of this term and while I understand that the college redesigned the WW2 course, there aren't any page numbers listed on black board to either of the three text books we are supposed to be reading. The teacher doesn't seem to know which pages we are to be reading either which doesn't make me feel any better, especially since she's taught the class six times already. She promised that the Dean is looking into it. Oh and did I mention that the third text book wasn't even on the class required materials list when I went to buy books? That's really shitty. Good thing the college online library has it, else I would be calling up my Grandmother to borrow the money for an extra text book.

Okay, I admit it, when it comes to school, I really like everything to be neat, cohesive, and to be spelled out. Tell me what you want and I will do it. I don't mind being creative with it, I don't mind doing extra thinking and what not, I am not a lazy student, but at least tell me what you want so I can give it to you.

Of course, I probably wouldn't be so frustrated if I wasn't currently anemic and still bleeding very heavily. When I spoke to my Grandmother yesterday, I learned that she, too, has been anemic off and on, and the best thing I can do is to eat lots of leafy greens, red meat (which has actually doubled in price here recently- you can buy ground turkey for less and that's a shocker), and take iron supplements. I've already been taking the iron; the rest of it, we'll see what we can do when we go to the store tomorrow.

For now, I am going to attempt to get something be it homework, another blog, book plotting or looking at some more information on setting up an etsy shop for my sewing endeavor, done. I need to find some more pattern ideas online too and bookmark the ones I want to buy. Either way, something will get done today even if I have to have Skoora smack me to keep me awake.