Category Archives: Home Again

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Home again, Home again

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Massage by Gideon. Login Loose you may have an apprentice sooner than you thought. Who needs preschool. Fun evening!!

the procedure that they did a week ago Friday has brought me a great deal of relief and with relief comes a feeling of Joy and elation and the sense of freedom from the horrendous pain. I still have a moderate headache that consists of more of a dull pain but the pain that I can ignore most of the time. Unfortunately I way over did it this weekend I think. Monday will be have to be a day of rest. Sounds like a fun day to be doing taxes.

So now I need to set some personal limits and stick to them. But it sure has felt good to have energy and motivation and pain that I could manage.

Unfortunately with an increase in motivation and energy means that I have been doing more and more and the nerve damage that was done by an IV during my stay at Chelsea is now becoming more and more painful the more I use it, to the point of not being able to use it without a fair amount. so ice and heat for my arm until my next appointment. Luckily I have a brace that I am able to wear that helps remind me not to use it as much.

But overall I really am feeling much better and pray for that to continue of course. Thank you for all the prayers and please keep them coming because the headaches are not gone and the pain in my wrist and arm continue to increase. I will also find out tomorrow if they are terminating me from my job for being gone for so long or if they will extend my leave of absence. so continued prayers really are coveted.

May 31st

Quick update: My leave of absence has been extended through June 10th, my next set of appointments.

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Heading Home

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Gideon and I are on our way home after 6 weeks being gone. Looking forward to my own bed for sure but i am going to miss my nice dark room and all the help that my mom and dad have given me. I am so grateful. Gideon is going to miss riding his bike and going for long bike rides with papa. He is also going to miss playing with the ice cream playdoh set and playing games with grandma. He has had so much fun with his grandparents. He is also going to miss his cousin Login Loose and massages and movies and wrestling. I too am going to miss Login and the massages that he gave me when my headaches were at their worst and gave me such relief. So while we are excited to go home we will miss our family in Midland.

I started the morning out with very little head pain.  However with the drive home, picking up Josiah from school and doing garage saling I was done for the day.  Head pain spiked to a 4 quickly.  So I took a Toradol shot, did the spray and went right to bed.  Still lots of jaw pain and my forearm is still hurting.  But I am HOME and I am so excited to see my boys, see Dan and am very excited to sleep in my own bed.

April 25th boys 2

April 25th boys

 

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Home again…making adjustments

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Slept all night in my own bed and it was wonderful…no beeping, no needle pokes in the middle of the night, no one waking me at 5:30 to take prilosec. But I did have a rough patch in the early morning.   Thankfully I was able to fall back asleep and slept until noon. Luckily Dan and I came up with a plan to dispense my medicines for morning last night so I just had to take them around the right time. It worked great. My head is still quite numb from the injections and the injection sites are starting to hurt a bit but overall I am doing ok!!

Has anyone ever had TMJ? I woke up yesterday in the hospital feeling like someone punched me in the jaw and I had a hard time opening my mouth. The nurse said it was probably TMJ due to the constant headache and I was probably clenching in my sleep. So now my rice bag has so many purposes. The newest being the injection sites and the jaw. At least I have a brief relief from the mind exploding headache.  I will take it.

tmj-diagram

I’m looking for a blood pressure cuff to borrow or know where we could rent one or buy one. After being awake for an hour and a half and just sitting in the chair I tried to get up and almost passed out so we were thinking we might want to start monitoring my blood pressure at home…with the advice of friends, Dan went to CVS and bought one.  Just took my blood pressure is 97/58. Going to monitor it and keep drinking fluids to get it back up above 100/60.

It just sucks that TMJ is one more thing that just started and causes additional pain. Plus the low blood pressure that is making it difficult to be up and around. Ugh. I’m not at the end of my rope but there isn’t much left.

And now the microwave died. Ugh! My main source of relief from pain is a heated rice bag. Going to try heating in the oven.  Update: Dan looked up on eHow how to reset the microwave and it worked. Phew. That was a close call!!  But the best FB response was from Emily:

Emily Feldpausch: Use the crock pot! (I continued to use the crock pot everywhere I went, including my bedroom, the hospital and at my moms.  Now I have a microwave in my bedroom, but the crock pot was genius!)

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BP drop/meds/going home: The Plan v 7.0 – Sparrow/MSU neurologist

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IV is back in. Apparently they don’t like it when your blood pressure drops to 87/43. I failed at drinking enough water. Wish they would have told me how much I needed. I drank my water bottle (24oz) over the course of the evening but it wasn’t enough. Oh well. Not really a big deal. It’s just crazy to see your blood pressure so low. And they repeated it several times.  They don’t really seem concerned which is really weird to me, because I kind off am???  I think they are just ready to get rid of me.  And I believe they will get their wish today. 😦

I just called the headache/migraine clinic at U of M and the wait is over a year and 6 months for just a general neurology consult. We just have to pray that the meds and the nerve block injections will do the trick.

I think I must have been clenching my teeth on my left side last night because it feels like someone punched me in the jaw. No pain on right side. It wouldn’t be right if I didn’t leave the hospital with something
weird.

After the neurologist came in for the last time, he added one more medication to my ever growing meds list: Neurontin.

Neurontin (gabapentin) is an anti-epileptic medication, also called an anticonvulsant. Gabapentin affects chemicals and nerves in the body that are involved in the cause of seizures and some types of pain. Neurontin is used in adults to treat nerve pain and has been used to treat migraine.

So I leave the hospital today on the following medications:

  1. Elavil (1x per day)
  2. Flexeril (as an abortive)
  3. Neurontin (3x per day)
  4. Keppra (2x per day)
  5. Magnesium oxide (2x per day)
  6. Birth control (1x per day)
  7. Prilosec (2x per day)
  8. Zofran (as needed)
  9. Topomax (until I have titrated down and off)

And of course I can’t leave the hospital without something else weird happening, besides the very low blood pressure.   I woke up on my day of discharge and my ear was hurting on the outside edge.  No idea but it sure did hurt..but as with my last stay at Sparrow, they just dismissed it and sent me home.

IMG_4195

UGH!!!!!  How am I going to keep this all straight!!! Oh and let the side effects begin 😦

March 13th

I’m Outta here!

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No Desire to Leave

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It has been almost 2 weeks since I went into the hospital. I was there for 6 days and never had any desire to leave my room. I have now been home for a week and have only left one time for a dr apt on Mon. Other than that I really have had little desire to leave the house. I know we live out in the middle of nowhere but I am up for visitors, even though I don’t want to leave I will always be social and I am off work for sure through March 5th.
I think when I want to start going places, maybe this will be the indicator that I am on the mend. So weird to not be experiencing cabin fever at all. In fact I don’t even want to leave my room much. I know I will and I
look forward to those days ahead.

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Solitude to chaos = Anxiety

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After 6 days of almost complete solitude, I am having difficulty adjusting to all the various noises, children’s voices (loud and always speaking at once while banging on something) and sounds my house makes that I had somehow forgotten about. The solitude in combination with this wretched headache (which has really reared its head at different times throughout the day especially right now) has me now hiding out in my oh so lovely bathroom. No it’s not really that bad, it’s just nice and dark and my
mom brought the heater up and put it in here today and the heat feels really good. Bedtime with the boys is more than I can handle right now. For a week now I have only heard one voice speaking at a time. I haven’t really even watched TV. So when my head is really hurting and it is bedtime I am sooooo thankful that my mom stepped in to help finish the process:). I think I am about ready for bed!!