I’ve had an issue with the plug-in I’d been using for recipes so I’m switching over to use a different one and manually adding the recipes from the old to the new. Hopefully it should all go smoothly but in case you see something out of place, please let me know.

In other news, I had the colonoscopy but there weren’t any polyps to blame for my anemia. I see the doctor for this in a few weeks and we’ll see where to go from here. Meanwhile, now that I can go back on the iron, I’ve had a couple ‘normal’ days for a change where I’ve been active and quite busy without being exhausted. I hope this lasts. I’m due for some normality!

Anyway, must get to moving my recipes.  Cheers!

 

Before I write about anything else, I have to tell you – I finally took the road test (actually I took it 3 times) and passed. I’m now a very happy camper with a Provisional licence for the next year. After that I’ll have P2′s which means I won’t have to drive with a P-Plate showing in my front and back windows. But mainly, I can now drive myself – without needing Rod as a chaperone. Yay!

It’s hard to believe I haven’t added to my blog since last November. I just read the last entry and have a few follow on comments. The salt thing was proven to be “SIADH” (inappropriate secretion of the anti-diuretic hormone). Meaning that I can no longer take anti-inflammatory medication for my arthritis. My GP had tentatively re-started me on one type but when I saw my rheumatologist he said the only safe option was to go on Fish Oil which would take about 3 months for it to start to take effect. I was a bit less than thrilled about that, and was about to throw in the towel when after 3 months I wasn’t seeing any effect, but I did some research and started taking a higher dosage and … yes it has helped a great deal. So that’s good, and the salt thing seems to have settled down but I’m still anemic.

In November I wrote that I was taking iron for the anemia but I stopped when my GP told me my iron deficiency wasn’t caused from a dietary lack of iron. It’s a shame she told me that in a way. Fast forward to 1st March. I had an appointment with a gastrointestinal doctor at Flinders, who was able to go back into my blood test records and he felt whatever issue I’m having with anemia, it’s been happening for a long while. Like even a year ago. He’s scheduled an endoscopy and colonoscopy, and has given me extra stuff to really make sure I’m all empty so the tests will be successful. They’ll give this two tries and if it still doesn’t work, I’ll need to swallow a miniature camera capsule. All this is to find out where the issue of my anemia is coming from. He also instructed me to start taking iron again. I did so until a couple of weeks ago when I had a bit of gastro tummy upset. I’ve now gone back on it as it did make a big difference in my energy levels. Without the extra iron, I am so very fatigued and flat. In fact, for a long time I thought that my being so flat was due to depression, but now I’ve realised that even though I’ve been dealing with depression, much of the fatigue has been the anemia. So here I’ve been mentally beating myself up for my lack of get up and go when it’s probably mostly due to something I don’t have much control over. The colonoscopy and endoscopy is scheduled for later this month so we’ll see how that goes. Hopefully it’s just a stupid polyp that needs to be nipped in the bud.

In other news there really isn’t any other news. I’ve enjoyed being able to drive on my own and pick up groceries and go to meetings I’d been avoiding due to lack of stamina to catch buses and worry about getting the bus home again. Other than that, I’m usually fairly active from Friday through Sunday and then spend Monday to Thursday in recovery mode. I’ll be glad to be able to be active all the time again. It’s been ages.

 

G’day. It’s probably time I sit down and write about the events of the last few weeks.

As many of you are aware, I had gallbladder surgery on 19 October and came home the very next day. It was a very straight-forward easy surgery with no complications. About the only odd thing was that I woke up during the night after the surgery and half my face was quite swollen and I had a sudden severe headache. The nurse noted my comments and agreed I looked swollen and that was about it. She gave me some pain pills and a cold damp cloth for my headache, and both worked well.  By morning my face was normal and my headache gone. The only other thing was being a bit sick before I went home. They gave me an anti-nausea shot and all was well.

I went home, took it easy and didn’t do too much until the weekend when I hung around in our home office updating my computer’s operating system. I’d looked forward to having some ‘down time’ to be able to do this and it went well except for a headache that slowly developed into something that made me head for bed on Monday. I spent the rest of the week taking it even easier than I had the week before but nothing would shift the headache. Saturday morning I started the day vomiting and it wouldn’t stop. As I have ambulance insurance I asked Rod to call for one and they took me to the emergency at Flinders. I spent a couple of days in the investigations area while they tried to figure out what was wrong with me and then they moved me to the Stroke / Neurological ward as a neurological patient. I had been on a drip the first couple of days and this was removed and my fluids were restricted as they found that my body had been depleted of salt – which they first thought was because of being on the drip. This may have had an influence but the thing is, and I was able to show them, my labs before the gallbladder surgery showed my sodium level as being low then. Apparently it was at that point much lower.

The first day I was limited to 1 litre of water for the whole 24 hours and the next day I was allowed a litre and a half. The headache eased considerably. The lab results on Wednesday came back much improved (but still low) and as I was feeling better, they let me go home but was to return to see my GP next week (which is now this week) to have my electrolytes tested again. From the time I came home from the hospital until now I’ve been keeping that headache at bay by keeping a close eye on what and how much I drink and by having salty food on an ‘as needed’ basis. I can tell when the sodium level drops by my headache and the odd way it makes my muscles feel. It’s not a cramp but certainly an oddity. For the liquids I’ve been trying hard to not drink stuff that doesn’t have some sodium content in it – which pretty much means limiting plain water and coffee as well. Instead I’m drinking Pepsi Max, sports and electrolyte drinks. All of which have sodium in them. This has worked to keep the headache at bay but my sodium levels in my blood aren’t changing much. It’s all too transient. I eat salty stuff and it just washes out of my system in a matter of a few hours.

This is all very much in contrast to what should be normal. I’ve never been one to go for a lot of salty foods (aside from craving the same at the beginning of every winter for some reason). I think we generally get enough sodium in the foods we eat without needing to add table salt. Also, with osteo-arthritis salt tends to make my joints swell and ache. At the moment the extra salt isn’t in my system long enough to bother my joints. This is good. I’ll get back to that in a bit.

I saw my GP on Tuesday. She ordered the electrolyte test and had me make an appointment for Thursday (today) to follow up on the results. She also told me make sure I take it very easy as she saw I was pretty wobbly.

The results were just about exactly the same as what I was in the hospital. I’m anaemic and have both hyponatraemia and hypochloridaemia. The last two usually show up together.  One is low in sodium and the other is low in chloride. Why? We don’t know.  One of the things it could be is the “inappropriate secretion of the antidiuretic hormone (SIADH)” which could be from the Fenac (like Voltaren but prescription strength) anti-inflammatory I take for arthritis. To find out, my GP wants me to stop taking the medication for two weeks and then see if it has a result on my electrolyte lab results.

So that’s where I’m at. Juggling liquids and salt intake and now going without anti-inflammatory meds to see if it’s a SIADH hormone issue. Meanwhile I’m still feeling a bit punky. I wake up ready for a brand new day and generally hold my own ok, but if I do anything extra (trips to GP, a bit of grocery shopping, etc) I tend to be done in for the rest of the day.  I’m taking iron tablets and the GP gave me a referral to see a gastro doctor to have an endoscopy and colonoscopy to rule out any issues with internal bleeding. She told me this is just a precaution and I realise that from the last time I was anaemic a few years ago. I won’t even get in to see that specialist until the end of January and if I’m doing well can decide not to bother with the testing. I think I’ll cross my fingers on that one.

So now you’re all caught up on the whole saga. Not fun, but at least none of this as serious as I was afraid it was when I was having the headache and vomiting. I really thought it was something like an aneurysm or some other brain thing. It crossed my mind whether this was ‘it’ or not more than once that weekend. I was retching for about 72 hours straight and the mind plays tricks when you’re that sick. I hope never to experience anything like that again. It was horrendous.

Hmm, hate to leave it on that note!  I am feeling better but it’s taking a bit to get back to ‘normal’ again.  My tummy is much happier with me since the gallbladder surgery and I’ve had no real issues with that side of things, which is good.  If you’re still reading, thanks so much for listening!

 

My butt is dragging tonight. I am so tired. It’s just been a very long day. I had a pre-admissions appt this afternoon and once finished with that, I had a purse-pocket full of errands to run. I had Rod drop me off at the shopping centre. I mailed a couple letters, picked up some things at Coles, bought a crossword scratchy, stopped at the GP’s office and made an appt for later in the day, walked to the bank (which is on the way home) and discovered that the bank deposit envelope which had been in my purse pocket wasn’t there. 

Crud. I’d have to backtrack all my steps and hope I found it. I was hungry, thirsty, tired and the bag of groceries I was carrying seemed so heavy. (It doesn’t help I can’t take my normal arthritis medication until after the surgery so I’m feeling every ache so much more acutely at the moment). 

I rang Rod, told him my problem and asked him to come pick up the groceries from me so I could carry on with my search. He drove up and told me the hospital called and I needed to go back for something. 

We went back to Noarlunga Hospital (a 15 minute drive) where I had an EKG they forgot to do earlier.  I would have had to have a blood test too, but turned out they’d already done the required tests on Tuesday. I still had to walk the length of the hospital to find that out though and I’m still hobbling and sore as it is.

Once done, I had Rod drop me at Coles again but wait for me in the parking lot because I wasn’t in the mood to walk home again and I knew I needed to eat something soon.

Fortunately Coles was my first stop in the search of the missing bank deposit envelope and that’s where it was. It had been found on the floor in front of the checkout I’d gone through and had been turned in to the front desk. PHEW. 

So off home where I made a cuppa soup with some ramen noodles, had a cuppa coffee and then walked back up to the GP’s office for my appointment. I came an hour after my appt time as I’d been told she was running an hour late. I still had to wait for another hour. It wasn’t a complete waste of time though as I managed to get almost all of the list of words / abbreviations into TextExpander on the iPhone so that was actually extremely productive. It’s the type of thing that actually required about an hour of time that under most circumstances I wouldn’t get around to doing. I only have 10 words to do now and that will probably get done in the next day or two.

I needed some prescriptions repeated so that I would have the scripts to show the staff at the hospital that they are prescribed for me so I can have them after the surgery. I normally do a weekly pill box thing and so was missing a few boxes that go with the drugs I take. So my appt with the GP was just a quick one to grab these scripts, get a print out of my blood tests from Tuesday and off I’d go. 

Turns out some of my tests required a bit of a chat. My sodium is low. Wow, that’s neat. Really, considering the arthritis and the lymphedema I have, having my sodium level be low isn’t entirely a bad thing. Was just rather surprising. I’m also slightly anaemic and had a higher hba1c (7.7) as well as a higher triglyceride test. She put me on another cholesterol pill for that and said a month after the surgery if my glucose readings are still high, she’ll increase my medication. Gee that 7.7 is a far cry from the 6.2 I had in April. Sigh. 

I had Rod pick me up at the chemists and suggested he go to KFC for himself but I’d still make the chicken thighs I’d planned to cook for my tea mainly because there’s probably not anything on their menu that’s fat free. He decided he’d eat healthy with me. Yay. We didn’t even have tea until after 8pm but it was very healthy, low fat and yummy. Chicken thighs grilled with a homemade honey mustard sauce, a salad and some noodles for me and a microwaved potato for Rod. Once we finished tea and watching the news (pre-recorded) it was nearing 10pm and I hadn’t even sat down at the computer yet. 

 

I didn’t sleep well at all last night. Then I woke up with night sweats necessitating a shower and changing my pillow cases. So then I was awake and tweeting at 5 or 6am. I did finally fall back to sleep but that caused me to be 15min late for my CT Scan. The scan was of my abdomen as I have some weird pain on the upper right hand side they want to look into.

I was a bit of a mess. Hobbling into the place with my sore foot and using my walking stick. Sore foot? I twisted my ankle on my walk yesterday. Well that or the arthritis turned the foot sideways and now it’s unhappy. Probably the later. Anyway, I’m hobbling.

I was given a litre or so of water to drink in the waiting room and after I’d poured a cup, I had a sudden sneeze. The water in my other hand splashed all over my pants and shirt. So not only did I hobble, need a walking stick, have horrible high water sweat-pants on, but now I also had wet spots.

While I was sitting there, a woman started screaming over and over again. I finally clued up on the fact it was me. Well not ME, but my new phone. It was in my pocket and telling me it was time to wake up.   I’d say it wins on volume, which was something I was worried about as my Nokia has always been excellently LOUD as a wake up alarm. It was really embarrassing seeing all these people looking so startled at me. (Hey. I wanted something that would WAKE me up, not be pleasant!) That and I never think anyone else is ever going to hear my alarms anyway. Then, two seconds or so later my other phone in my other pocket starting singing Huey Lewis’ “I want a new drug“, which is/was my wake up song for my old phone. I managed to shut it off before it got to the ‘drug’ part. Ugh. The only reason I had two phones on me was because I was waiting for the iPhone to be activated and I would need to ring Rod to come pick me up when the test was over.

Once in the CT Scan room the first try at finding a vein suitable to put the dye into failed. She found it, stuck it, and then the vein disappeared. It does that. They can only use my left arm for these things and the chemo I had 9yrs ago pretty much destroyed all the good veins I had on that side. So it’s a challenge.  The tech opted to wait until the doctor came in and let her do it. (Here in Oz, doctors actually DO blood draws and needle sticks – and they’re very skilled at it). She was funny. She commented, ‘Did you forget to bring your veins with you today? Maybe you should go home and get them.’ LOL. Have heard plenty of jokes about not having enough blood but that was a new one for me. She did finally get a good spot and it was nearly too good. I leaked red stuff all over their floor. Then when they gave me the dye some of that leaked too but luckily onto the floor and not inside of me – which would have been painful. Aside from a few pokes, nothing today was painful in regards to the scan at least.

Once home, I had something to eat and gave SMSPup a second call for the day (my 3rd for the last 24hrs) and was a bit more forceful in getting across it’s been nearly 24hrs and my phone should be activated, darn it, and what if it’s not done by 6pm, would I be stuck without a phone all weekend? That must have done something because they rang back within 10 minutes to let me know it’d be done in the next few minutes, which it was.

With the scan behind me and my new phone functional, I turned my sights to the next most important thing – getting a good nap in. I had a sleep-deprived headache and just wanted to get a couple hours nap. Fortunately Rod chose to go do stuff on the computer so I was able to sleep without his snoring… meaning, I actually got some rest.  Hopefully tonight I’ll get a good night’s sleep, which is where I’m heading now.  Cheers & G’night!