Today's Win and Fail

Fail would be the baby girl name Trashe. No, people, no. The "e" does not save that name.
Win would be today's lack of diarrhea on my part. After ten episodes yesterday, I am allowed a small cheer.
No real migraine, either; small grumbles and a weirdly painful jaw muscle spasm on the left side. Does Botox work on jaw muscles?

Five Work Days In

The phrase "Soul-killing job" will not stop popping into my head.
The TENS unit on both ankles and lidocaine patches on both feet aren't really helping with the foot pain.
I got a headache that seemed to be a stiff neck but then decided to be a migraine; never knew there were neck migraines. Whoever invented air freshener spray should be shot. And I need a taser to use on all the idiots who spray the nasty shit around in closed spaces around a fucking hospital. And a Phantom of the Opera mask to cover the swollen eye and nose I now sport from having to use their offices.
The diarrhea is back. It doesn't hurt yet. I am hoping it's related to the migraine.
It's a good thing this job doesn't have life insurance.

First Full Week

Is it supposed to be this hard to make yourself go to work? I hate paperwork like the plague and I have landed an all-paperwork job. That I have nothing to do for days and days except hobble around on wickedly painful feet and try to look interested. This week is shaping up to be very long indeed.

New things are awesome

My poor feet are killing me. It's really got me worried; I only walked around the hospital a little bit Friday and excruciating foot pain does not begin to convey how they hurt. They have started doing the turning-purple thing again too, which they had eased up on. I'm pretty concerned that the bad sprain on the left one has triggered the reflex sympathetic dystrophy on both sides. I am going to try to rush through my orientation to see if maybe I can get established on my floor; other case managers have the whole hospital but I am going to be assigned to peds so maybe it will limit the hiking. When money starts coming in I think I will give my acupuncturist a shot at the rsd.
On a happy note, OaA#2 is currently replacing the shutoff valves for my bathroom fixtures prior to replacing the new toilet. He has tiled almost the whole bathroom floor so now I have beautiful cottage style white mosaic that replaces the former horrid Pepto pink mosaic. The toilet had to be replaced because there was a large crack in the base of the old one and we were afraid it would go through once the toilet was re-installed. Here's hoping the new one has a better flush as advertised.
Also new is my fine new skill of peeing standing up. While the toilet has been missing this weekend, I have had to pee in a ziplock freezer bag a few times. I love peeing standing up. I want a girl urinal. Do they make girl urinals? They should.

Today's win and fail

The best thing that happened today was the 500+ pound switchboard operator who had a screensaver on her monitor with her kid's name scrawled in Microsoft paint dots: Travisty. Like Travesty of justice, only spelled different.
The worst thing that happened today was, there are only two people I have ever worked with that I would never, ever, piss on if they were on fire because of epic mistreatment from them. One of them, turns out, is among my new co-workers.
Hopefully they will keep her locked in her office while I roam around the hospital.

Deep Exhale of Breath

Wow. What a year this has been. A year ago next week I had a CT scan that literally brought me to my knees. I'd been having lots of problems with colitis that was making my hair fall out, giving me arthritis and nerve pain plus muscle spasms, nevermind going to the toilet over 10 times a day. The CT contrast made this horrible burning sensation that basically didn't go away until last week.  A few days after the CT I started having trouble with nausea and fainting, and four days after that I was unable to eat more than once a day and fainting into my patient's beds with the pain. Good thing they were comatose, mostly. Going to the hospital made things worse, and I ended up at home on disability; you know the rest.
So today I took my second board certification test from the online course I took while I was sick. The one I was taking for six weeks before I got my short-term memory back part of the way. I passed it, so now I am officially Loosey, Fixer of Whut-all Needs Fixin.
Beats Empress of Famous Poop all to hell.
I got a call from my new boss, the nice lady who offered me the crummy job I desperately snatched up. She is trying to get me benefits.
My guts aren't fixed with the new medicines, but they don't make me run six times a day anymore and they fuckin finally stopped hurting. Finally made the muscle spasms stop. The arthritis and nerve pain in my feet is still pretty bad but I'll take it for a trade off; maybe I can find places to sit all around the hospital while I'm working. I'm so used to pain level 7 or 8 out of 10 I figure five to seven is doable. The head fog that started hitting me 18 months ago when the colitis started is going away now; I can complete a spoken sentence without always, always, always having to stop and try to think of the word.  Studying was no big deal, again, finally.
After I passed my test I went to buy pants and socks for this street-clothes job; on further reflection, I decided to go to the gas station and celebrate the hat trick of job, certification, and gut relief by buying two Powerball tickets.
It could happen.
But I'm still setting my alarm to go to work in the morning.

Revenge of the autoimmune disorder

So, I was super happy-slappy with the absence of gut pain. We went on a long walkabout Sunday; I bought clothes for the new job at a good sale, and we spent a looong time at the Lowe's picking out things for OaA#2 to use when redoing the bathroom. My legs started hurting pretty quickly in the Lowe's and I was finding places to sit by the time we got out of there. Monday I woke up with a huge muscle spasm from butt to toes on my right side, and arthritis flares in my back and fingers and toes. The usual treatments and pills did not budge them. I went for a Chinese massage yesterday and have bruises from that today. She presses in a spot until the pain subsides and there were a couple she couldn't stop. I had let my antibiotic run out and it took a day to get the refill; I visited the doc who is greatly dubious at taking me off disability with only a three-day remission. I pointed out I'd be homeless after Christmas if I didn't start working, and she sighed and agreed. She wants me to take the antibiotics for a solid month and see if the colitis will give up. The back-pain and arthritis mean it's still hanging around, trying to wreak sneaky mayhem. I am currently covered in patches and tape, with my right leg thrumming painfully, and think we will pill up for a while.
My friend's next-door neighbor has been coming over to visit frequently. She had an ileostomy done for severe colitis years ago. She is now showing a weeping rash on her forearms that is a rare but not unheard of sequel of ulcerative colitis; so she has a belly bag, no colon, and it's still trying to get her. Autoimmune crap is the meanest.

Rip Van Winkle rides a bike

Thursday I rode my bike about half a mile. Friday, a mile. Today, two miles.
Nothing bad happened. No muscle spasms, no gut explosions.
I ate three meals today. And a snack.
I haven't had breakfast, lunch, and dinner without nausea and gut pain for eighteen months, and I quit trying to eat three meals a day a year ago this week.
So today was coffee and steel-cut oats. No problem. Leftover Chinese shrimp from last night's meal for lunch, no problem, a handful of almonds in the afternoon before dinner, no problem, pulled pork nachos and bean soup for dinner with a lot of salsa. No problem. Chocolate after lunch and dinner, too, dammit.  I thought I'd forgotten how to want food.
All I want to do is eat. That's going to be a problem.
I'm going to need to ride that bike farther.

Medicine that helps: What a concept

So it's been a tough two years. I got foot surgery that was supposed to take the horrible foot pain away by replacing the gnawed and ruined joints with clean, smooth, comfortable titanium. Instead, I got C-Diff, an atrocious form of diarrhea, from the antibiotics that are necessary when one has bone surgery, and reflex sympathetic dystrophy from having a nerve tumor removed at the same time. My feet hurt worse from the crazy painful muscle spasms and constant state of purple-black vein dysfunction, and my leg muscles actually started to waste away. Six months later, I got diarrhea after a festival meal, and things got a lot worse, with a persistent headfog and belly pain to go with the muscle spasms. I ended up in the hospital, and when my sister came to see about me, she was horrified; not only had one of my cats peed up the whole house while I was gone, I looked and acted like a dying person. I couldn't stop fainting, and couldn't eat because of the nausea and belly pain, and my normally verbose self would start a sentence and be unable to finish it; no memory, no strength. This went on for months and I lost my job. I didn't really care except for being concerned about being homeless; it wasn't like I could do the job anyway, I couldn't leave the bathroom.
The meds the GI doc got me made things much worse.
I figured out a way to replace the lost electrolytes and have lived on V-8, Pedialyte, and soda crackers for the last eight months. That helped the fainting. I never got used to or over the belly pain and muscle spasms, and I have to say, living at pain level 7 out of 10 does not improve one as a person.
I asked my family practice doc who has been great, although bewildered and frustrated for me, through all this, for some antibiotics that are not absorbed, they work only in the gut, that I found out about online. By chasing the footnotes in a wacky new age doc article in the Huffington Post of all places. I printed the original study and showed it to her and she happily wrote for the pills.
Thirty bucks for them, thirty bucks for the zinc and probiotics the study put with them, and a week later: the muscle spasms are gone, and the belly pain is only on the left side and down to about a 3. The Famous Poop my GI doc told so many hundreds of people about? Three times a day, not really diarrhea anymore.
I feel like Rip Van Winkle.
While I was sick, I left my life and it left me. I have three friends left, do not know the rector at my church, and the house looks like an old person lives here.
But today I feel like riding my bike. After I study for my final certification test, I may do just that. Thinking about that is like imagining myself as an astronaut. But a tough-ass, mean old lady astronaut.
Small-intestine bacterial overgrowth. That's what they called it, SIBO. Fucker. Thief. Die, you mean little one-celled bastards. I have things I need to do.

Woot woot also SQUEEEEE

I passed my first certification exam! I have fancy new letters after my name! Now I am HRH Loosey, Empress of Famous Poop, and Certified Fixer of Whut Needs Fixin'. I have studied like a nut the last month and that plus the online review course a kind soul sent me (value: many hundreds of American dollars I did not have) got me over the top. When I pass the Certified Fixer of Whut-all Needs Fixin Besides That, I will have enough letters to go out in the wide world and make a good salary.
Also, the medicine seems to be helping the Famous Poop and its associated Horrible Belly Pain. Now all I have to do is get the Foot Whut Is NOT Broken But Sure the Fuck Feels Busted to heal up and I will be unstoppable.
OaA#1 Squeed with me on the phone, OaA#2 is going to take me for Indian or sushi tonight.
Woot!!!!

There's a motif here

Our minds always want to find patterns, that's why people get religion in weird ways, like thinking God gives a shit if a girl cuts or covers her hair. I have this one pattern going that has me thinking. I got a job offer, full-time no benefits. I have an interview today for one at the same place that is full-time benefited and less time on my feet. The pills for my gut have cut the Famous Poop episodes down to two or three a day, and the belly pain is a lot less with half the pills to go. My foot is not broken but whatever is wrong in there still aches and throbs a lot with use, I guess it's a sprain. And I got the house like 85% cleaned up before the ugly twisted foot episode.
I hope I can get to at least an A here, 85% is less stressful than total unemployed jobless busted diarrhea fail but it comes with a different set of worries to fight off. Tomorrow I have a test that's pretty important and I hope I make 90% or better after all this work!

Spider flowers beat spiders all round

There are a few cleome plants that  came up this year from a planting one or two years back. I love the white ones, they are amazing. I shook a bunch of seeds into the flowerbed to try to get them to come back next year. I saved spiderlily bulbs from a house that was scheduled for demolition and this is their best year yet; I have spiderlilies in all kinds of places I forgot I planted them. It's been fifteen years since I put them in and they are finally multiplied to start a big fall show. A couple of  autumns ago I had this huge orb spider making a nightly web across my front walk. Now, I love orb spiders OFF TO THE SIDE. I actually walked through the web the first time she did it and kind of had a spasm imagining she was on my head. There was probably a frenzied anti-spider dance routine in there, which would only add to my reputation on the street. Now when I am coming up the walk in cooler, orb-spider weather, I do a web-check. I do not wish to be huge unwieldy prey.