Jecca Mehlota (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jecca_mehlota) wrote2015-02-23 07:51 pm
jecca_mehlota) wrote2015-02-23 07:51 pm
Entry tags:
Day 27 NO PROMPT DAY
You know that thing where you suddenly hate basically all of your icons? merghjkgtlr;re
Anyway, I somehow ended up without an assigned topic for the 27th day of the, uh, December meme, so you're going to get a hopefully brief rundown of what'd been up with me since, well, who fucking knows, actually, but mid-December (ie, when I started missing meme days and mostly stopped replying to entry comments I AM SO SORRY it wasn't anything personal), to be more specific.
Except actually it's a tibia, but no one knew that until recently and old habits die really, really hard.
A long, long time ago, like, seriously, at least ten years, Jecca developed a pain in her right ankle.
I'd sprained the thing once really badly in first grade, and then a few other times growing up, so I was kind of used to my ankle hurting. But this was really bad and didn't feel like a sprain (you sprain your ankle enough, you know what a sprained ankle feels like). Mom thinks I maybe had ankle pain my senior year of high school, I honestly don't remember, but definitely my freshman year of college it was present. She had to mail me ankle bandaging because I didn't feel able to hobble downtown to the pharmacy to get something for it. When I came home, I went to see my doctor, but because it was a pediatrician's office and I was 18, I mostly only got a lecture about how I needed to find a real doctor who could deal with my being a mature female and we don't do that kind of stuff here and I am asking about my ankle and not my vagina?? But okay whatever I guess. I was told it was probably a sprain, I disagreed, and then I was sent away. And the pain subsided eventually and I forgot about it. Sometimes it hurt, sometimes it didn't, and I just figured I must've just permanently hurt myself with all the Actual Sprains I limped my way through.
The first time I remember THE PAIN happening was after I moved out of my parents' house, so around 2009. It was blindingly bad, which, I'd never really understand the idea of pain being blinding before that happened, and I'd kind of be okay with it if I didn't still, but oh well. But it passed, and since it kept happening during the coldest times, I just continued to chalk it up to MY STUPID ANKLE. I did mention it to doctors in passing a few times, but no one seemed real interested in it, possibly because I was usually pretty flippant about it.
It'd get really bad sometimes, where I couldn't walk, couldn't drive, couldn't even curl up in bed and whimper because it hurt so, so much.
Also then it started happening not just when it was cold.
FINALLY, I dunno, after I got on antidepressants, I was like, fuck this shit, this is stupid, I don't want to live with this. DOCTOR. HELP ME. And I was sent to physical therapy! Yay! We found out that my mobility was actually pretty visibly impaired, so my therapist decided we'd try some strengthening stretches and see if we couldn't improve in. But after a few weeks of that, I hadn't really improved much, and she dismissed me, because there should've been way more than we were seeing if my problem was going to be solved with PT. She figured I probably had joint mice, which are bits of bone or cartilage that got into the joint somehow and impede it, and she sent me back to my doctor with orders to get an x-ray done.
THAT WAS BASICALLY TWO YEARS AGO and then I started a new job and went crazy and never actually got around to getting to the hospital until after my form had well expired. Which they apparently do in a matter of weeks.
And then I felt stupid and was embarrassed and didn't want to ask for a new one until, mmm, November of last year, when I went in for a physical and was like, hey, so, this stupid ankle... And the next day was a holiday, so I just went to the hospital and had my x-ray done and then I annoyed everyone by wondering out loud about how long it would take and what they might find. It was only a few days, actually, and my doctor called me because they were definitely seeing something but they had no idea what. Possibly a benign bone tumor, she thought, but an MRI was probably in order.
And thus began an ordeal of chasing the hospital and my doctor's office around and around trying to get them to talk to each other and set up an appointment for me, I have no idea what happened there, but it was really frustrating. I eventually started calling multiple times a day, that finally worked.
December 3, they put me in a flimsy hospital outfit and shoved me into a cold, noisy room and took magnet pictures of my right ankle area. Then they shot me with some REALLY COLD CONTRAST FLUID WTF WHY and took some more. I walked out with a headache and possibly hypothermia (not really). THEN MORE WAITING AAAAUGH THE WORST THE WORST.
Hospital called me later, told me, there is a THING in your bone. We still don't know what it is, so we want to cut you open and look at it and take it out.
Well, sure, we've gone this far, why not. I was supposed to go under on December 12, but I got bumped to the next Tuesday (which, actually, is a pretty good turn around time, I guess). Now, I only found out about this after the fact from my brother by accident (he heard it from my mother, who'd been told while I was recovering from surgery), but apparently at this point the surgeon was pretty sure I had bone cancer. BONE CANCER. But no one told me because they didn't want me to freak out (pshh, my doctor said no way was it bone cancer, so I knew better). Mom thought it was maybe staph, since she knew someone who's father had similar ankle issues and it turned out to be staph, but I was like, Mom. This has been at least 10 years. There's just no way. I'd be dead.
hahahahaha.
ANYWAY, they put me out and cut me open and pulled out some kinda fibrous crap that no one knew anything about and sent it off to pathology, and path came back at the end of the week and said, we're pretty sure this is staph, get her on antibiotics FUCKING YESTERDAY, but we're gonna send it to the infectious disease specialist just to make sure so don't do anything too drastic.
So I actually knew I (probably) had staph at this point, but it wasn't 100% so I didn't want to mention it, just in case it was a false alarm.
Except, of course, it totally wasn't, and apparently people get isolated staph infections in their fucking dorsal tibia areas for no gd reason.
Language. Talking about it still stresses me out, apparently. You should've heard me in late December / January. Every other word was an F-bomb, practically.
Like a VERY STUPID PERSON, I decided to try to go back to work Christmas week. Such a disaster. I was in pain and the stretch from the car to my desk was probably about 12 miles at that point, since I was still super drugged and exhausted. I made it through the day on Monday somehow, then I came in super late Tuesday because I had an appointment, and then I had to leave early on Wednesday. Then I made it all day Friday somehow??? AND THEN I WAS GONE FOREVER.
The infection disease specialist I was assigned said that the usual treatment for a bone infection is 4 weeks on intravenous antibiotics, and that the best way to do that for me would probably be a PICC line and pump. If, for some awful, unholy reason I ever have to relive that experience, I am going to demand ANYTHING BUT THE FUCKING PICC LINE AND PUMP. Put me in a medical coma, seriously. ANYTHING. It was awful. I mean, it's great that the pump is an option, and I'm glad it works so well for so many people. I am. It did not work for me.
I almost fainted when they were putting the tube in, which apparently is just a thing that happens sometimes, but I didn't know that's what it was at the time and I was terrified right outta my mind. But that was fine, I got over it.
The tube was uncomfortable, and I couldn't sleep in any of my usual positions. Partially upright on my back was the only way I could get any rest, which, for me, is super awkward. And they put it in my right arm, which is my dominant side. I couldn't lift my arm above shoulder level. ALSO DID I MENTION? This put this in while I was still on crutches, and then told me I couldn't put the crutch up in my armpit because I could do something to the tube. So my right leg and right arm were out of commission. The actual first thing I did on getting home was to fall down the stairs as I tried to get up them. The boot and dressing came off shortly after that, and the surgeon encouraged me to try walking on it, but you lose a lot of muscle in a mere two weeks. It was just awkward all around.
The pump went every four hours for half an hour. It woke me up every. single. time. As you can PROBABLY GUESS, it didn't take long for me to become super tired. Also, the antibiotics totally messed with my appetite. By the end of January, if it wasn't cheese or peanut butter, or something carrying cheese and/or peanut butter, I wasn't eating it.
The bag had to be changed daily, which I was way nervous about, but apparently the VNA, who were supposed to be helping me, did not care so much about that. Someone came and plugged me in the first night, then someone came the next two days - the first time they did it, the second time I helped - and then NO ONE SHOWED UP, and I called and left messages and no one even called me back and I freaked out a lot and it was awful. Fortunately, one of them, the one who saw me on the third day, was super kind and made time in his schedule to come help me the day after that shitstorm. And I had done the bag change properly the day before, thankfully. And he helped me write instructions down.
Mom stayed with me a lot after surgery and the first little while after I got the tube in, and then my brother was around for a bit playing FFVI through while I watched, but after that I was basically on my own, and I sort of went crazy. I was lonely and tired and I felt terrible and I was scared, because staph is scary and having tubes in your arm is scary. I couldn't go anywhere, because walking distances was exhausting and I couldn't safely drive, and no one was ever willing to come visit me OR CALL OR TEXT OR BASICALLY ANYTHING the only people who communicated with me were people who are long distance, which made me sad and angry, because I was a mess.
Then, at about the halfway point, my specialist decided that, since my liver and kidneys hadn't given out yet, he wanted to leave me tubed for another two weeks, I got really upset, had an anxiety attack at 1 in the morning and started texting my mother, then broke down into hysterical sobbing and carried on for about 14 hours. I'd contain it briefly, then I'd go off again. Basically this entry. And, like I said, my mother ended up calling the hospital and begging them to reconsider.
FORTUNATELY, THEY DID and after a straight month on that stupid pump, they took the tube out, stuck me back on oral antibiotics, and left me in peace. I did some PT to get my right leg back into action, I've gone back to work, and EVERYTHING IS FINE.
except of course now the bills are rolling in and maybe i liked it better when my ankle hurt
WORDS
Anyway, I somehow ended up without an assigned topic for the 27th day of the, uh, December meme, so you're going to get a hopefully brief rundown of what'd been up with me since, well, who fucking knows, actually, but mid-December (ie, when I started missing meme days and mostly stopped replying to entry comments I AM SO SORRY it wasn't anything personal), to be more specific.
Except actually it's a tibia, but no one knew that until recently and old habits die really, really hard.
A long, long time ago, like, seriously, at least ten years, Jecca developed a pain in her right ankle.
I'd sprained the thing once really badly in first grade, and then a few other times growing up, so I was kind of used to my ankle hurting. But this was really bad and didn't feel like a sprain (you sprain your ankle enough, you know what a sprained ankle feels like). Mom thinks I maybe had ankle pain my senior year of high school, I honestly don't remember, but definitely my freshman year of college it was present. She had to mail me ankle bandaging because I didn't feel able to hobble downtown to the pharmacy to get something for it. When I came home, I went to see my doctor, but because it was a pediatrician's office and I was 18, I mostly only got a lecture about how I needed to find a real doctor who could deal with my being a mature female and we don't do that kind of stuff here and I am asking about my ankle and not my vagina?? But okay whatever I guess. I was told it was probably a sprain, I disagreed, and then I was sent away. And the pain subsided eventually and I forgot about it. Sometimes it hurt, sometimes it didn't, and I just figured I must've just permanently hurt myself with all the Actual Sprains I limped my way through.
The first time I remember THE PAIN happening was after I moved out of my parents' house, so around 2009. It was blindingly bad, which, I'd never really understand the idea of pain being blinding before that happened, and I'd kind of be okay with it if I didn't still, but oh well. But it passed, and since it kept happening during the coldest times, I just continued to chalk it up to MY STUPID ANKLE. I did mention it to doctors in passing a few times, but no one seemed real interested in it, possibly because I was usually pretty flippant about it.
It'd get really bad sometimes, where I couldn't walk, couldn't drive, couldn't even curl up in bed and whimper because it hurt so, so much.
Also then it started happening not just when it was cold.
FINALLY, I dunno, after I got on antidepressants, I was like, fuck this shit, this is stupid, I don't want to live with this. DOCTOR. HELP ME. And I was sent to physical therapy! Yay! We found out that my mobility was actually pretty visibly impaired, so my therapist decided we'd try some strengthening stretches and see if we couldn't improve in. But after a few weeks of that, I hadn't really improved much, and she dismissed me, because there should've been way more than we were seeing if my problem was going to be solved with PT. She figured I probably had joint mice, which are bits of bone or cartilage that got into the joint somehow and impede it, and she sent me back to my doctor with orders to get an x-ray done.
THAT WAS BASICALLY TWO YEARS AGO and then I started a new job and went crazy and never actually got around to getting to the hospital until after my form had well expired. Which they apparently do in a matter of weeks.
And then I felt stupid and was embarrassed and didn't want to ask for a new one until, mmm, November of last year, when I went in for a physical and was like, hey, so, this stupid ankle... And the next day was a holiday, so I just went to the hospital and had my x-ray done and then I annoyed everyone by wondering out loud about how long it would take and what they might find. It was only a few days, actually, and my doctor called me because they were definitely seeing something but they had no idea what. Possibly a benign bone tumor, she thought, but an MRI was probably in order.
And thus began an ordeal of chasing the hospital and my doctor's office around and around trying to get them to talk to each other and set up an appointment for me, I have no idea what happened there, but it was really frustrating. I eventually started calling multiple times a day, that finally worked.
December 3, they put me in a flimsy hospital outfit and shoved me into a cold, noisy room and took magnet pictures of my right ankle area. Then they shot me with some REALLY COLD CONTRAST FLUID WTF WHY and took some more. I walked out with a headache and possibly hypothermia (not really). THEN MORE WAITING AAAAUGH THE WORST THE WORST.
Hospital called me later, told me, there is a THING in your bone. We still don't know what it is, so we want to cut you open and look at it and take it out.
Well, sure, we've gone this far, why not. I was supposed to go under on December 12, but I got bumped to the next Tuesday (which, actually, is a pretty good turn around time, I guess). Now, I only found out about this after the fact from my brother by accident (he heard it from my mother, who'd been told while I was recovering from surgery), but apparently at this point the surgeon was pretty sure I had bone cancer. BONE CANCER. But no one told me because they didn't want me to freak out (pshh, my doctor said no way was it bone cancer, so I knew better). Mom thought it was maybe staph, since she knew someone who's father had similar ankle issues and it turned out to be staph, but I was like, Mom. This has been at least 10 years. There's just no way. I'd be dead.
hahahahaha.
ANYWAY, they put me out and cut me open and pulled out some kinda fibrous crap that no one knew anything about and sent it off to pathology, and path came back at the end of the week and said, we're pretty sure this is staph, get her on antibiotics FUCKING YESTERDAY, but we're gonna send it to the infectious disease specialist just to make sure so don't do anything too drastic.
So I actually knew I (probably) had staph at this point, but it wasn't 100% so I didn't want to mention it, just in case it was a false alarm.
Except, of course, it totally wasn't, and apparently people get isolated staph infections in their fucking dorsal tibia areas for no gd reason.
Language. Talking about it still stresses me out, apparently. You should've heard me in late December / January. Every other word was an F-bomb, practically.
Like a VERY STUPID PERSON, I decided to try to go back to work Christmas week. Such a disaster. I was in pain and the stretch from the car to my desk was probably about 12 miles at that point, since I was still super drugged and exhausted. I made it through the day on Monday somehow, then I came in super late Tuesday because I had an appointment, and then I had to leave early on Wednesday. Then I made it all day Friday somehow??? AND THEN I WAS GONE FOREVER.
The infection disease specialist I was assigned said that the usual treatment for a bone infection is 4 weeks on intravenous antibiotics, and that the best way to do that for me would probably be a PICC line and pump. If, for some awful, unholy reason I ever have to relive that experience, I am going to demand ANYTHING BUT THE FUCKING PICC LINE AND PUMP. Put me in a medical coma, seriously. ANYTHING. It was awful. I mean, it's great that the pump is an option, and I'm glad it works so well for so many people. I am. It did not work for me.
I almost fainted when they were putting the tube in, which apparently is just a thing that happens sometimes, but I didn't know that's what it was at the time and I was terrified right outta my mind. But that was fine, I got over it.
The tube was uncomfortable, and I couldn't sleep in any of my usual positions. Partially upright on my back was the only way I could get any rest, which, for me, is super awkward. And they put it in my right arm, which is my dominant side. I couldn't lift my arm above shoulder level. ALSO DID I MENTION? This put this in while I was still on crutches, and then told me I couldn't put the crutch up in my armpit because I could do something to the tube. So my right leg and right arm were out of commission. The actual first thing I did on getting home was to fall down the stairs as I tried to get up them. The boot and dressing came off shortly after that, and the surgeon encouraged me to try walking on it, but you lose a lot of muscle in a mere two weeks. It was just awkward all around.
The pump went every four hours for half an hour. It woke me up every. single. time. As you can PROBABLY GUESS, it didn't take long for me to become super tired. Also, the antibiotics totally messed with my appetite. By the end of January, if it wasn't cheese or peanut butter, or something carrying cheese and/or peanut butter, I wasn't eating it.
The bag had to be changed daily, which I was way nervous about, but apparently the VNA, who were supposed to be helping me, did not care so much about that. Someone came and plugged me in the first night, then someone came the next two days - the first time they did it, the second time I helped - and then NO ONE SHOWED UP, and I called and left messages and no one even called me back and I freaked out a lot and it was awful. Fortunately, one of them, the one who saw me on the third day, was super kind and made time in his schedule to come help me the day after that shitstorm. And I had done the bag change properly the day before, thankfully. And he helped me write instructions down.
Mom stayed with me a lot after surgery and the first little while after I got the tube in, and then my brother was around for a bit playing FFVI through while I watched, but after that I was basically on my own, and I sort of went crazy. I was lonely and tired and I felt terrible and I was scared, because staph is scary and having tubes in your arm is scary. I couldn't go anywhere, because walking distances was exhausting and I couldn't safely drive, and no one was ever willing to come visit me OR CALL OR TEXT OR BASICALLY ANYTHING the only people who communicated with me were people who are long distance, which made me sad and angry, because I was a mess.
Then, at about the halfway point, my specialist decided that, since my liver and kidneys hadn't given out yet, he wanted to leave me tubed for another two weeks, I got really upset, had an anxiety attack at 1 in the morning and started texting my mother, then broke down into hysterical sobbing and carried on for about 14 hours. I'd contain it briefly, then I'd go off again. Basically this entry. And, like I said, my mother ended up calling the hospital and begging them to reconsider.
FORTUNATELY, THEY DID and after a straight month on that stupid pump, they took the tube out, stuck me back on oral antibiotics, and left me in peace. I did some PT to get my right leg back into action, I've gone back to work, and EVERYTHING IS FINE.
except of course now the bills are rolling in and maybe i liked it better when my ankle hurt
WORDS