In which I recount the Epic Saga of the last month. Here's the thing, intellectually you always know that you can become really sick, or even disabled, but on some level you never really believe it until it throat punches you.
Diabetes runs all through my family, so I always knew that it was coming for me, slowly but surely, like a fucked-up vampire sloth. A couple of months ago I noticed that I wasn't able to read the item descriptions in my inventory on Mass Effect, and had to have my partner read them for me even though he was just about as far from the screen as I was. So I went to the eye doctor and found that I needed glasses despite the fact that I only had LASIK surgery a few years ago, and quite successfully too. As an afterthought we decided to go ahead and test my blood sugars just to be certain that I wasn't running high, because that's a thing that can sometimes drive reductions in vision.
Turns out my sugars were through the roof, cue metformin. A rare side effect of Metformin turns out to be something called lactic acidosis. I was one of the lucky ones.
Cue Glipizide. This was not bringing my sugars down however, even at top doses, cue insulin. For those of you unfamiliar, this is not the way this usually goes. Typically you have a lot of time before you have to start insulin, and usually diabetes doesn't slam into you like a freeway truck. However even with this cocktail, my sugars were uncontrolled and I wasn't really able to eat much, for some reason I couldn't deduce at the time. I also was having trouble with dizziness, stumbling around like I was drunk despite painful sobriety, and general weakness and fatigue, and not the Monday morning after a late Sunday kind.
As it turns out, my liver was attempting to jump out of my navel. This was uncovered after a blood test revealed that my liver enzymes were just about on level with someone who had Advanced hepatitis. To be clear, I don't have hepatitis. I know because that's the first thing we tested for. By this point I was on Zofran, a medication to keep me from Technicolor yawning all over the house. It wasn't really working, but it was trying hard. We took my blood again and found that my liver was continuing to be pissed off and so we did an ultrasound. This didn't show anything except for, surprise, a liver with anger management issues. This type of thing drives up blood sugars a lot, so mystery solved there at least.
You know, you can go your whole day and not really think about what your liver is up to. That is, of course, until it starts getting an attitude.
My doctor's verdict? I had some mysterious virus that was pissing off my internal organs and was going to run its course and then I would magically start feeling better? I hadn't much hope by then. By this point it had been about 2 weeks since I'd been able to work, thank all the deities for Aflac.
Eventually, the universe took pity on me and my liver just started to chill out as this unnamed mystery virus got bored and wandered off. My doc doesn't believe that we'll ever know what infectious process was slapping my liver around, and frankly I don't care as long as it doesn't take an interest in me ever again.
I've never been truly disabled since I started working as an adult. I mean, aside from the occasional respiratory infection, however those have a really well defined course and you know roughly how long they're going to last. The worst I'd experienced as an adult was bronchitis taking me out for a week or two, or the odd surgery that took me out for a week or two. But here it was three weeks in and I still wasn't sure how much longer this was going to last. The biggest stressor for me was the nebulousness of it all. How much longer was I going to have to miss work? How much longer was I going to have to sit in this recliner? Just how long before I could eat something besides dry toast before I kill someone? I haven't even gone into the details of what liver dysfunction does to your bowel movements, but trust me, it ain't pretty. I'm fairly certain we're going to need a rabbi to bless my bathroom before it can be safely used by humans again. But I digress.
Today marks the fourth week of my being off of work, and it looks like I'll be fit to be re-released into the work force next Monday. This has been without a doubt the most terrifying, most uncomfortable period physically and emotionally of my adult life. I was sick a lot as a kid, but when you're young, you don't really have a sense of mortality, or at least I didn't. All I know is that there's no amount of emotional preparation that I could have done that would have made this any easier to process. When you're that sick, the most simple cognitive processes become intense uphill struggles. The next time one of my clients comes in telling me that they have trouble thinking or concentrating because of pain or nausea or any physical problem really, I'll have a whole new understanding of what they're talking about.
I cried every day of this ordeal. Every. Day. And now, the simplest of physical victories, like leaving the house for something other than another blood test or eating something other than toast and not throwing it up make me feel like Rocky Balboa beating a Russian twice his size.
Yesterday, I went out wearing real clothes, and got 2 oz of sugar free frozen yogurt, and sat like a person eating it with my family at a table and watched random humans go by. After weeks of going to Kaiser an average of 4-5 times a week, it felt like going to Disney World.
The point of all this, if indeed I have one other than to record this experience as a means of upload to external memory, is as a reminder. Both to appreciate any moment of good health that you have, and to be as kind and patient as possible to those who have less of it than you do. Because that, I assure you, will be you someday, and you will not be ready, and you'll need all the kindness and patience you can get.
Meanwhile, that thing that you were really wanting to do but were putting off until you had a little bit more money? Go do it. Because you might not have the spoons to do it tomorrow.
Diabetes runs all through my family, so I always knew that it was coming for me, slowly but surely, like a fucked-up vampire sloth. A couple of months ago I noticed that I wasn't able to read the item descriptions in my inventory on Mass Effect, and had to have my partner read them for me even though he was just about as far from the screen as I was. So I went to the eye doctor and found that I needed glasses despite the fact that I only had LASIK surgery a few years ago, and quite successfully too. As an afterthought we decided to go ahead and test my blood sugars just to be certain that I wasn't running high, because that's a thing that can sometimes drive reductions in vision.
Turns out my sugars were through the roof, cue metformin. A rare side effect of Metformin turns out to be something called lactic acidosis. I was one of the lucky ones.
Cue Glipizide. This was not bringing my sugars down however, even at top doses, cue insulin. For those of you unfamiliar, this is not the way this usually goes. Typically you have a lot of time before you have to start insulin, and usually diabetes doesn't slam into you like a freeway truck. However even with this cocktail, my sugars were uncontrolled and I wasn't really able to eat much, for some reason I couldn't deduce at the time. I also was having trouble with dizziness, stumbling around like I was drunk despite painful sobriety, and general weakness and fatigue, and not the Monday morning after a late Sunday kind.
As it turns out, my liver was attempting to jump out of my navel. This was uncovered after a blood test revealed that my liver enzymes were just about on level with someone who had Advanced hepatitis. To be clear, I don't have hepatitis. I know because that's the first thing we tested for. By this point I was on Zofran, a medication to keep me from Technicolor yawning all over the house. It wasn't really working, but it was trying hard. We took my blood again and found that my liver was continuing to be pissed off and so we did an ultrasound. This didn't show anything except for, surprise, a liver with anger management issues. This type of thing drives up blood sugars a lot, so mystery solved there at least.
You know, you can go your whole day and not really think about what your liver is up to. That is, of course, until it starts getting an attitude.
My doctor's verdict? I had some mysterious virus that was pissing off my internal organs and was going to run its course and then I would magically start feeling better? I hadn't much hope by then. By this point it had been about 2 weeks since I'd been able to work, thank all the deities for Aflac.
Eventually, the universe took pity on me and my liver just started to chill out as this unnamed mystery virus got bored and wandered off. My doc doesn't believe that we'll ever know what infectious process was slapping my liver around, and frankly I don't care as long as it doesn't take an interest in me ever again.
I've never been truly disabled since I started working as an adult. I mean, aside from the occasional respiratory infection, however those have a really well defined course and you know roughly how long they're going to last. The worst I'd experienced as an adult was bronchitis taking me out for a week or two, or the odd surgery that took me out for a week or two. But here it was three weeks in and I still wasn't sure how much longer this was going to last. The biggest stressor for me was the nebulousness of it all. How much longer was I going to have to miss work? How much longer was I going to have to sit in this recliner? Just how long before I could eat something besides dry toast before I kill someone? I haven't even gone into the details of what liver dysfunction does to your bowel movements, but trust me, it ain't pretty. I'm fairly certain we're going to need a rabbi to bless my bathroom before it can be safely used by humans again. But I digress.
Today marks the fourth week of my being off of work, and it looks like I'll be fit to be re-released into the work force next Monday. This has been without a doubt the most terrifying, most uncomfortable period physically and emotionally of my adult life. I was sick a lot as a kid, but when you're young, you don't really have a sense of mortality, or at least I didn't. All I know is that there's no amount of emotional preparation that I could have done that would have made this any easier to process. When you're that sick, the most simple cognitive processes become intense uphill struggles. The next time one of my clients comes in telling me that they have trouble thinking or concentrating because of pain or nausea or any physical problem really, I'll have a whole new understanding of what they're talking about.
I cried every day of this ordeal. Every. Day. And now, the simplest of physical victories, like leaving the house for something other than another blood test or eating something other than toast and not throwing it up make me feel like Rocky Balboa beating a Russian twice his size.
Yesterday, I went out wearing real clothes, and got 2 oz of sugar free frozen yogurt, and sat like a person eating it with my family at a table and watched random humans go by. After weeks of going to Kaiser an average of 4-5 times a week, it felt like going to Disney World.
The point of all this, if indeed I have one other than to record this experience as a means of upload to external memory, is as a reminder. Both to appreciate any moment of good health that you have, and to be as kind and patient as possible to those who have less of it than you do. Because that, I assure you, will be you someday, and you will not be ready, and you'll need all the kindness and patience you can get.
Meanwhile, that thing that you were really wanting to do but were putting off until you had a little bit more money? Go do it. Because you might not have the spoons to do it tomorrow.
