health – Page 4 – Wrekehavoc.com

Category: health

don't fear the reaper

Posted on September 19, 2008 by wrekehavoc

we have a sad little trend happening here in the wreke house: kids terrified that their mom (read: moi) is going to die.

my kids have been through an emotional mill. they remember a time when i went to the emergency room and didn’t emerge for a few days. they visited and saw a mom who was covered, head to toe, in purple blotches, with needles in her arms. (the perfect visual: my BFF jaxx came in, took one look at me, and announced: you look like a crack whore.) then, a day after i was released, i was back in the hospital for over a week. my recovery from ITP took months (and i’m still in remission — yay, me!), and during that time, i learned how each handles this stress.

while i was in the hospital, BC (ever her mother’s daughter) apparently cried every single day at school. her first grade teachers and the guidance counselor were absolutely amazing — they took her under their wings, they gave her TLC, and they let her know that they were in her corner. once i came home, she settled down a bit.

jools, on the other hand, a sturdy almost-three-year old at the time, was fine at school. once i returned from the hospital, though, he wanted to be with me at all times. at night, he didn’t want to go to bed for fear i would not be there in the morning.

the hardest thing about being a parent with a serious illness may very well be coping with, and for, your children. that peaceful, calm moment of childhood is ripped away from your children suddenly; and in it’s stead lies a terrifying potential reality of extreme loss. it never really leaves, either: my mother’s first bout with breast cancer happened when i was 15. she’s always very up-front with me about things, and yet, i still get nervous every time she goes to a doctor. and i’m a grown-up.

it stands to reason, then, that every time something seriously medical is on the horizon, my kids prepare for the worst. and, in short, i have to get my gallbladder out. and suddenly, everyone is afraid. BC isn’t sleeping; her upset makes her coughing so much worse. jools is randomly noting things, such as: “when you die, i want to give you my star (that he made in his kindergarten class earlier in the week.)” it is enough to make me wonder whether they know something i do not.

but, to paraphrase mark twain, the rumors of my impending death are greatly exaggerated.

sure, any operation is a little riskier for us CVID folks, as any infection is not something we need. but this is my gallbladder. it’s not brain surgery. it will go well; i’m not too terribly concerned. but it doesn’t matter how many times i tell my kids that so many of their loved ones have had this very same operation. girlfriend and mr. man are on the alert.

i have to get past my own angst here and do whatever i can to make them feel more comfortable. short of constantly reassuring them, though, i don’t know what else to do.

it crushes me to know that i am the reason they’re so distressed.

after midnight

Posted on September 17, 2008 by wrekehavoc

it’s after midnight. and for over a week now, girlfriend awakes in this time, starts barking and coughing her head off, and generally gets hysterical. with her coughing history, we are never sure whether it’s allergies, reflux, an actual infection, a virus, or none of the above. a good friend’s twins also has this and was told it’s viral, which of course means we just have to suck it up and deal.

but it’s hard to suck it up and deal when no one is getting any sleep around here.

girlfriend already missed two days of school last week because she felt so incredibly awful. of course, this week is the week that her class is in mandated swim lessons. today, she told me she could barely make it through the laps she was required to swim; it was difficult to breathe. between the nasonex, albuterol, allegra (interspersed at times with benedryl, which gave her scary dreams last night when she was sleeping), and the z-pack, i just don’t know what the hell to do.

girlfriend gets hysterical because she knows she’s waking everyone up. getting hysterical, as we all know, doesn’t help. no one is mad at her because she’s coughing. we people of the adult variety may seem a little stiff and gruff at this hour only because we, too, are feeling the effects of negligible sleep; but no one is mad at the girl. we want to help her. we just feel completely helpless at the moment.

my magic wand is broken at the moment, so i can’t seem to wave it and make things all better. it just so figures it would fail me at this moment.

punky's dilemma

Posted on August 25, 2008 by wrekehavoc

school is about to start, and i’m wrestling with my kids’ lunchtime situations, both from a nutritional and an environmental perspective. you can experience my angst on this topic over at the green parent, where i’m guest blogging today. go check it out and share your solutions, people.

i sure need them.

and to those of you who’ve gotten here via the awesome green parent blog, welcome. i promise not to curse in this post.

after that, all bets are off. (if you read back at my ongoing, so-called vacation from h-e-double-toothpicks, you may understand why.)

no rain

Posted on August 6, 2008 by wrekehavoc

a sort of continuation of yesterday’s post. because you know you want to hear me whine that. much. more. but fear not. i promise; today is a happy post. a shiny, happy post. a post with a happy buzz.

a post with no rain.

somedays, i feel like a professional patient. i have been to a pulmonologist; a gastroenterologist; a cardiologist; a dermatologist; a hematologist/oncologist; an infectious diseases doctor; a gynecologist (well, once a year, whether i like it or not); an orthopedist; and my regular, run-of-the-mill primary care dude… and my dentist twice a year, of course. and that’s just in the past year. and that’s just for me. not to mention the doc-in-the-box i hit up a few weeks ago when my lymph nodes went kerflooey (and my brother-the-doctor, alias BTD, told me to stop taking antibiotics and suck it up… which of course was the correct thing to do once i found i didn’t have strep. lord, i hate when he’s right.)

i spend a fair amount of time with doctors, and not just because i’m related to one, either. most treat me well. some treat me with complete disrespect. i have learned to appreciate many of them and the help they give me. and i have learned, over time, that very few of them really know much about CVID. they know pieces of the elephant, but they’ve never actually seen the elephant. (l’elephant, c’est moi?) (BTD tells me that in his years of practice, it would have never occurred to him to learn much about CVID until he actually had to.) i spend time educating them in a way that is hopefully not pedantic. (my brother larry says i am often pedantic. i try to use the word pedantic in a sentence as much as possible, just to show him i am not pedantic. phooey on you-ey, big brother 😉

seriously, as much as i like sharing what i know with doctors (such as explaining what my IgG, IgA, and IgM numbers mean), it does get exhausting, especially since i would appreciate more guidance than what i can get from the internet. i often marvel at the fact that if BTD wasn’t: a) a doctor, and b) a person who understands what CVID is, i would be fumbling in the dark, looking for that damn pachyderm myself.

so it was with intense pleasure that i met with the immunologist today. i hadn’t seen him since november 2006, when i decided to plunge into a semi-denial state and get a second opinion, an opinion which, of course, corresponded perfectly with his own. sure, i hate his parking lot in bethesda. but he is the best. la creme de la creme. he knows his stuff. he’s up on current research. he listens. (he even let me give him exercise pointers since he, too, just had arthroscopic knee surgery.)

and he can advise.

no, i still have CVID, and i’ll probably have CVID for the remainder of my hopefully plentiful days. i only have to have chest and sinus scans if i appear to be having trouble in those areas (and not mandatorily every year like other people have guessed. it is like he channeled my brother.) yes, he agrees with BTD that getting breakdowns of my IgG groups is not necessary (damn, i hate when my brother is right.) and yes, he will help me steer the train. come back in six months unless i have a problem or concern.

and keep those IVs of gammaglobulin flowin’.

finally. it’s like i found someone besides my brother who is familiar with my tribe of bees.

shakin'

Posted on August 5, 2008 by wrekehavoc

hello, and welcome to another edition of things that scare me.

what terrifies you? (i mean, besides john mccain as president.) while i don’t have any diagnosed phobias at this time, there are a lot of things that scare the bejeezus out of me. not the usual suspects, i suppose. f’rinstance, spiders don’t bother me. going outside without makeup is a daily experience, so that doesn’t cut it. and i like rollercoasters as long as my feet are not hanging free.

so, things that scare me, in no apparent order:

1) having veins that don’t cooperate with people who are trying to put in IVs. like yesterday, when i ended up having seven or eight holes put in my arms and hands. (two in my right hand, one in my left hand, three in my right arm, one or two — not entirely sure — in my left arm. you should see the lovely purpley-bluey green bruise on my arm.) apparently, between scarring and collapsing veins (as well as 3 sets of IV tubing that weren’t cutting it), my arms didn’t want to cooperate with yesterday’s treatment, a treatment which ultimately took over 7.5 hours to complete. my hand was so swollen that i couldn’t get my college ring off.

i absolutely adore the nurses who take good care of me. i cannot say enough good things about them. i was so upset at one point, i burst into tears, not because being poked hurt (and it did, especially in the hands), but because i felt like i was making their lives difficult. bless them both; they were upset because they didn’t want to make me the human pincushion.

i live in fear that one day, my veins won’t permit an IV thanks to scarring. it’s so unfair; i’ve never, ever been an IV drug user, and yet i apparently have the veins of one. (note to self: i wonder how keith richard’s veins are doing these days?) the day that happens, i will end up with a PIC line, an idea that frightens me not only because of how it is put in but also because those thingies are prone to providing me with a whopper of an infection. which brings me to…

2) infections. normal people don’t worry too much about them. after all, they’ll take an antibiotic for 7-10 days, and off they’ll go. unfortunately, i am allergic to two different families of antibiotics. i have to use antibiotics that are safe for me sparingly, as i will definitely need them when/if i experience The Infection To End All Infections. which could be a simple infection for a regular person, but not for me. which leads me to…

3) not being around for my kids. well, duh. this is every parent’s fear, isn’t it? when you’ve been in a situation where, out of the blue, you lose things you need to live, then you are never the same again. one day, i was walking down the street, having lunch with old friends, doing my job. the next day, i was in the hospital with almost no platelets. if i had done something to precipitate this change, it would make more sense to me.

but i didn’t. just because i possess some wonderful genes, i magically developed ITP, then CVID. boom! everything changed.

in some ways, it has been a blessing. my entire life perspective has changed to the point where i think i’m living most of my values for once instead of glancing at them, like a passenger on the subway watching the blur of movement out the train window. and every day, i attempt to be healthy, though i’m far from perfect on that front.

i’m in remission from ITP. i’m in treatment for CVID. and i’m still shakin’.

and i’m trying to push back the thoughts over when the other shoe will drop.

it don't come easy

Posted on June 28, 2008 by wrekehavoc

today, i share the tale of the Easy Bake Oven. it will be a tale much like another famous tale, though it involves no curtains. mercifully.

it’s starts with a little girl. let’s call her BC, shall we, as we always do around here. when BC was about three years old, she went to a chanukah party at her uncle BTD’s house. there were many children there, as her uncle has five kids, and her uncle’s wife’s family has a lot of children and cousins. at this party, everyone had presents to exchange; everyone, except the uncle, who had presents for all of the other children but no present for his beloved (and at the time only) niece, BC. probably a little oversight on the busy present shopper’s part.

in any event, bless BTD’s heart: this is conjecture, of course, but it appeared that after BC’s beloved uncle scrambled upstairs, and then downstairs, he presented BC with a gift he had plucked from an upstairs closet from thin air: a brand-new Easy Bake Oven. BC loved this oven; only, too bad for her. EBOs are for children age eight and up. no matter how mature madame was at this age, she was not ready for an EBO. carefully, her grandmother whisked the present away to toys r us, where she exchanged it for something a little safer for a spunky three year old.

fast forward to our hero, the now-eight-year-old BC. that same grandmother, remembering how much her granddaughter wanted that EBO, got it for her for chanukah. her other uncle, the lovable, right-wing nutball larry, supplied a whole bunch of EBO mixes to keep her own personal glycemic index at about 1000. happy days are here again, right?

not quite.

for our hero, who had not yet fully developed her ability to read fine print, took the giant long cattle prod pushing tool and shoved it into the oven, lodging it permanently inside the oven, even before she had any chance at baking anything. oh woe, she cried. her mom, desperate to dislodge the long plastic thingy, called up hasbro for guidance. unfortunately for all, hasbro and our friends at the cpsc had just announced a recall of the EBO. apparently, other things were getting entrapped in the ovens. (things called fingers.) dutifully, BC’s mom and dad packed it up and returned it, as they had been instructed. the mixes lingered, but the oven was gone with the wind postal service.

months went by, months when hasbro said they might rebuild it; or then again, maybe not. eventually, they issued a $25 gift certificate for any item on hasbro.com. considering the shipping, it wasn’t the best offer in the world. (BC’s mom promptly lost the offer, so in truth, she’s just rationalizing because she felt so guilty.) in time, BC’s evil mom, fearing that the mixes were going to be nastier than nasty, chucked them as well.

fast forward once again to this very date, a date which shall be remembered for so many things. for one thing, BC’s brother jools celebrated a whole week of dry nights; he was to be gifted, as promised, with a shark slip and slide. (after weeks of obsessing about this item, he decided to choose two other items instead as his reward.) for another, BC achieved straight As on her report card. and, remembering that a child had been denied her EBO for so many years, BC’s parents caved bought her her very own EBO.

hurray!

but woe to BC: her mixes are gone. BC’s mother, being cheap industrious, located DIY EBO recipes on the internet, as she knew the three included mixes would last about two minutes. and after BC’s dad returned from the store with a lightbulb (the secret to those crispy crusts delicate cakes heated plastic oven walls), we set forth on our baking adventure.

#1: yellow cake (one packet) with chocolate frosting (one packet), baked especially for the man who bought the lightbulb.

#2 and #3: chocolate peanut butter fudge, one serving shared by wreke and jools, this serving was affectionately dubbed gloop for it’s consistency. imagine the fine taste of confectioners sugar with a slight brownish tinge. the second attempt, eaten by BC after a stint in the fridge, fared a little better.

BC had a great time, though her mother, wreke, was left with the realization that the same woman who would not buy wreke an EBO was willing to do so for her grandchild. no, instead, wreke realized that her own mother, aka the grandmother, was willing instead to let wreke use the real oven instead.

in retrospect, it was probably safer.

lift me up

Posted on June 26, 2008 by wrekehavoc

i’ve just returned from lifting at the gym. it was uneventful, i am glad to report. the only one there from tuesday was the original man, who stared at me when i walked in. i grinned big and said, “HI!” and he left me alone after that. there were several other men in there, and eventually, one other incredibly fit woman. no one paid attention to me (though one guy was staring at the other woman at one point. i only noticed because i was waiting for the barbell, and he was waiting, in between reps with the barbell, watching her. still not wonderful, but whatever.), and i paid little attention to them.

it was a beautiful thing.

exercise lifts me up. i seriously end up sad when i cannot take care of myself the way i need to. if i keep this up for life, i may end up corraling some of you into becoming a sort of online workout club. i want you all to grow old with me and to feel as good as this 🙂 it’s great to do cardio, but i feel like women don’t get a strong enough message to do strength training. gaining muscular strength is where it’s at, as those old hipsters would have said. you help your bones, you help maintain (and obtain, in my case) a better weight situation (especially since muscle burns more calories than does fat), and you probably can kick someone’s ass in a dark alley.

(just kidding on that last one. well, at least for me, anyway.)

and no, you don’t have to spend your life on machines. in fact, when i am using machines, i am more likely to “cheat” and be too comfortable. (in other words, yes. i am actually doing pushups.) (commence laughter.) the workout i’m following, which uses few machines, lasts only about 35 minutes and a three-day/week commitment. it’s great to do cardio on two or three of the other days if you like. but i see these cardio bunnies on the elliptical, men and women. they spend an hour on a machine and don’t push themselves much. (there’s one woman who regularly reads the Washington Post on one of the machines. you should see her toss the sports section.) if you don’t push yourself to a higher intensity, you’re not really getting the full benefit of the time.

of course, i have my little POS hot pink sansa clip with me, loaded with my usual assemblage of weird songs. (who knew that i was thinking i could clean up for christmas would be an inspirational workout song?) at some point, i would love to start amassing suggestions for workout playlists which don’t include any current crappy pop. (i’m very open to new music; i’m just not open to the stuff that stuffs up the Top 40.) if you’ve any suggestions, drop me a comment.

after all, i need a change. i may be the only person who hangs out on the elliptical tripping to this:

i probably look like a complete dork, but it’s almost a religious experience 😉

well the madcap laughed at the man on the border…

pump it up

Posted on June 24, 2008 by wrekehavoc

during the school year, i hit the community center gym roughly at 9:15. it’s a great time to be at the smelly cheap wonderful facility, as the pre-work exercisers are on their way and the only ones left are:

1) the senior citizens, who play some weird, cultish game that is a cross between tennis and badminton (and they’re out for blood, man. seriously.);

2) the stay-at-home moms, including the new moms who do stroller stride around the track, desperately wishing for post-birth fat removal;

3) the junior high kids at their PE class — the community center gym is their gym, so you see four or five track stars running gym teacher mandated laps, followed by the herd, followed by four or five kids who you just know are already heavy smokers;

4) the one token woman who shows up in the weight room and who looks like a tough prizefighter; and

5) the fire fighters, who, during their non-call moments, are bulking it up in the weight room.

there are a few other regulars, mostly men who i wonder about. unemployed? shift workers? serial killers? who knows. one approached me when i was new and wanted to help me work out, but i casually flashed my wedding ring and tried to pawn him off on another lady. i rarely wear my rings, as i lift weights, so that was my lucky, albeit inexperienced, day.

but it is a known experience.

this week, i have to get to the gym after 1 pm, as that’s when i am childless for a few hours. i like to work out before i hit the supermarket; working out keeps the world safe from ring-dings. so i hit the gym, precisely at 1:00. it is summer now, so there are no PE kids to dodge. and apparently, at 1:00, the seniors must be having their naps. the new moms aren’t there, either — it’s prime baby napping time, too. and no firefighters to speak of. (sigh.) even ms. prizefighter is gone.

this left me with several men, some older, some younger, in the weight room. the only girl. i brought my new weightlifting bible with me, set it down on an unused bench, and started my routine. as i picked up my barbell and started lifting, i saw an older lifter looking at me. looking angrily at me. a look that said: what the fuck is a GIRL doing here? he glared at me pretty much for the entire 40 minutes i was in the room. i just focused on my workout. i mean, maybe he was just having a crappy day? or maybe he was constipated? i dunno.

i walked over to pull on some other weights. i noticed a younger guy looking at the bench where my book was laying. shoot, have i broken some gym etiquette, i wondered. i walked over and apologized. no, he replied with a smile, i was actually just looking at your book. well, the cover with the picture of the hot chick, anyway.

i started to do some step ups on a box that was covered in astroturf. these things kill me, but i feel better in the end after doing them. in the gym mirror, i noticed another one of the younger guys, just staring at my wisconsin-sized ass from behind. was he admiring my form? was he pissed that i was taking up space in the tiny room? was there a rip in my capris? i’ll never know. i was a little creeped out, but i just kept on.

finally, i had to get a ball and do these weird-ass jackknife things. an older man somewhere in the 50-60 range, hair parted and maybe bob dobb‘s dad, walked right up to me. what the hell are you doin’? he asked, snottily.

by this point, i had pretty much had it with the men. i can understand why some women join wimpy-ass places like Curves, but when i did a trial week there, it didn’t do anything but aggravate the shit out of me and waste my time.

i got up and looked him in the eye. it’s called a prone jackknife.

he looked at me. what the hell are you doing that for?

to get stronger, i replied. i’ll show you how to do them, then why don’t you try a few?

hell, no, he replied.

then, he left me the hell alone.

no one, but no one, is kicking darla out of the he-man woman hater’s club.

radioactive

Posted on June 13, 2008 by wrekehavoc

heh.

as foreshadowed last week, yesterday, i had a stress test with pictures. this means in normal human parlance that i had some radioactive dye injected into my arm so that they could see how well my heart functions as i walk faster and faster uphill. not really too hard until you realize that all i was allowed to eat all day was toast and a little juice before 5 am. and the three-hour test started at noon.

but i passed. i believe the doctor’s words were: you have a good heart. he literally went into no details, such as my recovery time after hitting 90 percent of my heart rate. nada. i still don’t even know what was seen on my echocardiogram i had the day before. (because of insurance vagaries, i had to schedule the tests on different days.)

i still have chest pain which radiates down my left arm. i guess since i am not dead it is probably something else, like a nerve. but the nifty thing i have now is a letter. a letter which will help me enter federal buildings, airports, and anywhere else with a detector. see, for the next three weeks: i’m radioactive. i can set off all sorts of things.

i always thought i was a little radioactive, considering i grew up a little ways from a nuclear power plant. but now, i have a letter to prove it.

whee! better living through science!

i wonder if i glow in the dark?

piece o' my heart

Posted on June 5, 2008 by wrekehavoc

welcome to crazy-busy central, where, at the rate we’re all going, someone’s going to shoot out an eye. jools is graduating from preschool next week; BC is hugging trees at school (as uncle larry put it, though they’re actually simply identifying them. but you know uncle larry, AKA the man who is to the right of attila the hun, will never shy away from an opportunity to put a political slant on a situation, joker that he always is…); and i’ve had a date this morning with a cardiologist.

see, i just don’t have enough specialists in my life at the moment, so i thought i’d go for the gold. i’ve been having pains in my heart and weakness that radiates down my left arm and into the left side of my neck and head. i feel like a crazy person, but BS strongly suggested that i’m not and that i need to take care of myself (as did my parents), so i broke down and ended up at a cardiologist, someone who seems quite approachable. my blood pressure is fine, and so was my EKG, but next week, i have to have a treadmill stress test and an echocardiogram. i figured next week would be good in case they need a vein, as tomorrow is another date with my IVIG!

(i wonder if keith richards experiences this many medical interventions?)

i have to laugh at the concept of a treadmill being my stress inducer. ha! i seek out the elliptical stepper to relieve my stress. here’s my idea of a real stress test:

1) up intermittently all night with one child who is barfing.

2) wake (ha! ha!) in the morning knowing that something is due. a report? paperwork? oh. now i remember. a presentation in front of bigwigs. a presentation i dutifully and diligently completed but was going to put finishing touches on last night after the kids went to bed; only, too bad for me. a kid got sick.

3) the realization that your spouse and you will now play the game whose job is more important today!? let the shouting begin!

4) “winning” that competition, off to work you go, exhausted, with other child in tow. drop other child off at school. park car; take a bus and two metros to work.

5) give important presentation, realizing that important piece you didn’t get to was actually more than just windowdressing. oops.

6) call from other child’s school. child is barfing. please come pick up child. spouse cannot pick up child, as other child is currently reenacting the magic of krakatoa in full bloom.

7) take two metros and a bus to get to car. get to school. get to child. child blows chunks on your Jones New York suit. (hold in those tears. it’s not your turn.)

8) after your dry clean only apparel is destroyed when child helpfully wipes a wet paper towel over the spew, get kid into car. do happy dance when you locate a plastic target bag in the back. place target bag in front of child.

9) get home to find that spouse, too, is kissing the porcelain god. spouse sees you, mutters something of the whereabouts of barfy child #1, then runs upstairs to the bedroom and closes door. buh-bye. won’t be seeing him again until saturday.

10) there you are: sleepy, queasy, in heels and a formerly good suit, with two kids looking up at you for help. it’s 3:00 p.m. go.

now you can attach electrodes to me and see how well my heart fares. not that this has ever happened to me… well, not necessarily in this order. i suspect there are other, better scenarios out there. i can even recall the night when i had a child and a husband barfing and a child not breathing. i held a bucket under one and a nebulizer on the other. oh, if only i had the wherewithall to take pictures of this joyful wee-hours-of-the-morning family experience. but in the end, i had to leave the barfers to themselves and drive the non-breather to the hospital at 4 a.m. — behind a weaving, probably drunk driver. really. good. times.

in short: i don’t need no stinkin’ treadmill.

(doctors? you can thank me later for this test design.)