It hasn't been a great day for me, or week for that matter. I got food poisoning about ten days ago and it took a week to start eating again (although somehow I lost no weight - go figure) and my appetite still isn't back to normal. Potato chips are about the only thing that sit well in my stomach right now. I'm just happy that the antiemetics I have at home managed to keep me from throwing up, because once I start throwing up my body doesn't seem to know how to stop, and I end up in the hospital, puking up blood. Hence my extreme emetophobia. Or at least one reason for it. (One of many, most likely.)
So I didn't actually throw up, and I know I should be on my knees kissing the ground for that stroke of luck, but I still feel somewhat nauseous, and my stomach's all bloated. It's been distended for several months now, and I'm wondering if the cysts that I had removed a couple years ago have come back. I need to overhaul my diet - the first of September seems like a good day to do it, since I always feel like the New Year starts in September - and see if that sorts it out. If it does, I'll know it was just poor digestion, and if it doesn't, then I'll ask to be send for an ultrasound, or whatever tests they do to find cysts these days.
Which reminds me, I need to have my Mirena coil checked, and probably a new one put in. It can stay in for five years, but I think it's only licensed as a contraceptive for three. Mental note - check this out after I finish writing this note. In any case, I had it put in in April of 2006, and I've noticed that my hormones have been acting up for a few months, so even if the contraception works for five years I still need to get it checked. I'm having food cravings, mood swings and I'm overreacting to various situations, and my breasts have gotten bigger.
Are you finding this strange, that I discuss the details of my private life with you guys? I apologize if it bothers you, but only to an extent - you can always stop reading, after all. :) I don't know exactly why I share all this stuff, but there it is.
Since we're sharing, you'll probably be happy to know that my HIV test came back negative, my hepatitis tests came back negative - both of which I was somewhat worried about, after that guy bled all over me back in February - and so did all my STD tests and my routine smear test. (Ah yes, two words guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of all but the most courageous men. Thank God that most of the men in my life aren't fazed by this kind of thing.)
So that's the good. The bad, healthwise? Well, I don't have any natural immunity to hepatitis - which I sort of knew, since I HAD it when I was in my teens - and with the kind of work I do (if I EVER get back to work *sigh*) it's probably important to get the vaccination. It's not often that I'm around blood and stuff, but it does happen now and then that I have to break up a fight and patch people up.
The fevers come and go. It's hard to know how bad they are right now, because it's been such a humid summer, and it's difficult to tell what's normal heat and what's not. I'll know more in the autumn.
At the end of June, I started having what I thought were panic attacks. I'm not a panicky person generally, but it's been a tough year, what with the glandular fever and Mom not walking properly, then Jackie nearly dying, then my Dad's stroke...yeah. Even though I seemed to cope with everything pretty well, and sort of pushed all the stress aside, it's still there, lurking. People deal with stress in different ways. My Mom gets emotional and gets a lot of stomach upsets. I can always tell that I'm stressed, even when I don't consciously feel it, because my skin goes to hell - I get rashes and dull patches and wrinkles and sometimes outbreaks of shingles along my spine. So sure, the stress is there, even when I push it aside, and when I started getting these episodes it was natural to assume that they were panic attacks.
However, my doctor doesn't entirely seem to agree with me, and neither does the ECG she ran. So I've been referred to a cardiologist, and I'm waiting impatiently for my appointment. It seems strange to have such anticipation for a doctor's appointment, but I really just want to get it over with. And as odd as it might seem, I have hope. Best case scenario, which keeps running through my head, is that they find something wrong, and they tell me it's likely the cause of all my other health problems - most notably the pains and the tiredness - but surprise! It's easy to fix with medicine or a little tiny minor operation that they can do in day surgery, and it'll only take me a couple of days to heal, and then I'll feel a whole lot better.
If you've never been in my situation, you probably won't be able to understand how I can be hoping that they find something wrong, but it's just so frustrating to be ill for a long time and to know nothing concrete about it. I know that there's something wrong with me, or I wouldn't feel this bad all the time. So I live in hope that one of the many doctors I see will one day be able to say, Aha! This is what's wrong with you, and this is how we fix it. Much better than being told that they don't know what it is or what to do about it, ja?
Anyway, panic attacks. They're very strange, because I don't FEEL panicky, or even anxious. They always happen in the same way: I'll be just going about my daily work, nothing special, brushing my teeth or chopping vegetables or sitting and watching TV, and I'll get a rush of nausea. Then within a minute or so, never longer than 90 seconds, my heart will start pounding for no apparent reason. Often my head starts pounding with it, and my hands and knees get shaky, and I can't grip anything or walk properly. Usually they clear up in five minutes, sometimes sooner, but I've had a couple that went on for a long time, and that got really scary. I wasn't anxious when they started, but I usually am by the end.
I figured they're panic attacks because I've always had a really, really healthy heart. Even though I'm overweight, my heart's always worked perfectly. My usual resting pulse rate is 68 or 70. It goes up to 110, 115 when I'm on the crosstrainer doing my usual workout, even up as high as 145 or 150 if I really, really push myself, but as soon as I stop exercising it's back to normal within five minutes or so. I have good circulation and well-oxygenated blood. I never get pain in my chest when I exercise unless I try to do cross-country or something, and usually my ankles give out before my chest does. And my lungs are good, too. And yet during these episodes, my heart rate shoots up to 120, higher than it usually is after fifteen minutes on the crosstrainer, and I have no idea why.
It measured 110 on the ECG while I was sitting perfectly still, perfectly calm and relaxed, so my doctor decided it's time to get it checked out. I don't know exactly what the cardiologist will decide to do, but my GP said that he (or she) will likely want to do a 24-hour trace ECG, and a chest scan (I don't know what this would be - MRI, maybe?). So I'm waiting. If I have to stay in hospital overnight to have the tests, I fully expect you guys to give me many hugs and "we'll miss you"s. Sure, it's just tests, but I don't get nearly enough chances to get hugs. ;-)
Sooooo...that's my health. Mom's is much the same. She had her MRI for her back, and now she's waiting for a consult with Mr. Ofori-Atta (her surgical consultant; he's this wonderfully adorable - but also incredibly capable - Ghanaian guy, and Mom and I both love him to pieces) to see if maybe it's something in her back that's causing the problems with the hip replacement. Sciatica or something similar, I guess. Aside from that, she's mostly the same as ever.
The rest of my day...egh. I told you how Mom crashed my car last year, and how pissed I was about it then. Today it's worse, because I got to find out that the AA have put my insurance up from £400 a year to somewhere between £1400 and £1800 a year. Yes, EIGHTEEN HUNDRED POUNDS A YEAR. Because of one accident that we didn't even claim for, for pete's sake. It wasn't even a bad accident - the other guy had a cracked headlight and a chip out of his bumper. We had a big dent in the door that still hasn't been replaced. I don't know how they can put the premium up by so much - even at the lower rate it's more than three times what I was paying. What makes me even MORE pissed off is that they never sent a letter telling me this, they just started taking the money out of the bank at the higher rate without any kind of notification.
I don't know who I'm more mad at, the insurance company or Mom. The insurance company are shitheads, but I keep hoping that we'll get a letter saying they've made a mistake and it's been adjusted to the right (much lower) figure. And Mom...hell. I told her not to drive that day. She was tired from work, and she wanted to go shopping in the Galleria. And I said, no, take a nap, you're exhausted and not safe on the roads. So she said, I'm fine, stop nagging, and made that face that I don't dare argue with. And then she took the wrong road, made a totally illegal U-Turn, and got smashed by another car. He was travelling too fast, but he says he wasn't, and there was no evidence that he was, so Mom's the one who's culpable. Or technically, I am, since it's my car.
It really doesn't seem fair, though. I didn't do anything wrong, except not insist that we stay home. And yet I'm the one whose car has a huge chunk out of the passenger door, I'm the one who's going to have to cancel the insurance tomorrow - and god knows where I'll be able to find cheap insurance now - I'm the one who cracked a rib, for pete's sake. Everyone else was fine.
There's no choice but to cancel, though. I can't afford £1400 a year. Hell, I can barely afford £400 a year.
This comes right on top of a very nasty letter from the DVLA, telling me that I haven't paid my road tax since January, and since I've ignored all prior letters - none of which I got - they're taking me to court, unless I pay them a lot of money right now. Mom was supposed to SORN the car in January, and I reminded her about it at least six times, and eventually she got really pissed and told me she'd do it, and to stop nagging. Guess what? She did it...this month. August. And here I'd thought it was done in January, so I had the shock of my life when I opened a letter saying that I'd ignored a court summons for it.
And yes, I know it's my car, and I'm supposed to be the one who's responsible for making sure it's legal. But we agreed when I let her drive it that she'd take care of the road tax. I still paid half of the first year, but from then on it was supposed to be her responsibility. So even though from a legal point of view I'm the one at fault, it still seems pretty rotten. You're supposed to be able to rely on your parents to do what they said they'd do.
I'm probably being unfair, I know. She's my mother, and she has a lot of things on her plate. No matter what we agreed, I should have just taken care of it back in January. I suppose really I'm mad at myself.
In unrelated news, although it added to my bad day, none of my clothes fit me any more. Even if you ignore the weight that I've put on since February (which is coming off - slowly - as long as I keep going to the gym), I've gained two cup sizes and grown two inches taller in the last two years. So I have virtually no clothes. Oh, I have plenty of beautiful clothes in my wardrobe, but most of them I'm not going to be able to wear until I get a breast reduction, or lose enough weight and gain enough confidence to wear skirts and dresses that are halfway up my thighs. Dresses that used to be a very respectable knee-length, or even lower.
I need to go shopping, and I probably will tomorrow, but money is tight at the moment. I haven't seen my Dad for a month, and I can't even tell you how guilty I feel. I should be there, but I simply cannot afford it. Between April and July, I spent every penny of my savings on train fares, and that was just seeing him once a week. And Paul - that's my boss - has been so sweet about it, even offering me a live-in job where I run an emergency helpline at night, which would allow me to live in London rent-free. If I lived in London, it would hardly cost me anything to see my Dad. But then who would look after my Mom? Either way, I'd be running back and forth, spending a fortune on train fares, and I don't have a fortune. I don't even have a pittance. At least my Dad has Jackie and the girls. Mom doesn't have anyone to look after her.
When my Dad had his stroke, everyone was asking me why I wasn't falling apart, or even getting particularly emotional, and I told them that I fall apart afterwards. I do what needs to be done, and then the emotional outpouring comes at a later date, usually right out of the blue. It appears that my fall-apart is now. Today I got overloaded. Papa, Mom, my health, the car...it's just all too much.
Damn, I wish I had someone to pick up the pieces when I shatter.
The one good piece of news is that I've managed to scrape up the money to do a university course in Japanese, and I've downloaded the enrollment form and am planning to fill it in tonight. I called the uni today, and the woman I spoke to said that they've only been open for enrollment for a couple of days, so there are plenty of spaces left. It'll start on the 6th or 7th of October, and I'll take a 2-hour class once a week for 16 weeks. I'll have to travel to DeHavilland campus, in Hatfield, and the buses are a pain, but it'll be worth it. :)
This has been a pretty long note. I think I'll leave you there. Now I'm going to check out about my Mirena coil, then I'm going to the gym to think about the SBD, and listen to Neil Diamond, and run until my mood has improved and I'm fit to be around other people again.
So I didn't actually throw up, and I know I should be on my knees kissing the ground for that stroke of luck, but I still feel somewhat nauseous, and my stomach's all bloated. It's been distended for several months now, and I'm wondering if the cysts that I had removed a couple years ago have come back. I need to overhaul my diet - the first of September seems like a good day to do it, since I always feel like the New Year starts in September - and see if that sorts it out. If it does, I'll know it was just poor digestion, and if it doesn't, then I'll ask to be send for an ultrasound, or whatever tests they do to find cysts these days.
Which reminds me, I need to have my Mirena coil checked, and probably a new one put in. It can stay in for five years, but I think it's only licensed as a contraceptive for three. Mental note - check this out after I finish writing this note. In any case, I had it put in in April of 2006, and I've noticed that my hormones have been acting up for a few months, so even if the contraception works for five years I still need to get it checked. I'm having food cravings, mood swings and I'm overreacting to various situations, and my breasts have gotten bigger.
Are you finding this strange, that I discuss the details of my private life with you guys? I apologize if it bothers you, but only to an extent - you can always stop reading, after all. :) I don't know exactly why I share all this stuff, but there it is.
Since we're sharing, you'll probably be happy to know that my HIV test came back negative, my hepatitis tests came back negative - both of which I was somewhat worried about, after that guy bled all over me back in February - and so did all my STD tests and my routine smear test. (Ah yes, two words guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of all but the most courageous men. Thank God that most of the men in my life aren't fazed by this kind of thing.)
So that's the good. The bad, healthwise? Well, I don't have any natural immunity to hepatitis - which I sort of knew, since I HAD it when I was in my teens - and with the kind of work I do (if I EVER get back to work *sigh*) it's probably important to get the vaccination. It's not often that I'm around blood and stuff, but it does happen now and then that I have to break up a fight and patch people up.
The fevers come and go. It's hard to know how bad they are right now, because it's been such a humid summer, and it's difficult to tell what's normal heat and what's not. I'll know more in the autumn.
At the end of June, I started having what I thought were panic attacks. I'm not a panicky person generally, but it's been a tough year, what with the glandular fever and Mom not walking properly, then Jackie nearly dying, then my Dad's stroke...yeah. Even though I seemed to cope with everything pretty well, and sort of pushed all the stress aside, it's still there, lurking. People deal with stress in different ways. My Mom gets emotional and gets a lot of stomach upsets. I can always tell that I'm stressed, even when I don't consciously feel it, because my skin goes to hell - I get rashes and dull patches and wrinkles and sometimes outbreaks of shingles along my spine. So sure, the stress is there, even when I push it aside, and when I started getting these episodes it was natural to assume that they were panic attacks.
However, my doctor doesn't entirely seem to agree with me, and neither does the ECG she ran. So I've been referred to a cardiologist, and I'm waiting impatiently for my appointment. It seems strange to have such anticipation for a doctor's appointment, but I really just want to get it over with. And as odd as it might seem, I have hope. Best case scenario, which keeps running through my head, is that they find something wrong, and they tell me it's likely the cause of all my other health problems - most notably the pains and the tiredness - but surprise! It's easy to fix with medicine or a little tiny minor operation that they can do in day surgery, and it'll only take me a couple of days to heal, and then I'll feel a whole lot better.
If you've never been in my situation, you probably won't be able to understand how I can be hoping that they find something wrong, but it's just so frustrating to be ill for a long time and to know nothing concrete about it. I know that there's something wrong with me, or I wouldn't feel this bad all the time. So I live in hope that one of the many doctors I see will one day be able to say, Aha! This is what's wrong with you, and this is how we fix it. Much better than being told that they don't know what it is or what to do about it, ja?
Anyway, panic attacks. They're very strange, because I don't FEEL panicky, or even anxious. They always happen in the same way: I'll be just going about my daily work, nothing special, brushing my teeth or chopping vegetables or sitting and watching TV, and I'll get a rush of nausea. Then within a minute or so, never longer than 90 seconds, my heart will start pounding for no apparent reason. Often my head starts pounding with it, and my hands and knees get shaky, and I can't grip anything or walk properly. Usually they clear up in five minutes, sometimes sooner, but I've had a couple that went on for a long time, and that got really scary. I wasn't anxious when they started, but I usually am by the end.
I figured they're panic attacks because I've always had a really, really healthy heart. Even though I'm overweight, my heart's always worked perfectly. My usual resting pulse rate is 68 or 70. It goes up to 110, 115 when I'm on the crosstrainer doing my usual workout, even up as high as 145 or 150 if I really, really push myself, but as soon as I stop exercising it's back to normal within five minutes or so. I have good circulation and well-oxygenated blood. I never get pain in my chest when I exercise unless I try to do cross-country or something, and usually my ankles give out before my chest does. And my lungs are good, too. And yet during these episodes, my heart rate shoots up to 120, higher than it usually is after fifteen minutes on the crosstrainer, and I have no idea why.
It measured 110 on the ECG while I was sitting perfectly still, perfectly calm and relaxed, so my doctor decided it's time to get it checked out. I don't know exactly what the cardiologist will decide to do, but my GP said that he (or she) will likely want to do a 24-hour trace ECG, and a chest scan (I don't know what this would be - MRI, maybe?). So I'm waiting. If I have to stay in hospital overnight to have the tests, I fully expect you guys to give me many hugs and "we'll miss you"s. Sure, it's just tests, but I don't get nearly enough chances to get hugs. ;-)
Sooooo...that's my health. Mom's is much the same. She had her MRI for her back, and now she's waiting for a consult with Mr. Ofori-Atta (her surgical consultant; he's this wonderfully adorable - but also incredibly capable - Ghanaian guy, and Mom and I both love him to pieces) to see if maybe it's something in her back that's causing the problems with the hip replacement. Sciatica or something similar, I guess. Aside from that, she's mostly the same as ever.
The rest of my day...egh. I told you how Mom crashed my car last year, and how pissed I was about it then. Today it's worse, because I got to find out that the AA have put my insurance up from £400 a year to somewhere between £1400 and £1800 a year. Yes, EIGHTEEN HUNDRED POUNDS A YEAR. Because of one accident that we didn't even claim for, for pete's sake. It wasn't even a bad accident - the other guy had a cracked headlight and a chip out of his bumper. We had a big dent in the door that still hasn't been replaced. I don't know how they can put the premium up by so much - even at the lower rate it's more than three times what I was paying. What makes me even MORE pissed off is that they never sent a letter telling me this, they just started taking the money out of the bank at the higher rate without any kind of notification.
I don't know who I'm more mad at, the insurance company or Mom. The insurance company are shitheads, but I keep hoping that we'll get a letter saying they've made a mistake and it's been adjusted to the right (much lower) figure. And Mom...hell. I told her not to drive that day. She was tired from work, and she wanted to go shopping in the Galleria. And I said, no, take a nap, you're exhausted and not safe on the roads. So she said, I'm fine, stop nagging, and made that face that I don't dare argue with. And then she took the wrong road, made a totally illegal U-Turn, and got smashed by another car. He was travelling too fast, but he says he wasn't, and there was no evidence that he was, so Mom's the one who's culpable. Or technically, I am, since it's my car.
It really doesn't seem fair, though. I didn't do anything wrong, except not insist that we stay home. And yet I'm the one whose car has a huge chunk out of the passenger door, I'm the one who's going to have to cancel the insurance tomorrow - and god knows where I'll be able to find cheap insurance now - I'm the one who cracked a rib, for pete's sake. Everyone else was fine.
There's no choice but to cancel, though. I can't afford £1400 a year. Hell, I can barely afford £400 a year.
This comes right on top of a very nasty letter from the DVLA, telling me that I haven't paid my road tax since January, and since I've ignored all prior letters - none of which I got - they're taking me to court, unless I pay them a lot of money right now. Mom was supposed to SORN the car in January, and I reminded her about it at least six times, and eventually she got really pissed and told me she'd do it, and to stop nagging. Guess what? She did it...this month. August. And here I'd thought it was done in January, so I had the shock of my life when I opened a letter saying that I'd ignored a court summons for it.
And yes, I know it's my car, and I'm supposed to be the one who's responsible for making sure it's legal. But we agreed when I let her drive it that she'd take care of the road tax. I still paid half of the first year, but from then on it was supposed to be her responsibility. So even though from a legal point of view I'm the one at fault, it still seems pretty rotten. You're supposed to be able to rely on your parents to do what they said they'd do.
I'm probably being unfair, I know. She's my mother, and she has a lot of things on her plate. No matter what we agreed, I should have just taken care of it back in January. I suppose really I'm mad at myself.
In unrelated news, although it added to my bad day, none of my clothes fit me any more. Even if you ignore the weight that I've put on since February (which is coming off - slowly - as long as I keep going to the gym), I've gained two cup sizes and grown two inches taller in the last two years. So I have virtually no clothes. Oh, I have plenty of beautiful clothes in my wardrobe, but most of them I'm not going to be able to wear until I get a breast reduction, or lose enough weight and gain enough confidence to wear skirts and dresses that are halfway up my thighs. Dresses that used to be a very respectable knee-length, or even lower.
I need to go shopping, and I probably will tomorrow, but money is tight at the moment. I haven't seen my Dad for a month, and I can't even tell you how guilty I feel. I should be there, but I simply cannot afford it. Between April and July, I spent every penny of my savings on train fares, and that was just seeing him once a week. And Paul - that's my boss - has been so sweet about it, even offering me a live-in job where I run an emergency helpline at night, which would allow me to live in London rent-free. If I lived in London, it would hardly cost me anything to see my Dad. But then who would look after my Mom? Either way, I'd be running back and forth, spending a fortune on train fares, and I don't have a fortune. I don't even have a pittance. At least my Dad has Jackie and the girls. Mom doesn't have anyone to look after her.
When my Dad had his stroke, everyone was asking me why I wasn't falling apart, or even getting particularly emotional, and I told them that I fall apart afterwards. I do what needs to be done, and then the emotional outpouring comes at a later date, usually right out of the blue. It appears that my fall-apart is now. Today I got overloaded. Papa, Mom, my health, the car...it's just all too much.
Damn, I wish I had someone to pick up the pieces when I shatter.
The one good piece of news is that I've managed to scrape up the money to do a university course in Japanese, and I've downloaded the enrollment form and am planning to fill it in tonight. I called the uni today, and the woman I spoke to said that they've only been open for enrollment for a couple of days, so there are plenty of spaces left. It'll start on the 6th or 7th of October, and I'll take a 2-hour class once a week for 16 weeks. I'll have to travel to DeHavilland campus, in Hatfield, and the buses are a pain, but it'll be worth it. :)
This has been a pretty long note. I think I'll leave you there. Now I'm going to check out about my Mirena coil, then I'm going to the gym to think about the SBD, and listen to Neil Diamond, and run until my mood has improved and I'm fit to be around other people again.
No comments:
Post a Comment