Tuesday, June 4, 2013

IT'S ALWAYS SOMETHING!

I guess I knew this, but it smacked me in the face this week; it's always something! Even when I seem to be dealing with all my IC challenges, maybe not feeling fantastic, but dealing with them, I tend to take for granted that those are my health issues. That nothing else is going to crop up and cause me a problem. Well, of course, it's not a conscious thought process, but it's there. It just hovers in my subconscious that my IC is really what I have to deal with and nothing else is going to go wrong.

Guess what, big surprise, that sure isn't true is it!! I have been struggling a great deal these past few days with a brand new excruciating pain that is not at all related to my IC. I have known for some time that I have a hiatal hernia and some pretty bad GERD but they have held steady not really needing a lot of management or attention and so I always put them in a separate corner in my brain. It has taken all I have in recent years to cope with my IC issues, that when other, annoying symptoms crop up, I tend to not take notice or react to them. Well, these symptoms FORCED me to take notice.

Still not sure what it is. I saw my Primary Care doctor yesterday and he prescribed a new medication for my GERD and suggested I go back and see my gastroenterologist who diagnosed my hiatal hernia and see what he has to say. For those that may not be familiar, the hiatus is an opening in the diaphragm -- the muscular wall separating the chest cavity from the abdomen. Normally, the esophagus (food pipe) goes through the hiatus and attaches to the stomach. In a hiatal hernia (also called hiatus hernia) the stomach bulges up into the chest through that opening. This is exactly where the pain is, so I am concerned the hernia may have gotten worse. I called my gastro's office yesterday and actually got an appointment for two weeks away. I was quite surprised because as we all know, it can often take 4-6 weeks to get in to see any of our doctors/specialists. But if this keeps up, it's going to be a LONG two weeks.

I have this pain, extreme headaches, everything hurts everywhere. I went for my weekly instillation today and that helped my bladder, but the nurse giving it to me aggravated the vulvar/vaginal atrophy that causes thinning of the skin in that area to tear.  So when she went to catheterize me, as she separated the skin to visualize the urethra, my skin ripped and I just about landed on the ceiling, tears streaming down my face! She felt terrible, but I don't blame her. I told her she had no way of know about this problem; the doctor does, but it's been under control for a while now and she had no reason to think this would happen. It's not her fault, but I sure didn't need THAT today on top of everything else. I got home and had some food and did something I almost NEVER do, even though I'm on disability; I went back to bed!


Today it hit home to me. I've got a bunch of stuff going on. I can't fix it soon enough, and I guess like the title of this post says, it's always something!





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