July 2007 Archives

First, let me say that I have been extremely lucky that T has been able to come down as much as he has. Not only was he here for the Passing of the Papers and the Painting of the REDRUM kitchen, he was able to come back down for the actual move, a debt which I will be paying back for a long LONG time.

We planned that over the last weekend at the old house (which T affectionately called the Rat Trap) we would have a yard sale on Saturday, move boxes and rest up on Sunday, then pick up the truck Monday morning and do the bulk of the heavy moving over Monday so that he could be back for work on Tuesday. I was going to then spend the rest of the week cleaning the old house and my ultimate (ambitious) goal was to be fully out of the old house by July 1st, getting back half a month security deposit because, frankly, this moving shit is expensive!

Well, you know what they say about "The best laid plans of mice and men often go(ing) awry"? Yup, you guessed it, we were rife with awry-ness.

The yard sale on Saturday was a bust. We sold very little ... very disappointing since I had an entertainment center, several small appliances, 3 pairs of chairs and half of my book collection. We decided that we would repeat on Sunday and we were up early again, watching the squirrel circus and just enjoying being together in the quiet. At least I enjoyed it ... a little too much, perhaps, since I began getting melancholy about leaving my neighborhood. I did love the view from my porch, how the birds loved to nest in my ferns and complain to me from the large shade tree in the front yard. No matter how hot it was, the porch always offered a bit of a respite and I will miss that.

Physically, I was also feeling a bit worn thin, not sleeping well and certainly not taking care of myself. I had aches and pains everywhere, some old and some new, and by the afternoon, we called it quits and I went in to lie down and take some Advil. I was getting a dull pain in my right side and felt slightly nauseous and, thinking it was PMS, I decided I needed to curl up around a pillow and let it pass. The moment I tried to lie on my side and put pressure on it, I felt a wave of nausea pass over me. After making 3 or 4 trips to the bathroom for false alarms, I pressed on the sore spot on my side while in the bathroom and immediately threw up. Who knew I had a button?

Now, this may not be a big thing for some people, and you may find this strange, but I haven't thrown up for over 15 years. Seriously. Last time I did was when I was in labor with Joseph. Sure, I've been nauseous many times, and many times I wished I could have just puked and gotten it over with but this was serious. I ended up puking and dry heaving until I could barely stand and dragged myself back to the bedroom to fall over on the bed moaning.

I could not figure out what I had eaten that had made me sick. I was having a hard time putting the pain together with the puking and was rather addled. T was thinking clearly and tried to tell me that I needed to get to a doctor and I had to roll that around in my head for about 15 minutes before I admitted that, yes, something was seriously wrong and I needed to go to the hospital. Yeah, you guessed it ... I don't 'do' the doctor either ... last trip to the emergency room was the Great Lung Failure of 1997.

The ride to the hospital was a blur, with me moaning and crying the whole way ... I could feel the fear from the kids and from T, even though they tried to make me feel better by joking, they were clearly scared when I didn't respond in kind.

I'm still embarrassed that T saw me at my weakest and sorry that I scared the kids but there was no way I could work through this pain. I tried to suck it up, even tried to talk to the nurses and doctors, but between the pain and the waves of nausea, I was just a mess. The pain meds they gave me did nothing and, when they took me in for a CT scan, it was all I could do to lie still and not moan.

They told me the first CT scan didn't show anything and that I would have to drink a quart of disgusting, bitter, room temperature grape ... blechy stuff ... so they could inject radioactive glucose into me and see better. I was still pretty dehydrated, even with the IV, so I tried to drink it as quickly as I could. They wheeled me back to my room and left me to drink my blech, telling me to call them when I was 2/3 of the way done so I could get back on the waiting list for the CT scan which could take up to ANOTHER TWO HOURS!

By this time, it had already been over 3 hours (it was past 11 pm) and I had been left alone for much of that time. I realized my family probably had no idea what was happening so I asked the nurse to let them know where we stood and how long this could all take. Within a few minutes, both kids came back to visit. Now, I have to give props to T for doing the adult thing and sending the kids back first ... they only allow two visitors at a time in ER ... unfortunately, I really only wanted T with me.

I know, I know, that sounds terrible. I just didn't think I could pull myself together enough to reassure the kids that I was ok because I didn't know if I was ok ... they did seem relieved just to see me, even though I couldn't answer their questions. I just hated for them to be in the ER at all, never mind to see me there. Its a frightening experience, seeing your only parent lying helpless in a hospital. Going with my mom when we thought she had a heart attack freaked me right the hell out.

Most people I talked to (from triage to T to the CT scan guy to the IV guy) thought my symptoms indicated a kidney stone but I had not been given an official diagnosis and I was having a real hard time relaxing without talking to a doctor. So when the kids asked me if I was going to be ok, I had no choice but to tell them that I would be fine, I just didn't know how long this was all going to take.

Then, apparently, the initial fear wore off and they relaxed a little. I told them about the pain meds and about how tired I was and the Boy said something about being tired too ... let me tell you, it so was not the time for 15 year old whine.

After just a few minutes of visiting (and a few more surly remarks), I sent the Boy out and asked him to let T come back to see me. I had about finished my quart of grape-ish blech and was waiting for the second CT scan and found the pain was easing a bit (a BIT!!! After 4 shots of something that should have put a horse out, it had eased a BIT!!!), but I was extremely uncomfortable and antsy ... yes, I started fretting about everyone else.

Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to be out of control of anything?? Now, I don't mind relinquishing control when I know someone more capable than me is taking over but I find very few people that I can trust enough to allow me to totally let go.

Since Joseph had stayed over a friend's house the night before and was grumpy from lack of sleep (yes, I let him off the hook, just like that), I asked T to take him home so he could sleep and, hopefully, get a better attitude. The Girl went with them for the ride. (CORRECTION: The Girl apparently stayed with me, I'm told ... I feel terrible now, because I could have sworn she went with T but I think it was that I WANTED her to go but ... oh well ... pain meds made me all fuzzy ... ) While they were gone, I slipped in and out of sleep and, before I knew it, T was back, holding my hand and making me smile.

Have I mentioned how grateful I am to both the Girl and T for being by my side? I hope I said it enough that night but I'm afraid all I kept doing was apologizing for getting sick.

The rest of the night was a blur. I finally went for the second CT scan. The tech explained about the radioactive injection and I told him I've had it twice before, once for my fallopian tubes and once for my lungs. That didn't stop it from being a totally ooky feeling ... I forgot about that part. Afterwards, the tech didn't talk to me at all, not like he did after the first one ... he just sent me back to the room and it didn't hit me that he didn't tell me anything until much later. I should have known that was a bad sign.

Later, much MUCH later, I caught the attention of my nurse and asked him what was happening with me, how much longer I had to stay. He brought me two Percoset (since it was now almost 4 am and I was getting achy again!!) and told me that the doctor was working on release papers. Looking back, he seemed sketchy, too, but I put that off as just being embarrassed that he kinda forgot about me.

Within a short time, a new doctor came in to see me, a very young, very perky resident as it turns out, and apologized to me for leaving me hanging but the other doctor had gone off and she was just taking over. I asked if she had the results from the CT scan. She said she had looked at it briefly and she wasn't sure what caused the pain I had earlier ... if I had a kidney stone, I had passed it ... but she said they had seen something else. The CT scan showed a mass on my left ovary. Now, the pain was on my right side but she attributed that to the ovary being across midline and twisted around.

Now, I don't know about you but MASS means one thing ... the C word, which put me in immediate panic mode. She did a lot of fast talking when I started crying because they wanted me to go see my OB/GYN immediately. She assured me I would be ok, that I was lucky I came in when I did, and excused herself pretty quickly, leaving me to deal with the enormity of what she had just told me.

After what felt like forever, and more check out red tape, she came back. She had taken more time looking at the CT scan, after reading the tech's report (she admitted she had just glanced at it the first time) she said she had more info for me. Apparently, they found a large cyst on my left KIDNEY and the mass was on my right ovary ... though I left there thinking it was the other way around (my real doctor cleared that up for me later) ... and she told me that she wanted me to call my doctor in the morning. After getting prescriptions, we finally checked out of there somewhere about 4:30 am ... no way in hell we were moving the next day.

Now, a lot has happened since then but this post is already FAR longer than I wanted so I will have to write The Other Shoe, Part 2, tomorrow. This exciting post will cover rescheduling my moving truck, a week of stressful waiting, moving, and going to the doctor ... AND MORE!!

Can't wait, can ya?

and I wonder why I don't have readers ... heh