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voice-oftheempire--archived-blog · 6 years

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SEMI-HIATUS NOTICE

// It probably doesn’t come as any sort of great shocker to see that, given that I haven’t exactly been really active on here or @morvokk now for some time. This blog has been running on queue, in fact, due to just not having the energy and capability to actually do anything.

So let me get on that, explain what is going on, and we’ll sort of move on from there.

As any of you who have been with my blogs since they were started back in October know, my health hasn’t been in the greatest of dispositions for one reason or another. Given that I do have some new followers, I’ll retell some things, so a few bits will be old-news-moving-into-new for the veterans here, eheh. (If you want to skip to the new stuff, search for “***”)

As this story goes, I went in to the ER, primary care, and a handful of different specialists on numerous occasions and ended up basically grabbing a doctor in the ER by the lapels and screaming at him what he was going to do to my body to find out what was wrong that time.

This was how we found out I had biliary dyskinesia. Again, for those of you who have been around for a bit, you know that this was but for the new ones this is basically a huge dysfunction of the gallbladder where it produces all the same symptoms of gallbladder disease with gallstones. . .except you lack the ability to actually make stones. No stones means this can’t be picked up easily through blood tests (mine were always “good”) or through an ultrasound because there’s nothing to see. You must get something called a HIDA scan done that basically induces your gallbladder to do it’s job and measures if it does. It should perform at lowest 35%, but doctors prefer 40%. Mine was 20% when the test was done. And dropping.

Scheduled for surgery, but it was postponed numerous times while I was given a run-around by my surgeon who wanted my heart cleared because I had been having chest pains since November (mind, this was January now when I finally had this together). I had asked about that, but they had denied me, so I grumpily wore it for three days and now have five scars on my torso from the stickers, tachycardia when I have panic attacks and bradycardia when I take narcotic painkillers. Thanks, heart monitor. Gallbladder out on February 5th, have bad recovery.

***This is where the new stuff starts kicking in, for those of you who have been around here.

As I recovered from my gallbladder surgery, I noticed that it was taking me a lot longer to actually recover than what it was supposed to. Like. A lot longer. Weeks more. I was steps back from my peers. I had to order another round of painkillers because I was still in agony. I was still suffering chest pain. I was told, “It’s just built-up gasses -- you’re fine, you’re fine.” And then the images came back from my surgery and we found the cyst on my left ovary. Okay, cool, nothing huge to panic over. Made an appointment with my OBGYN and discussed it with him. Got scheduled for an ultrasound to see what kind of cyst we were dealing with and why it was pretty sizeable. Discussed and agreed to having an ablation treatment to my inner lining to hopefully fix a lot of those problems too. Schedule that after the ultrasound (because if we gotta do surgery for one, may as well do them at the same time, right? Right).

And then there were the pesky panic attacks that were keeping me up at night. Gasping, chest-crushing, sobbing, I-am-dying, screaming into pillows and begging for it to end attacks on end. Five, six, eleven times a day. All hours, always worse at night. I was staying awake instead of sleeping. My spouse was getting two hours on good nights where all he could do was try to keep me from hyperventilating and screaming. Most of the time I just sobbed and begged him to make it stop.

The muscle weakness came not long after. My arms went first, but we expected them to be a little off, especially since I had been on strict orders from my doctors to not lift beyond five pounds. But my legs? When it became almost impossible for me to stand up from sitting in a chair, or getting out of my car without help I knew something was wrong. It felt like sandbags weighed me down. Like I had done leg day for eons. Like a thousand leg presses. Whatever. It was wrong, and it got worse every day.

Then the brain bleed happened out of nowhere. That one was fun and scary. A simple trip to the ER for a headache that felt very wrong that I wasn’t willing to mess with (my aunt has a history of brain tumors, so nu-uh) revealed blood on my brain and wham I was laid up for two days in a much fancier hospital ICU. Three more CTs later, plus a cerebral angiogram I was released, and no one knew where the bleed had come from or if it would happen again.

And all the while my chest got worse and worse. And my entire body began hurting and aching. My headaches became worse, but no more bleeds (even after another ER trip to make sure). Many days I would wake up and barely be able to roll out of bed without wanting to scream. Some days I was up and okay but still not there. I was always dizzy, always a bit sick, always foggy in my brain. Given new drugs to help with the panic attacks (they did, for a bit, and then they came back).

My primary care doctor sat me down and gave me this: you will go see a gastroenterologist. The testing will ultimately probably come back clear, and when that does I can give you the referral to the best rheumatologist. You have an auto-immune disease or fibromyalgia. Maybe both at this point, but it’s not our specialty. It’s theirs.

Then: the nail. The insurance I was riding was literally riding -- I was coasting on the fumes of my old job’s insurance -- expired. When I showed up for my ultrasound appointment they told me they had tried to bill it the day prior and it bounced back as gone and asked if I had new insurance. Well, no, not yet.

Now, this isn’t to say I haven’t been working with Medicaid here since December because of chronic illnesses and various mental/physical disabilities keeping me from having a job to be able to PAY for insurance, but they had to collect paperwork from every doctor I had seen in six months time. That was over sixteen doctors. And some...were not sending. And not sending. And not sending. As of right now there are still some who have not sent from months ago and I am screaming because they are hindering my potential.

Anyway

$400 upfront for my ultrasound and who knew how much for the actual appointment? Sorry, no could do. Guess that cyst is there to stay for now, fellas. I had to cancel my GI appointment, which also means that all my progress is now halted. I’m a dead fish in the water with no insurance. My doctor has given my prescription strength NSAIDs to see if that will help relieve some of the issues in my chest, but so far nothing.

And, not to make this sound more Danny Downer? But each day I wake up and it’s worse. For the past two days I haven’t even gotten a whole five hours because I woke up to roll over and my heart started hammering in my chest, my entire chest cavity began hurting worse than ever, I felt like I couldn’t breathe and was dying all over again...and hours later it still feels like that? I was in the ER again last night for pain uncharacteristic for all of this and they couldn’t even diagnose it at this point. It’s just a, “You’re not having a heart attack, so you’re alright and that’s the best we have.”

The week before I was in the ER too. I’m getting very tired of hospitals.

My point here is: today, I’m doing really good to be sitting up and typing. I’m really proud I walked from my bed to my attached bathroom and back again before I started sobbing. I keep writing in my chronic illness journal and I keep waiting for something to happen with insurance. But I’m always exhausted and my creativity is absolutely gone. It’s just...zapped and gone.

For now, I’m having to take a step back, focus on just trying to get through each one of my days as I have them, and exist. Adding the responsibility of Tumblr to my life right now just isn’t quite possible. It’s too taxing right now, and I feel too much guilt looking at how many replies I owe or how many Asks I have in my box. And given that some days I can’t even sit up to type? Or even see the screen or keyboard? Maybe best not.

So, in the meantime, both Valoren (@voice-oftheempire) and Morvok (@morvokk) will be placed on a SEMI-HIATUS with an indefinite return date. I’ll be in and out as I can, when I can, and work as I can, but it will be extremely low-key, threads will be highly-selective, and I will ask for the upmost patience with my partners while I navigate good and bad days.

As always, I love each and every one of you, and please, please do not hesitate to hit me up on Discord just to chat or whatnot. Just remembering that someone else is out there is often enough to help someone through their day. I’ve actually lost irl friends because my health bothers them -- and I would hate for that to happen here as well simply because I wasn’t writing as frequently as before.

PS: There are certain drugs that if you take them will make your urinalysis come back positive for meth, cocaine, and cannabis. If you have been in and out of the hospital as much as I have, the nurses will ask in on your Drug Cartel. This legit happened last night. I had to end this on an amusing note. <3

#ooc #faust comments #{ I Spoke and you Listened [Announcement] }#cw: medical #also if any symbols are showing weirdly don't ask me why blame tumblr at this point

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