My Pet Rock

About forty years ago my hubby scooped me up off the bathroom floor, deposited the kids at a  neighbour's and took me to the Emergency Room at a nearby hospital. All I can tell you about that was that the pain that put me on that floor was worse than childbirth but by the time we got to the hospital it had subsided. Luckily the doctor on call was someone who knew us and after giving me a quick check over, the two men had a little chat about mundane things while he kept one eye on me. He ended up saying there was a strange bug going around and that I probably had that. I was sent home with orders from the doctor for my hubby to administer some TLC.

Over the next year or so I would get a strange feeling in my stomach area. I would be fine and be walking somewhere and it would come on me. It wasn't a pain but it had the tendency to make me put my hand on my abdomen as I walked. There was no sense in trying to getting a doctor's appointment as I would never be able to describe it unless it was happening.

One day I was downtown near my doctor's office when it started. I wandered in and told the receptionist that I needed 30 seconds of his time. She, of course, didn't think that was possible. I told her I could only describe this while it was happening and that after that I could make whatever appointment was deemed necessary. The doctor saw me and ordered an ultrasound.

When I went for the ultrasound the technician spotted something and told me that she was going to roll me over and if it moved it was a gallstone.  Well, I rolled over and she was awful quiet for a while before sighing and saying, "There it goes."  So when I got back to the doctor's office and he told me about gallstones, I figured maybe I had passed one earlier and that was what that bad pain was all about.  I asked if changing my diet would cure the problem and he said it would not. I then decided I would eat what I wanted because if he decided it needed to come out it would be better if that happened while I was young and healthy enough to survive an operation. I never had a bad pain again and if I got that strange feeling too often I would just cut back on bacon and fries for a while.

A few months ago I went to the ER again with a pain that had been moving to a different location every day for a week. It would have taken 3 weeks just to see my own doctor (things have changed over the years, eh).  I explained the pains and mentioned the gallstone. The ER doctor didn't think it was that. She tested me for all kinds of things. I had blood and urine samples taken, a chest x-ray, and some good poking.  The ER doctor suggested that I come back the next day for an ultrasound. Before that test, I warned the technician that she would find a big gallstone in there. I knew about it but it had never bothered me in the past 40 years. The ultrasound showed the thing was now the size of a golf ball!  I found out later the doctor was actually looking for kidney stones.  I don't have those.

The doctor asked why, since I knew I had a large gallstone, I still had it. Simple question. The simple answer was that nobody had ever suggested that I have it taken out. It has never bothered me. In fact, I had given my current doctor the blast for not checking my gallbladder during my yearly routine checkups (when we had such things) and she said, "Well, you don't have a gallbladder problem." I informed her then that I'd had gallstones for years.  She seemed genuinely surprised when she got a report about the size of it. Suddenly it seemed the doctors thought it was best to get rid of the thing. I said again that it had never bothered me in the past 40 years. But they kind of made a point of stressing that if it did decide to do something it would be really bad. The next thing I knew I was scheduled for surgery......within a month, if you can believe that!

So this week, just one month after meeting the surgeon, I gave up my gallbladder. I have heard of others getting to see the gallstones that were taken out of them, and some even kept them. I never saw mine. Maybe I should have asked for it. After 40 years of being part of me, it was kind of like a pet rock.
  

De-cluttering Week 18 - A Birthday Wake Up Call

For my birthday, I had my first ambulance ride. 

Thursday we started moving my son from one apartment to the other. True, I had the easy job of sitting all day waiting for the COGECO guy to show up to connect the tv, internet, and phone,  but I did move a lot of boxes and things around during that time.  The next day I didn't feel so good.  I suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, so I know better than to over do it.  And that was, of course, the reason I got elected to do the waiting in the first place.  But hey, that's a long day to sit and do nothing when so much obviously needs to be put away.  I figure I had overdone it, and just took it easy all day on Friday. 

Saturday I woke up at 3:30 AM, very dizzy.  Moving anything just made it worse, so I tried to lay very still, flat out on my back for a while.  Then I rolled over.  Not a good idea.  Sitting on the side of the bed was just silly, but that's when my hubby woke up and asked if I was alright.  I admitted that I was not, and it didn't take him long to decide to call 911.  They asked some questions and then sent the ambulance to fetch me. 

The ambulance guys were really nice.  By the time they had arrived, I had put on some clothes, and had landed on the couch in the livingroom.  I had a bucket beside me as the dizziness had gotten bad enough by then to make me nauseous.  The guys asked some questions, and did some tests and apparently didn't like something they were seeing because they decided to take me to the emergency room at one of the local hospitals.  At my age, one doesn't mess around with dizziness, I gather.

The doctor tried to get me to describe the word dizzy.  Have you ever done that?  I remember, in the past, trying to get a doctor to understand that I was having periods of light headedness, and she couldn't seem to understand that I wasn't full out dizzy.  This hospital doctor, though, said there are several kinds of dizziness and he wanted to know which one I was experiencing. So I tried my best to describe what it made me feel like, even though it wasn't happening at that moment.  It had begun to come in waves.  So he had me do a little something, that made me say, "Here it comes again." 

I was totally amazed when he said, "Yes, I see that."  He said that my eye was jumping.  I couldn't feel that.  Then he had me turn the other way and repeat the experiment.  Immediately I saw the chair across the room roll up the wall, over and over again.  Think of a movie with a broken bit of film and how that last frame just keep repeating itself, over and over, rolling up the screen.  That's about what I was seeing. 

"Oh, that's so weird," I said.

 He responded, "No, it's what I expected." 

I told him it was certainly weird from my point of view. 

He was then able to diagnose an inner ear problem and gave me some pills that definitely seem to help.  I should be fine by the time the week is out.

All this is bad timing, or maybe good timing, depending on how you want to look at it.  It meant that I could not go back to help finish off the move today.... my birthday

The thing is, I'm getting older, and a whole new thought pattern has developed when things like this happen.  Dizziness could be sign of a stroke. It dawned on me that nobody else really knows where I keep such things as wills and insurance policies, or other important papers.  When I mentioned this to my hubby later, he just assumed I had such things in the safety deposit box.  They aren't.  I had been told years ago that it was hard to get into a safety deposit box if someone passes on, until it has been established who the executor is. That information, of course, is in the will. So if the will is locked away where nobody can get it, then that delays things considerably.

I obviously didn't get any of my de-cluttering done this week, at least not at home .....other than to take another box of books to the Merrickville United Church for their big sale later this month.  But I certainly have come up with next week's project.  I have to search out all those important papers from their current locations, and put them all together, where they can easily be found.  Next time I have an emergency, it might be too late to do that.

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