As if dealing with my own symptoms and doctors and financial struggles weren't enough, I have now heaped another helping of doctors and symptoms onto my plate.
My 'Uncle' has recently been diagnosed with Stage Four of an aggressive form of lymphoma. He is 69, his daughter has her own family a couple of hours away, and his wife is Autistic. Any guess as to who has volunteered to spend three to five days down there every three weeks when he has his chemo?
I'm hoping that this trip was the most intensive. First round of chemo and a half dozen oral medications to get used to taking, one of which is making him diabetic, so I also had to learn and then teach them how to change his diet and monitor is blood sugar. What a roller coaster ride.
At first I was frustrated because we couldn't lay hands on the reference material that they had sent home with him. But once I'd read through that, I felt much better. I had been working blind, with only the Internet as a rough guide as to how to balance out his blood sugar. But the care manual for the Chemo was in conflict with some of those instructions, so until I had read everything, I was a little bit unnerved. According to his doctor, though, I'm doing a great job. Uncle's daughter and I are getting on well, and make a great nursing team. Even Auntie isn't feeling too overwhelmed with all of the changes.
With both myself and their daughter only a phone call away, and a handy reference guide for both diabetic diet, and chemo symptoms to watch for, I am confident they will do fine on their own until my next visit.
With any luck, my own medical appointments will coincide with my trips to Hamilton for nursing duty. Cross your fingers...
Friday 17 August 2012
Friday 3 August 2012
Physical Health: I
Where to begin. Well, as a kid, I was often sick. Usually the first one to catch any bug going around, and the worst hit by the virus. I can remember having the flu so bad in high school that I dropped 15 lbs in 2 weeks. That'll happen when you have a high metabolism and eat nothing but jello and ginger ale for 2 weeks. Measles I got before I started school. Chicken pox waited until the fourth grade, for some reason. Grew up on a hobby farm, with lots of chores to do. Spent my off time reading or riding my bike or just messing around building forts and clearing trails in the bush. Was on the track team all through grade school and into high school.*shrugs* Nothing major, nothing special. Unless you count undiagnosed ADHD and OCD, which I don't.
The winter that I turned seventeen is where it all started. We did the same thing we had done every year since high school started; went down the road to my grandmother's to go sledding in the series of gullies on her property. The only real difference being, that because there was fresh powder, one of the bigger guys treated us by tossing us all down the hill to flounder in the deep snow. It was a lot of fun, and the perfect way to pack down some of the sled run. Everything was fine until it came to my turn. You see, he found a gopher hole with his foot, misstepped, and it threw off my trajectory causing me to land of the flat of my shoulders. It hurt a lot and knocked the wind out of me. But the freaky part was that I couldn't even lift my arm to let them know I was okay. By the time they scrambled to he bottom of the hill, I was okay, had climbed to my knees, and was giving my head a shake. I got up and spent the rest of the afternoon sledding just at though nothing were wrong.
Later that summer, I got my first migraine. Not that this was unheard of in my family, and until recently, I didn't even consider in part of the bigger picture. These were debilitating migraines. Light and sound sensitivity, vomiting, the whole works. MRI's showed nothing, and Tylenol didn't touch it. Mom's home remedy was a dark room, and sipping a shot of cherry whiskey over the span of half an hour. That always managed to work. And so I carried on with life.
It wasn't until the age of twenty-four that the old back injury seemed to catch up with me. I was working in a Café at the time, and all of the lifting, bending and twisting was finally getting to me. One day in particular, after helping to haul off the plexi glass slabs that made up the patio enclosure, I seemed more done in than usual. And so I booked myself an appointment with my brand new Family Doctor. Initial assessment was most likely a mechanical injury, due to hefting things that a girl of my petite stature really aught not to be lifting but, just to be safe, he scheduled me an x-ray. I got a call back after the scan, and was asked to come back in to see the Doctor.
Now, at this point, I'd like to interject with a little bit of a side note about my luck with doctors to date. While my paediatrician while still in my home town of Orillia had been a marvel of a Medical Practitioner, every doctor I had had since (and living in small town rural northern Ontario, that ended up being a steady stream of them) had been a complete waste of a diploma, in my humble opinion. And this guy, well he just took the cake.
Forgetting the fact that he was late for my initial and follow up appointments (I understand that Doctors are people too, with their own lives and own personal or even professional emergencies), by the time he showed up to my x-ray follow up, he brusquely told me that I had Degenerative Disc Disease, but that we weren't going to be doing any replacement surgery, that it would be up to me to exercise and lose weight. I sort of blinked at him, doing a fair 'deer in headlights' routine. I tried to ask him a few questions, which he bulldozed through. Some explanation of how my vertebrae in the neck and shoulder areas were inverted, but that weight loss and exercise would fix everything. He was about to write me a prescription for oxicodone. No thanks! I'm good! Tried to ask a few follow up questions. I mean, disease? Wouldn't you ask a few questions? His response, was to square off with me and state, in no uncertain terms, "I. Have. To GO!" I sputtered, having no clue what I could possibly have done wrong. I was this close to losing my infamous Scottish/French temper at him before reigning it in and replacing it with my best Customer Service demeanour. I thanked him, apologised for keeping him, and walked out. Suffice it to say, I never went back.
I did however, go home and pull of a wikipedia article on DDD, in hopes of answering my myriad questions. As you can see from the article, it's not really that bad. something that happens to our body naturally as we age, that I had supposedly managed to accelerate due to disregarding that repetitive adage running through my head whenever I did something foolhardy; my mother's voice saying "You're going to regret that when you're older." So I lost the weight, I did the workouts, and I trained my body to deal with the pain which, at first, was only sporadic. Generally, whenever I'd over done it at work.
Two years later, I had migrated from food service to telephone based customer service, the pain getting to the point that I could simply no longer tolerate the strains of standing on my feel all day, and the bend, lift twist that is the natural rhythm of work in a kitchen. I mourned the shift in careers, because I greatly enjoyed the idle banter and lively chit chat with customers that one cannot always, if ever, get away with in a phone anchored customer service environment. But the pain was slowly changing from periodic flairs, to a near constant buzz in my nerve endings. Approximately two years after my original diagnosis, I was missing whole and partial days at work due to the pain induced vomiting. There were now some days that I wouldn't even make it out of bed before my body was rebelling against the amount of pain it was in. It was time to buckle down and find myself a new Family Doctor.
The winter that I turned seventeen is where it all started. We did the same thing we had done every year since high school started; went down the road to my grandmother's to go sledding in the series of gullies on her property. The only real difference being, that because there was fresh powder, one of the bigger guys treated us by tossing us all down the hill to flounder in the deep snow. It was a lot of fun, and the perfect way to pack down some of the sled run. Everything was fine until it came to my turn. You see, he found a gopher hole with his foot, misstepped, and it threw off my trajectory causing me to land of the flat of my shoulders. It hurt a lot and knocked the wind out of me. But the freaky part was that I couldn't even lift my arm to let them know I was okay. By the time they scrambled to he bottom of the hill, I was okay, had climbed to my knees, and was giving my head a shake. I got up and spent the rest of the afternoon sledding just at though nothing were wrong.
Later that summer, I got my first migraine. Not that this was unheard of in my family, and until recently, I didn't even consider in part of the bigger picture. These were debilitating migraines. Light and sound sensitivity, vomiting, the whole works. MRI's showed nothing, and Tylenol didn't touch it. Mom's home remedy was a dark room, and sipping a shot of cherry whiskey over the span of half an hour. That always managed to work. And so I carried on with life.
It wasn't until the age of twenty-four that the old back injury seemed to catch up with me. I was working in a Café at the time, and all of the lifting, bending and twisting was finally getting to me. One day in particular, after helping to haul off the plexi glass slabs that made up the patio enclosure, I seemed more done in than usual. And so I booked myself an appointment with my brand new Family Doctor. Initial assessment was most likely a mechanical injury, due to hefting things that a girl of my petite stature really aught not to be lifting but, just to be safe, he scheduled me an x-ray. I got a call back after the scan, and was asked to come back in to see the Doctor.
Now, at this point, I'd like to interject with a little bit of a side note about my luck with doctors to date. While my paediatrician while still in my home town of Orillia had been a marvel of a Medical Practitioner, every doctor I had had since (and living in small town rural northern Ontario, that ended up being a steady stream of them) had been a complete waste of a diploma, in my humble opinion. And this guy, well he just took the cake.
Forgetting the fact that he was late for my initial and follow up appointments (I understand that Doctors are people too, with their own lives and own personal or even professional emergencies), by the time he showed up to my x-ray follow up, he brusquely told me that I had Degenerative Disc Disease, but that we weren't going to be doing any replacement surgery, that it would be up to me to exercise and lose weight. I sort of blinked at him, doing a fair 'deer in headlights' routine. I tried to ask him a few questions, which he bulldozed through. Some explanation of how my vertebrae in the neck and shoulder areas were inverted, but that weight loss and exercise would fix everything. He was about to write me a prescription for oxicodone. No thanks! I'm good! Tried to ask a few follow up questions. I mean, disease? Wouldn't you ask a few questions? His response, was to square off with me and state, in no uncertain terms, "I. Have. To GO!" I sputtered, having no clue what I could possibly have done wrong. I was this close to losing my infamous Scottish/French temper at him before reigning it in and replacing it with my best Customer Service demeanour. I thanked him, apologised for keeping him, and walked out. Suffice it to say, I never went back.
I did however, go home and pull of a wikipedia article on DDD, in hopes of answering my myriad questions. As you can see from the article, it's not really that bad. something that happens to our body naturally as we age, that I had supposedly managed to accelerate due to disregarding that repetitive adage running through my head whenever I did something foolhardy; my mother's voice saying "You're going to regret that when you're older." So I lost the weight, I did the workouts, and I trained my body to deal with the pain which, at first, was only sporadic. Generally, whenever I'd over done it at work.
Two years later, I had migrated from food service to telephone based customer service, the pain getting to the point that I could simply no longer tolerate the strains of standing on my feel all day, and the bend, lift twist that is the natural rhythm of work in a kitchen. I mourned the shift in careers, because I greatly enjoyed the idle banter and lively chit chat with customers that one cannot always, if ever, get away with in a phone anchored customer service environment. But the pain was slowly changing from periodic flairs, to a near constant buzz in my nerve endings. Approximately two years after my original diagnosis, I was missing whole and partial days at work due to the pain induced vomiting. There were now some days that I wouldn't even make it out of bed before my body was rebelling against the amount of pain it was in. It was time to buckle down and find myself a new Family Doctor.
Why, Oh Why?!?
No, not "Why me?" just "Why Am I Doing This?"
I have lead a rather chaotic and eventful life, filled with one challenge, conflict, and hurdle after another. You won't catch me wasting my breath with sentiments like 'why me?' I'm quite content to struggle though each new challenge with the knowledge that what does not kill us makes us stronger. According to the vast majority of my friends and family, strength is something I have in abundance. But we cannot always be strong on our own.
As a self sufficient and very determined individual, it took finally coming face to face with my own mortality to clue into the fact that I cannot in fact do this alone. So this is one medium that I am using to reach out to the world around me. I'm not looking for sympathy, just for support and, at times, clarity. Sometimes getting the tangle of thoughts and emotions out of my head and scribbling it out can help process. Sometimes another perspective can help put things into focus.
So hold on tight, folks! It's going to be a bumpy, chaotic ride!
*maniacal grin*
I have lead a rather chaotic and eventful life, filled with one challenge, conflict, and hurdle after another. You won't catch me wasting my breath with sentiments like 'why me?' I'm quite content to struggle though each new challenge with the knowledge that what does not kill us makes us stronger. According to the vast majority of my friends and family, strength is something I have in abundance. But we cannot always be strong on our own.
As a self sufficient and very determined individual, it took finally coming face to face with my own mortality to clue into the fact that I cannot in fact do this alone. So this is one medium that I am using to reach out to the world around me. I'm not looking for sympathy, just for support and, at times, clarity. Sometimes getting the tangle of thoughts and emotions out of my head and scribbling it out can help process. Sometimes another perspective can help put things into focus.
So hold on tight, folks! It's going to be a bumpy, chaotic ride!
*maniacal grin*
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