My Single Mom Life

In December, it happened again only lasting a few days that time.
January was hell, most of the month was spent being sick and not being able to keep any food down or in.
On my trip to Maine, I had a few bad days while I was there. Took some of my moms zantac stuff because I had left my meds at home. It helped a little, I just ate really dry foods the whole time I was there, avoided anything that would burn on it's way back out.
When I came home, I had a couple of good days, and then I was back in the ER for a high white cell count again. They repeated the same steps. My primary care doc couldn't figure out what was wrong, didn't order any tests either, just kept telling me that if it happened again, I was not to come in to the office, but to go to the ER, because if whatever it was I had was contagious, he didn't want other patients getting it.
I had 4 trips to the ER during February. I didn't blog about them all, I think I blogged about 1. I was sick of being sick, and sick of dealing with this.
I don't even know if I talked about it any of the previous months either.
I was overwhelmed with all my health issues.
My healing back, my weird nerve sensations, pain management appointments and so on and so on.
It was too much for me to deal with, and it was bringing me down so I didn't think any one else wanted to deal with it either.

Every time it's coming on, I know it the night before. I get the whole body aches, the skin crawls, the stomach cramping, the inability to sleep, legs spasming. I know when it's coming.

On Wednesday March 7th, Sebastian was sick with the same cold I had.
But when I posted that night, my whole body was starting to freak out. I knew it was coming. I knew in the morning, it was going to be rough.
On Thursday the 8th, after barely sleeping, I was violently ill that morning with the added cough.
Sebastian was in pain from his cough, his lungs were hurting like mine were.
I had every intention of getting him treated for his bad cough.
By the time we reached the ER though, I was in bad shape. I threw up in the ER restroom a few times, but kept telling the triage nurse to take care of him.
They did check him out and gave him some strong cough medicine.
I was sick in the room with him, they made me lay down, took temps and vitals, immediately called for blood work, called a gastro and the attending.
They started pumping fluids into me immediately along with dilaudid. Asked me how long I had been sick this time, I told them it had just started that morning.
Within a few hours, they had pumped 4 bags of saline into me, took about 6 vials of blood, and nurses and doctors kept coming in and out.
When they got the blood results back, they said my white cell count was so high, they could not let me leave the ER.
I told them I had to leave, my other son was coming home from school, I can't stay.
They said if I left, they would be responsible should anything happen to me.
I agreed to stay the night because they said they would run a test in the morning that may give an answer.
My sis came and picked up Sebastian, came to my house and picked up Mark, and took them to her house.
That night, the hospital gave me a barium cat scan. Drink the nasty kool-aid, go get scanned and they gave me some type of shot inside the machine that made the contrast brighter and made me throw up.
Afterwards, they took me up stairs and kept pumping me full of fluids and dilaudid. They kept coming in and taking vitals and blood samples every 4 hours.
They kept telling me my white count was still too high. They started an antibiotic in the IV.

By morning, the test they wanted to do was out of the question and instead chose to do an endoscopy and a colonoscopy. They flushed my system out making me drink 4 liters of this colon cleanser stuff mixed with gatorade.
I spent all of Friday drinking that stuff, using the bathroom to throw it up and shit it out.
My body was freaking empty by the time I finished the last bottle.
Every 4 hours, more pain meds, a new bag of saline, a new bag of antibiotics. It was round the clock needles and vitals and drips.
The room mate was a 90 years old DNR woman who was out of it, on pain meds for comfort and oxygen to keep her steady I guess.
Her oxygen mask was on an alarm so every time she took it off for whatever reason she was taking it off, alarms sounded, then she'd cry out for help but couldn't push the call button.
I spent the whole time Thursday night and Friday day and night, pushing the call button thinking the woman next to me was gonna die at any second.
I hadn't slept for more than 15 minutes at a time. No food, not allowed to drink anything for my dry mouth, no ice chips to suck on.
Early Saturday morning, they took me down for the tests. Thank god they put you to sleep for that shit. I saw the length of those scopes they were going to shove down my throat and up my ass, and freaked out, said I wanted to go home. The anesthesiologist came in, said nothing to worry about, put something in the IV and asked me what my name was.
I woke up in holding, and then was wheeled back to my room.

About 2 hours later, both of the gastros came in and said I had a hernia and gastroenteritis, but that was not causing the problems I was having.
I was so exhausted, I just wanted to go home.
They said if I could eat and keep it in, they'd let me leave but I had to promise to come back on Monday for more tests.
I agreed and ate about 3 bites of food and promptly lost it, and then the stomach cramping which had been under control from the dilaudid, came back with a vengeance, and they had to pump more into me, and tell me to stay one more night for one more test Sunday morning.
I spent Saturday night on a new floor in a new room, with a large black woman with some kind of sickness and crying out for Jesus every few minutes. Then her loud Baptist minister came in late, and was all hallelujah-ing all over the damn room, and praying for our ailments to be lifted up out of us, his dear holy Jesus, heal these precious sisters in faith of yours!
*bang*
Sunday morning, I spent 3 some odd hours drinking barium and being rotated on an xray table while the tech watched the stuff go through my body on film.
After the test, they still couldn't tell me what was causing it, but agreed to let me go home, but I had to promise to make an appointment with the attending gastro for the pill camera test within 2 weeks.
I agreed, the attending who was a cardiac specialist, released me and I came home where I spent straight up till Thursday basically, still sick as hell.
Thursday to Thursday, 7 days, just like the usual past months.
They gave me new meds this time. Prevacid, pamine forte, and lomotil, for all the symptoms.
They do ok, not great. The Prevacid I think is their hope of a cure to be honest.
The pamine is the anti-spasmodic, for the stomach cramping, and the lomotil dries you out so you don't barf or shit.
It doesn't really stop either one of those as yesterdays events showed me.
It does however make your mouth so dry you can't swallow any food down without a gallon of water to help wash it down.
I've eaten pretty much nothing but popsicles since coming home.

So I've been off and on sick like this since November with no answers yet. No reason for this to be happening.
I'm tired of it and just want whatever it is to go away.
As I sit here right now at this hour, my stomach hurts, but not as bad as previous days, it's slowly ending this time.
I'm completely exhausted, physically and mentally. I've spent so many days over the last months dealing with this privately, unable to focus on much, slacking on things I was supposed to do.
Instead of just telling people I'm sorry I'm sick, I can't complete that for you, I agreed to do a lot of things and then couldn't follow through.
Even after repeated reminders from people, I still chose not to tell people what I was going through, kept saying I would try to do the things, but kept failing.
I tried to keep up outward appearances as best I could, I didn't want to explain this to anyone. I blogged, I replied to emails, I posted on forums. I didn't take time off from things because I didn't want people to start emailing me and asking where I was. I didn't want people to start calling me and asking why I didn't blog today. I didn't want to explain it. I was tired of talking about it, and dealing with it.
I snapped at people, I was downright rude to others. Pain plus lack of sleep, plus lack of nutrition, starts fucking with your head, and you start behaving irrationally.
I apologized to people without explaining why I did and said what I did, just really, really sorry.
So now y'all know. Know y'all will know if I don't post or reply to emails in the future, what may be happening. I won't have to explain, and hopefully won't have to try and speak on the phone from well meaning and concerned friends, while tossing my cookies.