Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Chronic Pain

Tens of millions of Americans suffer from chronic pain -- pain that lasts longer than six months. Chronic pain can be mild or excruciating, episodic or continuous, merely inconvenient or totally incapacitating.

With chronic pain, signals of pain remain active in the nervous system for weeks, months, or even years. This can take both a physical and emotional toll on a person.

Both Alice and myself suffer from chronic pain. Alice has chronic back pain caused by reputed disc that can not be repaired.  Mine is severe joint pain and muscular pain caused by my lupus. Chronic pain has been excruciating and greatly affects every part of our lives.

I feel so much older than people 20 years older than myself. Alice is almost wheelchair bound and she in her early thirties. We are blessed by people that love and care for us. Without these people I am not sure where we would be.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Wow


Wow, what a rough few weeks. I've been in the hospital again and the day after I'm out Alice fell and was admitted to the hospital. We are both OK now, but we both are very tired. In spite of being tired we had dinner out to rid the taste of hospital food.

The weather has been crazy around here. We have had over a 40 degree temperature drop. I guess I should be thankful because it has not been sever weather. I know and pray for all of those people on the East coast.

Halloween is just around the corner. We have candy in stock and are waiting on the little goblins to show up at our front door. Last year we didn't get that many trick or theaters at our door. Maybe this year we will have more.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

A Little Outing


Alice was going crazy from being confined to the house so we took a little outing. We stopped at a Mexican restaurant and had lunch. The food was really good and the prices were great. We had lunch with drinks and a tip for $20.00. We then drove to see some new developments in Broken Arrow. We saw a new service station that was huge, the land were a multiplex movie theater was going to be put in, and finally a beautiful new housing addition. We continued our drive to pick up my medications, a half price large drink at Sonic, and finally we found were my polling place was. I think it did Alice good to get out of the house even though we are both tired now.

I have read several blogs today that dealt with not being worthy of God's love. I have felt this so much in recent days. I feel I don't know how to give or receive His love. I sometimes feel like the worst Christian on the planet. I seem to doubt everything or believe it's not true for me. I am working on this but I guess I'm a work in progress.

I am feeling a little better today.  Maybe holding back on the amount of liquids  and salt is helping. I did kind of blow it by eating Mexican today. I will just have to be real strict the rest of the day.

The weather change must be affecting us all, including  Alice's cats. They have been running and jumping all over the place. They act like they found a stash of catnip.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Doctor Visit

Doctor, doctor you are giving me the blues!  My CA level is still low, but it looks like the parathyroid glands are trying to stabilize. She did say that my CA level is much improved over when I was admitted to the hospital. She also stated I was lucky my heart did not stop.  They needed to increase my thyroid medication. I am retaining a lot of fluid and can not take a diuretic due to my lab values. I have been put on a strict diet with a fluid restriction. The reason is to decrease the work load on my heart and decrease the amount of fluid I am retaining. I have to do a daily weigh and blood pressure reading to call in next week. I am also supposed to get another CA level next Tuesday. Being sick is NO FUN!

Saturday, October 13, 2012

So Tired

I am so tired today and hurt all over. I don't even feel like going to the store. My feet are swollen like balloons. I have had to take more pain pills today. I just want to feel good again.

It is raining here and there is some thunder. To me thunder is very relaxing. My cats would disagree. I love the smell of the air after the rain. Let it rain!

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

ICU

I came as close to dying as I care to. I am thankful God was watching over me. I went to ER thinking I was having an asthma attack. I was very weak, short of breath, and had severe numbness in my face and hands. Until they had lab result they treated me like a crock. My lab came back with a critical CA level that was effecting all the muscle in my body including my heart. I came very close to dying that day. I was in ICU for three days getting loaded up on my CA. The doctor said she had never seen anyone with a level so low. I spent 2 more days in a step down unit monitoring my heart. The last thing they did was give me another bolus of CA before I left the hospital. I am suppose to see my doctor tomorrow for another CA check. The scary part is the symptoms are so non defined it is hard to tell what is going on. They believe it was caused by my surgery and nausea and vomiting. What ever caused it I don't want to go through that again!