3 posts tagged “blood”

First of all, I really just want to take a second to shout out to some of the wonderful people in my "hood.  One of the most special young women that I've been blessed to know, Adah, has gone out of her way to ask people to pray for me.  She must really have some pull around Vox and people have been coming out of the woodwork to say hello and to send prayers my way.  Adah, I want to thank you, from the bottom of my heart.  If you were here, I'd give you the biggest bear hug of your life!  To everyone of you who have been giving your time to pray for me, OMG!  Your prayers are working and I want to thank you all so much.  SO...   BIG virtual group hug to all of you.  I wish there was something more I could do to express my thankfulness.  I just hope you know that I really mean what I'm saying.  Your prayers aren't falling on deaf ears and they're NOT going unappreciated by me!  I love you guys.  I really feel like the most blessed and lucky person in the world.  I am certainly rich in the area of good friends:-)

Here's where we're at:  I was released from the hospital on Easter day because they could find no more veins to give me the two units of blood that I needed at that time.  They also needed to give me 3 consecutive units of iron because I was losing iron just as fast as they could put it in.  There was nobody in the hospital to put in a central line or a pic line like I needed.  I'd been asking for these more permanent lines since I was admitted but the nurses would not even ask the doctors because there was always a possibility that I would be released the next day.  Several days later, I was still being tortured with these idiots blowing up every good vein that I had.  I was finally told by a supervisor that I could yell and scream and threaten these bastards with the hospital administrator.  This is what I'll do from now on.  So, I got to go home because, either they discharged me or I was walking.  I'm getting mean now.  They let me go if I promissed to come back and get my blood the next day.

I came back on Monday.  My mom took off work to bring me back to the hospital.  I had to go to the "infusion center", where I was told that they couldn't even draw blood from me because my veins were so bad.  They work with a lot of cancer patience and people who are notorious for not having veins, and they are generally AT LEAST able to draw blood.  They couldn't on me so they tried to get me into the radiologist to do a pic line.  Because I was ONLY bleeding to death and nothing more, they wouldn't consider it an emergency and I had to go home and come back on Tuesday, which is today.  8:30 is when they told me to go to admitting to get this party started.  I showed up at admitting, Ben taking off work this time (because I'm too weak to drive), and they told me I was supposed to be here at 8:00.  It wasn't the hospital's problem that Mom and I were told wrong.  NOW I would have to be worked into their schedule and that meant that I might not be seen until 3:00 this afternoon.  I was more than a little pissed.  It takes more than the loss of blood to make me forget that I have a "temper".  At this point, I don't really know what to do because if I show them that I'm as mad as I really am, they could treat me worse and make me wait longer.  You just don't know how it will work out with these people.  I kept most of my cool.  I got my pic line within the hour.  It could have been SO MUCH WORSE!!!!!  Prayer answered.

It was explained to me that because blood takes 4 hours for each unit to process (that would be 8 hours for me), and iron takes 1 hour for 3 consecutive days, that I would be admitted so that they could moniter me and it would just be that much more simple.  I'm packed to stay.  Once I got down to the infusion center, they took my blood to see where I'm at today.  I DON'T NEED BLOOD!  My blood went up a whole point since Easter!  Prayer answered again!  I can just go home now and come back and get my iron for an hour every day.  Not bad eh?  God will only give us as much as we can take and I think he probably knew that I was getting redy to kill the nurses up on the "floors".  My doctors are such good doctors now and I feel so blessed to have them but they only work out of this hospital.  If it gets to the point where I'm feeling postal, I may have to switch doctors again just because I absolutely despise some of the floors they put me on in the hospital.  This last stay made me feel like I was in the nursing home.  One lesson I've learned is that if you ever have to go into the hospital for any reason, TRY to bring someone with you.  I watched some of these people who didn't have family their to back them up not ever get waited on by some nurses.  I wouldn't have gotten 1 single glass of water if it weren't for Ben or Amber or my mom.  The lady next to me wouldn't have gotten 1 single glass of water.  A volunteer changed my bed only 1 day.  I changed my bed the rest of the days.  The lady next to me laid in her own mess for about an hour before anyone would help her.  When they did help, the nurse gave the patient all the stuff to clean herself.  She was a 73 year old lady who was weak from loss of blood too.  They would NOT help her.  I called the nursing supervisor to complain for this lady.  We were given semi better nurses after that.

Where I'm at with the doctors:  I'm being told that because of almost 100% paralysis in my stomach, maybe the best way to permanently fix me is to completely remove my stomach.  I know I've said this before so I'm sorry if I'm boring anybody:-)  My ulcers are being caused from the food laying in my stomach, causing acid and eating holes.  If I had no stomach, this wouldn't happen.  They want to attatch my intestines to my esophagas.  Very little of your digestion happens in your stomach (even for normal people) anyway.  Your stomach just squishes up your food and technically, you can live without a stomach.  The quality of life wouldn't be as good but mine isn't great anyway.  I'm in the hospital every other week and my last major surgery that I wasn't supposed to live through just happened in August.  They think this might just fix me as best as I can be fixed.  The surgeon is going to a conference and will be presenting my case to other surgeons in order to get their input.

There is another option that I think I'm going to choose.  They can make another tube (for a total of 2 tubes) coming off the other side of my stomach.  They can cut away the damaged ulcerated tissure that won't heal with medication.  There is a POSSIBILITY that this might work.  They don't think so.  This is the general consensus of all of the doctors combined.  I think I'm going with this option because it leaves the possibility that I might be able to live a somewhat normal life.  They can always take out more stomach if this doesn't work but if they take out everything now, I'll never know if this could have worked.  To take out everything just seems so drastic.  Besides I want to give this new nutrition stuff that is supposed to rebuild cells, a chance to work.  Just maybe, with prayer, faith and a positive attitude it might work on me.  I'll never know if I let them take everything out right now.

The other positive thing that happened yesterday was that I signed up for disability.  There's almost no way that I won't get it (or so they say) with the amount of hospital records that they have on me.  I'll be getting back pay to 2006!  AND my kids will also get a little amount of money.  Hey!  Anything that we weren't expecting is better than nothing, right?  I never wanted to file because I couldn't get it through my head that I was REALLY disabled.  I think I'm accepting that, for at least a little while, I will be.  The good news is that I don't always have to claim disability.  I mean that if I ever feel good again, I can go back to work.  I guess I thought that once disabled, always disabled.  I just hate that label.  I'm just too proud for my own good.  So proud I'm actually stupid sometimes!  lol  I'll get my first check anywhere from June to August.  Great, huh?

AND another thing is that I took Savannah to get her permit yesterday and she passed!  She only missed one question.  She has a photographic memory so I was pretty sure that she would.  I also took her to open her first checking and savings account that she has control of.  I set up overdraft fee protection that won't come out of MY account too!  Yay me!  I guess I just feel like I need to get things in order in case something really does happen to me.  I know it's negative to actually think that way but to me, it's being realistic.  Even if nothing happens to me, I don't really have too many good days where I'm out of the hospital for very long, so I need to get as much done as I can while I can do it.

So there it is peeps!  Thank you all again and I love you all!!!!!!!!

Serious Doctor

2 comments

This is a very little update to let all of you know that I've been in the hospital since yesterday.  I haven't felt "wonderful" for a while now so the doctor did some tests and found more GI bleeding.  Today I had a scope done to reveal a new ulcer that wasn't detected before.  The location of this one is where the surgeon cut me and reconnected the tissue.  They tell me this is fairly normal.  Ulcers like to develope in places that have been "tampered" with.  There is a lot of scar tissue.  That's the bad news.  In 6 weeks, the GI doctor will be rescoping to decide if I'll have to have even more surgery to remove more of my stomach and/or intestines.  In the meantime, he caurterized it to stop the bleeding.

I'm not cherishing the idea of being here but I'm SO pleased with my GI doctor for disrupting his schedule today in order to get to the bottom of this new problem.  He could have put me off and performed the scope on Monday, all the while keeping me in the hospital.  As it is, I'll get to go home tomorrow if all remains well.

Even if I have to have surgery, I'm so much more healthy now that I've been receiving iron infusions.  I'm thinking that I won't get the news that there is a high probability that surgery will kill me this time.  I haven't had to have a blood transfusion in almost 6 months, I think.

Other than this, I can NOT begin to relay to you the boredom that I'm having now!  lol  There's just not that much entertainment in the hospital, you know?  At least I have a private room AND my internet air card is working so I can still talk to all of my cool peeps!  lol

Hope all is well with you and you're having a very happy Friday!

give blood stamp 1969

I'm going to make this quick and painless:)  I feel like I need to let everyone know what's been going on since my post last week so here goes...  As I mentioned before, I had to have my hemogloban levels checked last week and I was kind of hoping that it would be down to an 8 (normal would be a 15) so that I could have a transfusion and in a sense, have new life breathed back into me.  I just feel so much more alive once I get a transfusion.  No such luck.  My blood was low and down to a 9 but not considered critical enough by Red Cross and the hospital to share that precious "liquid red gold" that we call blood.  Although it's too bad I don't get to get a transfusion, I decided to make the best of this and pretend that there's nothing wrong with me:)  I've been telling myself that I'm "normal" (ok, stop laughing and shut up - especially you Kristine) and can do anything that anyone else can do.  It's amazing how far a good frame of mind can get you.  I've been feeling better since I've started doing this!  We'll see.  Yesterday, Ben had to take me to have my blood checked again.  I guess they'll keep doing this until I get critical or I get "normal".  I'll find out tomorrow what the level is this week.  I suspect it will be good:)

Incidently, Ben just received his Red Cross Donor card in the mail today and I thought now would be a good time to pass along these little Red Cross "fun facts":)  Did you know that every 2 SECONDS is how often someone in America needs blood?  Did you know that one blood donation can save 3 lives?  Did you know that LESS than 30% is how many first time blood donors will EVER give blood again?  Did you know that you can give blood 6 times a year which equals 18 lives that just YOU can save?

These are some pretty cool statistics.  I worked a blood drive that Red Cross was holding at our church, a few months back.  I wasn't able to GIVE blood, obviously, but I was able to give my time so that the people who COULD give blood would be more comfortable.  It felt good.  Anyway, out of all the people that we registered to give blood, Red Cross only turned away 3 people.  One was a young guy who was apparently too big to lay on their stretcher, another person was a woman who's iron counts were too low and the other was Savannah, Ben's daughter.  She lost her school ID and didn't have another form of identification.  The cool thing is that there were a lot of teenagers who showed up.  There were a lot of elderly men also.  Most of these men had served in the military and many of them in Korea or Viet Nam so they were VERY concious of how much blood was needed even in non war times.  I loved and appreciated them all.  If it weren't for these men and women, people like me might not even get to receive blood as much as we do.  There are times that the blood banks are so low that the hospital has to make a decision only to give blood to severe accident patients.  Someone like me might just have to go on a waiting list until the blood banks are replinished again. 

Ok, I'm done:)  You may all return to your regularly scheduled programs:)  lol

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