I haven’t been out of town.
I haven’t been on a honeymoon.
I have been scatterbrained.
I am learning how to be married.
I have been stressed out.
I have been depressed.
I am learning to grieve.
I got married on April 26th this year.
A couple of days later, two important family members passed away on Steve’s side of the family.
April 29th onward, we’ve seen doctors at least 6 times, including starting physiotherapy for his AS (ankylosing spondylitis, a type of arthritis), getting a CT scan and a colonoscopy for what the specialist is now pretty sure to be either Colitis or Crohn’s disease. We found out that the “abscesses” flare up any time there is irritation in that general area, including taking the Colyte laxative stuff before the colonoscopy. So he may have been taking antibiotics that were MAKING him extremely sick, for nothing, since it might just be inflammation and not bacterial. And oral thrush! Stupid antibiotics. Steve lost 20 LBS in about 2 weeks, proving for all you body conscious women out there that ANOREXIA WORKS LIKE YOU HOPE IT WILL!!! That scared me, when he and I were about the same weight. Not cool. Now he’s on a new drug, Pentasa, which is helping control the inflammation in his colon. It’s starting to make a difference and he’s not getting diarrhea anymore, hence no more abscess-y looking things. Then we went camping on the long weekend. And remembered to bring the new meds but not the old ones, i.e. asthma inhalers for when we sat around the campfire and by 12am he was having difficulty breathing. So we went home to get them.
It’s like pills pills and then more medication.
Pentasa 3x/day for lower colon
Indomethacin 3x/day for arthritis
Daily inhaler for asthma
Nystatin 4x/day for oral thrush
Probiotic pills for re-populating his colon
*I AM leaving this post for a minute to THROW AWAY the rest of those dastardly antibiotics….DONE.*
The house is a mess.
I’ve been finding it hard to get out of the house.
I signed up at fitness world, only to realize that they charge $700 to join the gym in addition to monthly fees. I cancelled within 10 days. I should have thought it through, ie. check out the community center gym that’s down the street, but i was a bit despondent that day…just needed to do SOMETHING.
I had a major migraine yesterday that made me so nauseous that I threw up on the side of the road. I’m better today. You know what? When I have migraines, it does something to my inhibition system, I’m realizing. Every time I have a headache, I seem to shop compulsively, spending money that I usually would not. I feel drunk when I get migraines – I can’t even talk properly to the cashier. I think I gave her too much money, which confused her when she tried to give me change. That or she gave me an extra dollar back. I can’t really be sure. And the light/sound/smell sensitivity is frankly AWFUL and painful.
I missed an appointment with Joyce today. Sorry Joyce. I accompanied Steve to the physio this morning and forgot about our meeting, even though i wrote it down on the fridge. I’m more than a little scatterbrained, maybe from yesterday’s migraine or just stuff in general.
My barely fledgling acting career is on hold. I emailed my agent last week to leave their agency (whom I was with since I was 19…I need a new start anyway). I took a look at the self submit sites for the first time in a couple months yesterday, and the thought of getting back into it seems overwhelming. I need new headshots, but I’ve gained a bit of weight from overeating and being pretty sedentary and I don’t want headshots until I find some motivation and take a couple of refresher classes. I’m not even sure I want to act right now. That’s fine. I’d like to go back to university and take a few solid semesters of just learning foreign languages. I’ve applied for fall 2008 semester, so it’s in SFU’s court to let me know if i’m back in. I don’t think grades will be a problem. I had a solid 3.3GPA before I left SFU, and the only class I failed at VFS was dialects (unfortunate that 2 missed classes is an automatic fail, but it was because I decided to do a little film called Food For The Gods that will be on TV may 25th, and screened at a festival this saturday, so i’m pretty happy about that. I would like to take a more extensive dialects class though because it’s something that I really like doing and that I wish I didn’t have to miss)
The thought of seeing friends is overwhelming. There are only a very few people that I feel like talking to right now. Facebook is overwhelming. Email is overwhelming. Doing normal things is overwhelming. Give me any list of Clinical Depression symptoms, and i’ll say yes to 10 out of 10. But what can doctors do? Send me to the psychiatrist. Put me on meds? I hate therapy. I am not at risk for developing any illicit drug/alcohol dependencies because I know what they do to people. Yes, I would say that before all this stuff happened recently, I was depressed too. No I have not seen a doctor about it. Some days are better than others, and on the worst days…
You’ve probably heard of Kubler-Ross and the 5 stages of grieving, blah blah blah. We got a pamphlet from the physiotherapist written up by the Arthritis Society detailing how this relates to self or loved one getting diagnosed with chronic illness. Good pamphlet. Important pamphlet. I’ve put everything we get from the physiotherapist in protective sleeves in a fuzzy pillowy red 3 ring binder that a family friend made into a photo album for us for our wedding. It’s an awesome binder.
But today I feel okay. Yesterday was awful. But today is okay. I’m going to put one foot in front of the other today. I’m going to put away the dishes. I’m going to do some laundry. I’m going to write a couple of thank you cards. I’m going to go for a swim later on tonight. I’m going to go watch Indiana Jones (which involves seeing people, but they’re people I like, so that’s a good, unstressful thing.) I talked to a friend. I cooked a little. I watched TV a little.
And if that’s all I can muster up for today, then I’m going to be okay with that.
I am not mad at the state of our medical system anymore. I am frankly SUPER GRATEFUL that we have health insurance. Any of you out there who haven’t bothered to apply for BC MSP even though you’ve been in BC for over 3 months, JUST DO IT. If you are low income, IT’S FREE. (you know who you are…ahem i filled out your form for you a couple of weeks ago, you! And the rest of you!). And it takes less than 10 minutes to fill out the form. Here, I’ll even give you the URL: http://www.health.gov.bc.ca/msp/forms.html
<!–RANT–!> Because, if you need an ambulance, are you going to have $400 to pay for it? A single hospital visit costs $200+ dollars. A doctor’s visit costs like $50 or something. What if all of a sudden you BURN YOUR HAND? Or God forbid, some sudden acute illness shows up and you have to go to the hospital/see a doctor 10 times? You might as well live in the United states and work minimum wage with no health insurance.
Don’t think the province you were born in (ie. no longer live in) is going to foot your medical bill. There’s just no excuse for not applying. You were supposed to do it the day (or soon after) you landed on BC soil and you wanted to stay here. <!–END RANT–!>
Never mind. All that matters is today I’m okay and Steve is okay, and we’ve been granted another day to live.
