The Day After Pain

Yesterday evening was dreadful and I cried out of pain for hours on end, but today has been so much better. So so much better.
I had an examination that required quite a bit of preparation, but it went well and took longer than expected, which of course was annoying. My nurses for the day were absolutely lovely, I have no bad word against them - especially my evening nurse is such a bubbly happy personality that I immediately become happy as well.

Tomorrow some of my relatives are coming to visit me, which is amazing, since I see them way too seldom and I love them to pieces (escpecially their little boy whose the smartest kid I've ever met and sure I'm biased but it's still true). Today my godmother came and I missed her so much already and it hadn't even been that long since we last saw each other. I love my family.

Hopefully one day this week my school project team is going to come here and film my part of our video presentation (me acting all drugged up and sick and mumbling words referring to finances, I love being the comic relief).

Next week is going to be hectic. On Monday if all goes well, I'll have a little photoshoot here in the hospital with Mr. Miettinen, who has photographed me before many times and is eager to test these kinds of surroundings. And on Wednesday I'll have my ENMG which is to check if my nerve pathways are healthy or not and if my pain is nerve related or not. Also in the evening an old friend of mine from school might come and help me with some energy healing (she's taken courses and everything), and though I'm sceptic towards things like that, I've been in the hospital now for over a month and I need to keep my mind open and let people help me. At least they can't do any harm, so what would be the point in not trying, right?

Also, eating veggie meals in the hospital is the best thing ever, the meals are just so much better without that crappy meat! I'm loving this lacto-ovo-vegetarianism.

A New Hospital Update

I thought I shoud probably write something about the last few weeks here, since I haven't really talked about anything in a while.
So my doctors still aren't sure whether the stuff the in my lungs is pneumonia or lung embolisms. Seeing as I have trombi (blood clots) in both my legs and two around my liver, it is possible I have something in my lungs as well.
I get treatment for that, heparin shots twice a day.

They've give up on antibiotics for a while, but my CRP is rising again, so at some point they may have to consider beginning some antibiotics again.

I had a BIC catheter in my right arm for a few days, but it caused a massive deep bruise (my entire right arm is purple-black) and it stopped working, so now I have a new CV on my neck. It's much more comfortable.

My whole body is covered in small bruises and small red dots, where blood has come out of a small vein. My left leg and my right arm aren't as swollen anymore as they were, but everything still hurts so much that I can't even describe it.
And I don't think I'm being treated with the right pain medication, But the pain doctor didn't come this week, so I have to wait till tomorrow or the day after or who knows how long till I see him and maybe get some changes to my pain medication.

Especially my right leg is now extremely painful, muscles hurt and feel like they've been in spazms and my ankles are really sensitive to touch.

My potassium levels were very low a few days ago, and before I came here to the Triangle hospital from Aurora, my hemoglobin was just 67 so I got five bags of blood! Five! Now my Hb levels are good enough so I don't need anything extra.

That's about it. I don't know more and neither do the doctors it seems.

Still alive - but still in hospital

I'm still here.
But writing is too hard and I'm in constant pain. I can't use my laptop since it's too heavy, so this will be short.

I don't have sepsis. I may or may not have pneumonia. I have blood clots, one in my leg, two around my liver and possibly some lung embolisms.

The reason why I'm still sane here because of my wonderful dad whose the most important person to me, my bestest friend Hanna whose been an an angel, and all my other amazing friends from school and the the blogosphere (I'm sorry Manette, I can't remember your blog's address...)

I've also gotten help from the psych department and they've been great to me.

So hospital again

So I'm in the hospital again: nothing serious, no worries, just really painful and very mysterious.

You see my lymph nodes in my neck swell up and my throat is swollen and extremely painful - nobody knows why or how, just that Valavir (valaciclovir) takes it away. However, before that happens I can't eat or drink. So I need an IV.

Now I was able to push food down with the help of the painkillers, so hopefully I won't stay here too long. I get the antivirals plus paracetamol and Tramal. It's a mild opiate. It's way stronger than plain old paracetamol but calling it an opiate feels somewhat funny. At least with the low doses - I don't get side effects or anything and even the painkilling capacity is slightly laughable. But it's definitely an improvement to paracetamol!

Hopefully I'll get out soon, but till then, I'll write from here. Tomorrow my dad should come and bring my laptop so I won't have to write from my phone.

Also: how bad can veins get? Five (5) people tried to find a vein for blood samples and after about fifteen stabs they found one miserably slow one in my left foot! I am not a happy camper.

Today's thoughts, some shopping and some hospital stuff

Sorry for being so quiet today, I just didn't have the time to write anything thus far. I spent the entire morning in hospital for an ultrasound of my throat and jawline, because of the pains I've had there, and it turns out that on the side that it hurts my lymph node is over 1 cm big! That's bleeding enormous! And no wonder it hurts.
And I got to talk to the pain doctor and psychiatrist and everything's in order as far as that's concerned, I'm allowed to take more of the painkillers I have (Neurontin) and I get to take my normal double dose of the 10 mg Cipralex anti-depressants. So all fun and games in possible lymphoma land!

Then I went to do some Christmas shopping, bought prezzies for my family (dad and gran) but other than that all it was was a huge amount of "Oh my Goood, could you PLEASE move out of my way" and "Oh please Lord just let the Apocalypse start" while waiting in queues and standing around and I was dead tired after getting back from Helsinki, but we still had to go to two stores and R-Kioski, so I had no chance of going to sleep, plus I drove us home, since dad had difficulty driving, so that was horrible.

Thankfully what awaited me today in the mail was a packet from MakeUpStore and YvesRocher:

Oh and our Bernese puppy (1,5 years) ate my favourite beanie. Here a few pictures of a freezing me with it on:

Day VII: Medical updates and news

So, the biopsy results from my enteroscopy in September finally came a day ago. They showed that I still had some abnormal cell growth, aka cancer, but that the samples were too small or degraded or something not to give an ambiguous result, so now I am going to have another CT scan (computer tomography for those who don't know, it's like an x-ray just better and uses iodinebased contrasting agent) and a new enteroscopy (it's a procedure where they go through your entire digestive tract with a tube, camera and a biopsy snapper). Thankfully the enteroscopy is done under anesthesia, so that's no problem.

I will have to get a new IV done though, because both procedures require one, but thankfully my doctor already promised that I'm allowed to be really sedated before they try to put the IV, since I tend to have panic attacks when they don't find a vein. And they never find a vein, I have such crappy veins it's not even possible hitting them the first time round. So yeah, sedation. Tranquillisers.

Also some paindoctorperson is going to think about the painkillers I'm using, since they don't like me getting injected all the time. The pills don't seem to work and there are no opiate patches with oxycodone, just phentanyl and I hate phentanyl, so...yeah, we'll see what they come up with.

And I'm going to see a shrink in about half an hour. Because I wanted to see one. Because of a reason I can't remember anymore.

Also this all probably means I won't be getting out of hospital for quite some time to come, but thankfully I've managed to clear things up with a couple of teachers....I'm just really nervous about the rest. Because I'd really like to FINALLY get my BA out so I can start concentrating on other things. Like doing smething worthwhile.

I also bought this t-shirt last night just for the fun of it: