Open Up a Vein & Say "Aaahhh"

Wordoxers have been asking me about my recent illness & I have avoided their questions with "I'll be blogging about it when I get the energy." I assumed that I was on the mend, but it appears that I am still battling for breath, consciousness & The American Way, & there is no energy in sight. I've never been a fan of lobby medical discussions where some Debbie Downer brings up medical malfunctions during a tournament and those not playing in the tourney discusss horror stories of their own & familial personal experiences & (w0rse) stories of encouragement. I think this mindset stems from my ongoing attitude that more than 4 people present constitutes a party & such things as tumors, phlegm & T-cells should never be discussed at a party. That can be further boiled down to my main mantra, "If it's not funny, I don't want to look at it." My best friend has further reduced this attitude to "I refuse to watch anything that doesn't have a monkey in it." I will continue my lobby boycott of all things medical but, while I have this small shred of energy, I'll try to tell what happened to me...the part I can figure out. I owe some explanations.

I have been feeling poorly since September & have been sent for many of the tests that Western Medicicine currently uses. I have have an Echogram on my heart, an Ultra-sound on my lungs, & X-rays on any organs that were just lying around looking shifty. On May 4th I was to have a Sleep Test at the local hospital. I was having a great deal of trouble breathing, but showed up (like the good sport I am) anyway. The Sleep Lab rejected me & promptly wheeled my pepper carcass back down to Emergency, where I was accepted with open arms & a dripping IV. They determined that I was in the intermediate stages of Heart Failure. {I freaked the hell out about the term "heart failure," initially mistaking it for 'cardiac arrest.' They are not the same thing. You may want to do a little research on your own & learn the difference between the two conditions before you leap onto a gurney & start pounding yourself in the chest the way I did.}

Actually, that awful moment in the ER was the best I've felt in two weeks. This is the first time I've had a prolonged hospital stay & didn't leave feeling better. While still admitted, my left leg blew up & turned painfully purple. {The work of a dastardly girple, you say? Naw, it's not like them....they don't work that way.} I seem to have had a "Baker's Cyst" rupture. This is an injury that one gets early in life & lies dormant until some other healthful disorder comes along & makes it long for the spotlight, when it cartwheels out & suddenly ruptures. I attribute it to my brief but memorable stint as a running back with the Green Bay Packers.

As if the SOB (they had that next to my name on the ER bulletin board & I again became upset until they explained it meant 'shortness of breath;') the anger at having to postpone my Sleep Test; and the fact that I was now hobbling around on a swollen eggplant, wasn't traumatic enough, I fell asleep & woke up in ICU where the nurses were yelling "tie her hands down!" I had retained dangerous levels of carbon dioxide & kept removing the mask they were trying to put over my face. I not only consider this one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, it has created a whole new set of phobias & fears in my repertoire. That hospital not only did not cure me, or even make me feel better....it made me crazier. And it happened the next night too.

My final diagnosis was Sleep Apnea, which is soundly kicking my ass. They sent me home with a much smaller mask & no nurses to tie me to the bed, but the whole thing is so intrusive that I've still not been able to sleep properly. I can't sleep, I can't think, I can't play Wordox. I am miserable & getting sicker daily.

There, now aren't you sorry you asked? If you have comments or questions, please bring them here & not to a tournament lobby where they will bum players out. Sleepy peppers are just not funny or interesting. I am rather interested in hearing if anyone else has undergone a similar experience & how they dealt with the Apnea mask they were prescribed. Mine is not user friendly.

{If I should die before I wake....take that stupid mask & shove it up Dr. Lawrence Goldstein's ass.}