My Apologies

     I’ve never gone this long without a post and I’m not sure I know why.  Getting through the holidays was hard for me this year.  Four months later and I’m still struggling with the loss of my best friend, Michelle.  I’m feeling mired in the mud and the muck of depression.

     I ended up right back in the hospital only a week after my last discharge.  I had a pancreatitis flare up that was as bad as it gets.  I was vomiting constantly for well over 2 days and I hardly had the energy to actually get up and go to the hospital.  Rudy kept telling me I needed to go, and for some reason when I’m that sick, my mind is telling me I’m not that sick.  It got really bad this time.  In fact while Rudy was at work, something in me finally told me I needed to get to the hospital RIGHT NOW.  I actually called him at work and told him I was going to call an ambulance.  Out of nowhere a feeling of impending doom came over me.  I thought I was going to die.

     In the morning my blood sugars were 148, a little high but I chose not to take an insulin injection due to not being able to keep anything down if they were to go too low.  When I checked again they were at 248, so I gave myself 3 units.  It was an hour later that I called Rudy and he came home immediately to take me.  When they drew my labs my blood sugars were just over 900!  I couldn’t believe they had gone that high, that fast.  One of my enzymes, I forget which were supposed to be in the 200 range were 1200, and even the next day instead of going lower went higher to 1500.

     As soon as the nausea and vomiting were under control I was starving.  I think at that point it had been 3 days that I hadn’t eaten.  Of course with the pancreatitis one of the treatments is complete rest of the digestive system.  I also had an infection somewhere because my wbc (white blood count)  was pretty high as well.  By day 3 in ICU my numbers were back to normal.

     I guess I’ve been getting pretty discouraged that I don’t seem to be able to have any control over my health or what my body decides to itself.

     I feel spent emotionally, physically, and spiritually.  There seems to be no rhyme or reason why this pancreatitis flares up.  It seems to be out of nowhere.  Looking back I believe it was God that gave me the feeling of impending doom, given all my numbers Rudy and I both were surprised I was still conscious, and we do believe that if he had not gotten me to the hospital as quickly as he did that I might not have been alive had we waited until he got home from work.

     I’m going to spend more time in prayer and try to turn my perspective around.  I like me a lot better when I have a more positive frame of mind.  I do believe my emotions and mental state has a lot to do with my health.  I should have written sooner.  Won’t let that happen again.  Love to all, thanks for reading and as always comments are welcome and appreciated.

Sick to my Stomach

     Pancreatitis, it would become a word I got very used to hearing.  My type 1 diabetes put me at risk for it and oh boy did I get it.  Of course there were still doctors and nurses that assured me it was my alcoholism, that I had to convince otherwise.  Now I don’t drink at all, but before pancreatitis it was still a rare event.  That’s really when I first started encountering cycnicism from some on the medical team.

     It’s really impotant to me that I be listened to and not assumed I’m a liar.  I could never figure out how they planned on helping me when on a very basic level I wasn’t believed.

     I was vomiting constantly, losing more and more weight, and my veins were so bad that evertime I would go into the hospital, no matter the reason I would have to get a central line.  My ct scans would show a psuedocyst on my pancreas, and I had a gallbladder scan.  So now my gallbladder needed to come out.  I did feel better for a short time after that, but sure enough about 6 weeks later I was back in the hospital with pancreatits.  I also had an endoscopy done and had a port a cath put in.  All of this without insurance.  Everytime I got pancreatitis my blood sugars would go out of control.  The same thing would happen when I got a mrsa infection.  My sugars would spin so out of control I would end up in ICU with DKA.  I would struggle so hard with testing and insulin and it felt like to no avail.  It was a very frustrating time for me.

     My pain was increasing, neuropathy was setting in.  My stomach never not hurts, and soon enough I was about to experience some of my worst pain ever.