Bend Over and Say: "OUCH!!!" in General Mental Anesthesia

The title just about sums up my absence. Apologies to my regulars. (Contained wherein is TMI… beware!)

I had to look at my last entry to see where things left off, I was still evacuated from Hurricane Florence. Oh boy… a lot has happened!

So picking up where we left off. This was 10 days after the Hurricane hit my area with 3 feet of rain on our way back from evacuating. We had to take several detours.

Our rental home was still standing and my makeshift tarp protection project worked! Our belongings were safe!

But that’s where the good news ends.

Aside from losing a few hundred dollars worth of food, including $100 worth of probiotics that I forgot in all the craziness…

Black mold was present all over the back wall from the ceiling to the floor by the fireplace.

Now, black mold is bad for even the healthiest to be around, but if you’ve been following my ridiculously poor health… blood clots in my lungs + black mold = not good.

After just 2 hours of coming home, I started coughing. I had just gotten rid of this 5 month cough 2 weeks ago!!! The end result… I’ve been sleeping in the car since Sept, 22. I did go to my primary care Dr.

For the longest time it was 80 degrees at night, humid with mosquitoes everywhere, especially with all the standing water everywhere. Now, it’s dropping into the 40’s and 30’s at night.

Also, the night we came back, my mom was taking something out of the trunk of her car, took a step onto the grass and the ground just gave way beneath her! She fell over 2 feet into the earth!

Here’s a bit of exterior damage…

One of the pieces siding that we lost

Downed tree in the back

My sister’s house (my previous residence) was deemed uninhabitable.

She had light fixtures filled with water, large cracks in the walls and ceilings, it’s bad.

A lot of other people fared just as bad if not worse…

Of course we contacted our landlord and to say that they have been lackadaisical in their approach to fixing our mold problem is an understatement. To date, nothing has been done. We’ve gone to Fema…

The Red Cross, the town hall, 211… you name it… Fema would have helped us out, but they force you to apply for a small business loan with a low interest rate first. If you get approved, they won’t help you. No way my mom would get approved, she has a car loan, car insurance, pays rent, bills, food, medical expenses etc… and only lives off of social security which leaves her penniless each month.

She got approved.

She can’t accept the loan, not even a small portion of it because there is no way she could pay it back. So of course this means we’re screwed. No temporary housing assistance, no help from our fucking government at all!

I should probably explain the walker in the Fema video…

With my already damaged back, multiple herniated discs and other injuries, I’m not supposed to lift or carry anything, particularly anything heavy. When my sister had to abandon her home, she had some important things she wanted us to keep safe. They were in two large boxes that were very heavy. She couldn’t lift them, her husband loaded them into my mom’s car, but didn’t help unload them. My mom sure as hell couldn’t do it, so…

As I lifted one box (about 2 feet x 2 feet x 2 feet) there was a snap in my back (like if you snapped a leather belt that is folded in half) I FUCKING SCREAMED out in pain and collapsed on top of the box which I dropped. HOLY SHIT, I WAS HURTING!!!!!!
But with no health insurance, I tried to walk it off. Of course it doesn’t help that I’m sleeping in a car, but when I tried to sleep that night, I couldn’t recline the seat without screaming and crying in pain. This went on for 6 days before I finally said “Uncle”. I gave up. 6 days with no sleep in this kind of pain… I went to the Emergency room.

They sent me right there and then to get an MRI.

Now, I’ve had Mri’s before and I told the guy that I couldn’t lie down, he gave me wedges and cushions etc… and so I tried to because I had to… the spasms… oh my fucking G-D the spasms… blood curdling screams poured out of me, tears running down my cheeks.

He said: I can’t have you up in here in this kind of pain and sent me back to triage where they gave me (according to them) a triple dose of morphine. Soon, I could still feel the spasms, but they didn’t hurt. Back up to the Mri room I went. I got on the table and was able to lie down. The test began.

Ten minutes later… all the pain came back… I SCREAMED!!! My body contorting at each spasm. He had to stop the test and once again I was sent back to triage.

I joked with the nurse and said: “Look, I know you don’t do this, but is there any way that you can knock me out, because I just can’t lie down?” She said they only did that for pediatrics and I knew as much.

The next thing I know, they brought over an anesthesiologist from another hospital to speak with me. She said we have to knock you out and we’ll need to use a breathing tube. I didn’t care. She ended up giving me more morphine, ativan and fentanyl… then she knocked me out and the 90 minute mri proceeded.

The mri revealed T-11 & T-12 vertebrae in my spine are compression fractures (crushed more like) and impinging on nerves. In layman’s terms, I have a broken back. This is what it looks like:

I spent the next several days in the hospital and sleeping in the chair in the room, never once touching the bed.

No one explained to me why I have edema all of a sudden now, but that’s why they put compression socks on me.

The Dr. wanted to do a surgery called multiple kyphoplasty where they insert a balloon into my spine to blow up the area to it’s original height, then go in and fill the vertebrae with cement. It wasn’t done and I believe it’s because I don’t have health insurance. That surgery would have greatly decreased my pain and increased the healing time which is about 4 months!

Instead I was given this…

I can tolerate any combination of the 2 and I get about 10 - 15% pain relief, but when I was given all 3 together at the hospital when they released me, I was out of it. They had also given me Ativan an hour earlier. I Couldn’t see straight, double vision, slurred speech, nauseous. Idk why anyone might want to feel this way, what a fucking shitty ass way to feel! I tried to post to fb in that moment…

Being released from the hospital. But befor you say that’s a good thing… It’s not. I feel exactly the same as I did whenI showed up 4 days ago. I still can’t. Tlay down without screaming, can barely wal(with a walker). I can’t see straight, vision is doubled /the or blurred. I’m going from a ssfe environment to an unsafe one an on so many meds at the same time… Morphine, Valium, Ativan and baclofen. My brainsis all messed up, rrally dizzy. Just not feeling well, it’s a Shitty feeling being slow and now I have to go o home and sleeping in a hot car with mosquitoes bexcsysd of the Black mold in our ho. M caused by Hurricane Florenc. I need help please

So… despite all my woes up to this point, I did find the time to rescue some kittens I found in flooded hurricane wreckage. These kittens were drowning and I heard their cries. Mom and I saved them and I eventually found them a no kill shelter to care for them. :)

Now here’s more good news:

I saw my gastroenterologist last week. The Humira is NOT working. I could have told you that based on how sick and in pain I’m in. Since my hospitalization 2 months ago for the colitis, they had me on 60mg of Prednisone and I was to wean off as I started the Humira. I’m down to just 5mg/day and for the last month I’ve been going through Prednisone withdrawal symptoms (for ex. fatigue. I can only type two or three words before I have to rest my arm for a minute before continuing). It’s taken me days to write this entry. I’m also going to the bathroom 15+x a day and bleeding quite a lot. If you are curious as to how bad the ulcerative colitis pain is… It’s much worse than my back!

With colitis this severe, when you need to go, you (literally) have 5 seconds or less to get to the bathroom. Imagine what my life is like going 15+ times a day and can barely get up and down from a seated position in excruciating pain and then I need a walker to get around…

That reminds me of a story…

Once upon a time, well… a fortnight actually. My mom had a Dr. Appt. Now, I’ve been trapped unable to go anywhere, and I was desperate to leave, so I went with her. As soon as she pulled up to the office, I had a colitis attack. My walker was in the trunk and long story short… I didn’t make it.

Because I was so hurried, I left my phone in the car. The bathroom was between the front doors and the doors to the waiting room, a bit out of the way. I got in and had to undress, no easy task. I was wearing sweat pants and I knew that if I took my sneakers off, I wouldn’t be able to get them back on. (I can’t dress myself with a broken back) so I decided to pull them off over my sneakers. Once everything was said and done, I had to throw my boxers away… and I needed to get my pants back on, but I couldn’t. I tried and tried and tried, my eyes welling up from the pain. I couldn’t call anyone, nor could I leave the bathroom. So I sat on the toilet (the lowest point to the floor) and kept trying… I reached and I reached when all of a sudden (CRACK!!!) I SCREAMED OUT IN AGONY!!!! This time injuring my ribs on the right side. Torn cartilage I found out later.

If nothing else defines my life than tearing cartilage on my ribs just trying to get dressed, this is it!

Despite the horrific pain and discomfort, I got my pants on and hobbled out to the waiting room.

Needless to say, I had no Halloween this year. :’( I was so out of it in fact that, not only didn’t I post in here, but I was really looking forward to participating in OctoPhoMo again. A big October failure. Sigh…

Oh and going back to good news… I actually have some, but if you know anything about my life it is immediately followed by bad news.

After 20+ years of not having health insurance of any kind and after 7 tries over that time…

Clearly this is great news! A couple of things though…

1. I was approved on Aug 1st, but I just found out now! Since Aug 1st, I’ve had 5 ER visits, several Dr. Visits (2 primary care @ $100ea and 2 GI visits @ $319ea, plus 4 hospitalizations and a TON of medications!! I have suffered greatly since Aug 1st and could have really used health insurance had I’d known I had it. I should have had the multiple Kyphoplasty done, but it wasn’t because I was ‘uninsured’ or so we all thought. AND, I was in constant touch with my case worker who never said anything to me about it!!!

2. It won’t help at all with my ulcerative colitis. Why won’t it help? Because no medications work for me and I’ve been on everything. My GI wants to go back to chemotherapy (remicade or entyvio) but at almost $15,000/month, I need to get financial aid (like I got with Humira). The catch is… you’re only eligible for financial assistance if you ‘Don’t’ have any insurance. It’s a catch 22.

I’m ever so desperate to see my holistic Dr. Dr. Mackey in West Palm Beach. She saved my life when all other Dr’s and meds failed and I know she can do it again.

My ongoing story - Donate, Please share via here, other blog, twitter, fb etc…

Medicaid is great, it should help tremendously with meds, Dr. visits and hopefully my back, but right now amigos… I’m literally bleeding to death, and Medicaid can’t help that.

I could show you those photo’s, but trust me; you don’t want to see them!

Lastly, here’s a sunset pic I took while waiting to get meds at a parking lot tent at my pharmacy which was also destroyed by the hurricane.