Surgery

Its been 2 and a half months since the surgery.  The surgery itself went well.  The recovery…. not so much.  When the docs and nurses all tell you to do nothing at all, you really should listen to them.  I thought I was feeling fine, and actually did some laundry, vacuumed and picked up my dogs poop outside and let me tell you I paid for it big time!!! Hurt sooo bad after.

But you actually feel good, and you actually think that you can do stuff.  BUT YOU SHOULD NOT!!!

It took longer for me to recover.  But i’m back at work now, been back for weeks now.

Kinda funny…

I honestly don’t even remember writing the last post.  oops.

Can I recommend something  If ever you have to have any procedure and they have to give you something, anesthesia or whatever, give your phone or computer (any device you can communicate with) to someone, and tell them not to give it to you until you are completely med free.  A good 24 hours.  I sent messages, I phoned my sister, mother, and god knows who else and I have no recollection of it.

Surgery – done

It’s done. I’m actually still in the recovery room. It’s taking me forever to write this because of meds. I’ll write more tomorrow

Pre-Op Apt

I had to be there at 2:15 and I left at 5:15. No lie.  I had to go to registration, then pre-admitting.  There I spoke with 2 nurses and the anesthesiologist, then I had to go for blood test.

At registration I had to fill out the forms for my insurance. At pre-admitting, I had to go through the meds I am currently taking with the first nurse, then waited…  Then with the second nurse, I had for forms to fill and also re-read and consent.  She went through the possible risks involved.  Then because I have angioedema, the anesthesiologist wanted to speak with me.  He was a little confused, because I wrote on one of the forms under auto-immune disease that I had angioedema, but he was telling it wasn’t an auto-immune disease (from now on I’ll use AID).  He was like do you know what angioedema is… Ummmm… yes.  Oh and I should note, he wasn’t being mean to me at all, he was just very confused. He seemed or seems to think that there is a test for angioedema and that it would tell me which type I have (because there are 2 types, I think)  Then he started describing what it is and I finish him to show him that I do know.  But he keeps saying that it isn’t an AID, and he asked if I had some tests done.  I said yes, a whole bunch, but of course I don’t remember them all. So finally he now realizes that I know what angioedema is.  I told him the doctor I saw at which hospital, and so they are now requesting my file to go through.

I’m telling you, I cannot make this crap up.

He will review the file and let me know once he has reviewed it. There is a very small chance that we might have to push my surgery to a later date.

My surgery is Tuesday, you can’t do this to me now. I can’t wait and stress over it for another 2-3 weeks or more, I don’t know. All the forms at work have been completed and sent to HR.  Plus I don’t think I can mentally take anymore waiting.  You have a date set for months and so you pumped yourself up, then to be told that there is a slight chance it gets moved to a later date.  NOPE!  Can’t do it.  Sorry.

What is wrong with me?

I think I should be a medical case, because someone my age shouldn’t have all these problems. There always seems to be something wrong with me.

After I gave birth, while I was still at the hospital, my left side of my face swelled up and my throat. They had to give me an epinephrine.   Since then I have episodes, left or right eye, my upper or lower lip will swell up.  Even my throat a couple times.  I’ve been to the hospital, so it’s all documented.  I have been to a specialist who has done all the tests that he can think of, plus more.  I have been tested for cancer, and all the test came back negative.  And so the doc diagnosed me with Angioedema (random swelling of the face and arms).  Leave it to me to get this.

Not only that, it’s always something. 3 weeks ago I had a bad sinus infection, antibiotics barely worked.  And they gave me such a terrible taste in my mouth, and I had to take them for 10 days.  I didn’t go back to the docs, I feel like I am always there.  So I’m doing my neti-pot and taking an over the counter nasal spray and drinking lots of water.  I just have surgery in less than a week….ARGH!!!!

I also get a lot of headaches, but we are thinking that the headaches could be caused by the endo. I’m hoping they will come less and less after the surgery.

Oh and Sunday, while I was locking the door, I threw out my back. No word of a lie.  I could barely walk or move….  I think it was a pinched nerve.  It’s way better today.

Always something. I hate always having something, I hate going to the doctors, I hate taking medication….

Today my right eye is swollen. Why???????  I’ve tried changing what I eat, vitamins, oh gosh I can’t think of all that I have tried.

Pre-op day

Today is the day I go for my pre-op. I’m getting excited, scared, nervous, plus a hundred different other feelings/emotions.

I really don’t know what to expect at this appointment. Forms to fill out, I know.  My insurance… probably blood test.

The doctor said that if all goes well, I won’t have to sleep at the hospital after my surgery. But if I had to, “check-out” time is a 6 a.m..  6 a.m.???  Isn’t that a little early?  Holy crow.  I’m hoping I won’t have to but at the same time I think if any complications come up, the hospital is the place to be.  At least the hospital is only 20 minutes away.

Taxes

I don’t know if I wrote about how my pay was all messed up, if I didn’t … here’s some background….

It all started in June 2016, all of a sudden I wasn’t getting paid, this lasted until the end of Aug, when I got all my pay that was owed to me (I think). They were able to give me pay advances though which was nice.  Not all my pay but close to my regular pay.  I called our pay center to let them know of all this, and then all of a sudden in dec 2016, I get an email that I owe 22,000.  Whoa… how much??  Ya that’s right 22 thousand dollars. I did the math myself and it wasn’t near 22k, it was around 11k.  So I called them and they said no, no, the amount is correct.  So I talked to one of my colleagues and we got the same calculations 11k.  I called back and I explained to her what and how I came up with my number.  We were going through the steps and she was agreeing with me, and then the total amount came to 11K and she was like, oh my, I was wrong.  Let me get back to you.  Sure enough after a day or 2 she got back to me and I was right, her amount was WAY off.  The amount I had was correct.  I could go on and on about a lot more things, the paper work, more problems, not getting paid for another 4 months and so on and so on, but I won’t.  I asked in December for a full audit of my pay.  I was to make sure that everything is right, I don’t owe them anymore and/or vice versa.  Nothing has been done yet.  I’m so fed up with this.  It’s never ending.  So many people are affected and we don’t see any light at the tunnel.  Very frustrating.

Oh ya to go back to what I wanted to vent about. My Taxes!!!

I do my taxes each year, and this year I did them and I showed that I owed them let’s say 500$. So I pay that off.  And I get an express notice of assessment right away and it says I still owe them 6300$.  What the heck??? 6300$.  I called them and then we figure out that my work re-did my T4 for 2016, and so CRA (Canada revenue agency) re-assessed my taxed and I now owe them 7000$.  OK, why was I not notified of this????  I never received an amended T4 for 2016.  And when CRA re-assessed that year, I wasn’t notified.  Now I take partial blame for this.  On my CRA account online, I checked that I wanted to receive any notifications via email.  So for this they would send you an email saying that there is a new email or notification for you on your “my account”, so I would have to go log in and check.  For the past year or so, I have received all kinds of spam emails from CRA.  Of course it isn’t really CRA.  In the emails, I never click on the links in case it is spam.  So I always go to the link I have saved in my favorites and check.  So the first 10-15 emails I got from “CRA” saying that I had new notifications or emails, I would go and check and there was nothing there.  So I started just deleting the emails, because they were all spam.  I have since change the setting to receiving my notifications via mail.  No more emails.  But what we can’t figure out is why I wasn’t given/ sent a new T4 for the year of 2016.  They should have sent me a new one via mail.  But they didn’t.

I now owe them all this money, and we don’t have that kind of money just laying around doing nothing. So I am paying what I can each month but I feel like it’s going to take forever.  It’s been one thing after another, and we are finding it hard to get back on our feet financial.

Back at it again

You were probably thinking, where is she? Is she still alive?  Cause I haven’t written anything in ages…

Well I’m still alive and kickin’. So many things have happened.  My dad had cancer… ya that’s right… HAD. He found out it was definitely cancer and within 2 weeks, he was operated and they got it all.  It was colon cancer.  When the biopsy came back, it confirmed it was stage 1.  1 week after the surgery, he had to have emergency surgery again, because, something inside was about to burst and it was infected, so they operated again.  Before they operated the first time, he was told he would probably have to have a colonoscopy bag for about 6-9 months (varies, depends how you heal), then they would have to operate again to reverse the, gosh what is it called????, anyways, they would reverse the procedure and he would no longer have the colonoscopy bag (now on I will just call it “the bag”).  But a week after the first surgery, when one of his daily blood test came back, it showed that there was an infection, so they sent him for a CT scan and it showed that there was an infection inside and a slow leak somewhere, so when they operated the second time, he had to get the bag.  His first surgery was May 17, and so the second was May 25.  The last doctor’s visit went very well, and he said that everything looks good and he could get operated either before Christmas or after, he said it was up to my dad.  He didn’t know if dad wanted it before xmas, cause he wouldn’t be able to do much, and it would be a dull xmas for him.  But it think dad just wants to get to bag out.

And now for me. I found out my endometriosis is back and not only do I have that but I also have adenomyosis.  So Endo is inside the uterus and adenomyosis is the outside the uterus.  And so I am booked for surgery next Tuesday (Aug 21, 2018) for a hysterectomy, and they will also be removing one ovary.  From the test we done, it looks like one ovary is full of endo and they recommend we remove it and the other one looks ok, but they will only know for sure when they open me up.  Now if they remove both ovaries, I will start menopause right away.  I will be 42 September 20, and I really don’t want to go through menopause this early.  But I told them that if they see that the second one is pretty bad, they have my permission to remove it too.

So it’s been a crazy year so far.

My parent are flying in on Monday and staying for almost 2 weeks. I can’t lift anything over 10 lbs for at least 6 weeks.  My daughter weighs 33 lbs and she is always with me, laying on me… she’s a mama’s girl.  So this will be hard, for both of us.

Endometiosis & Infertility

I really don’t remember if I have written about this.  I quickly skimmed through my posts and didn’t see anything, but I’m sure I have …but anyways here goes.

Me and Babes tried to conceive naturally for a year before we started going to the fertility clinic.  In total I think we did 8 IUI’s (Intrauterine Insemination) in total.  On the 4th try we were successful and got pregnant and at 10 and a half week we lost the baby.  and on the 8th one, we got pregnant again and we had our beautiful little CP.

During our time at the clinic, we had a lot of tests done.  They were trying to figure out why exactly I wasn’t getting pregnant.  They couldn’t find anything really.  But the doc asked if I would be ok in doing a laparoscopy, and I said yes.  While they did that, the doc then saw that I had endometriosis, so while he was “in there”, he cleaned out what he could.  He told me I was a stage 3, and he hoped that by doing this, it would help me conceive.  And well it helped.  which is good, but he also told me that while I was pregnant the endometriosis would go dormant but as soon as I gave birth, it would come back.

I went to see a doctor last week and we believe that its back, I have all the symptoms.  She is sending me for a special ultra sound, she said this exam will detect endometriotic cysts on my ovaries and depending on the severity of it, she might have to do another laparoscopy.  I have a feeling that it is that, and I would like to talk her into doing the laparoscopy anyways, even if the test doesn’t detect much.

I’m 41, some people might say that’s old, but its not really.  Today people are getting pregnant later in life.  If there is a slight chance that I could possibly get pregnant again, then lets do everything we can.  If she opens me up and sees that its beyond repairable, then fine.  Take out whatever is necessary, I would feel better knowing that we did what we could.  The pain that comes with every time I ovulate, is beyond.  I don’t only have pain but I also feel sick to my stomach.  Then I have pain each time me and babes are “intimate”, then when my period comes.   So I’m in pain for 3-4 days during ovulation, another 3-5 days for my period, that 9 days, sometimes more, and then you add every time we are “intimate”..  And by pain, I mean, I am rolled in a ball, I can’t even get up, major migraines, its unbearable at times.  I also miss work because of it.

It does run in families, my mother had it.  She had us when she was young, but at the age of 30-31, she had to have a hysterectomy because it was so bad.

I would prefer not to have a hysterectomy but at this point, I’m so over being in pain all the time.  I would opt for one, ONLY if I’m at stage 4, which is the last stage, and which also means that its too late.  (from what I hear)

The doctor sent me home with homework, she said that depending on what the exam detects, she suggest I look into the Mirena or the medication Visanne.  Both are a form of birth control, she said that this will help treat the endometriosis.  As you can see, I am 99% against taking birth control, why take BC is there is a chance I can get pregnant again???  But I did read up on both and IF I HAD TO…, here are my thoughts.  Mirena – I have heard so many bad stories about the Mirena that, I am crossing that one off the list…period.  Visanne is a pill you take daily, and its newer so it looks like a better option, but again, I really don’t’ want to take either.  But if it will help with the pain and she absolutely does not want to do a laparoscopy, then what that’s that.  I would have to choose Visanne. (which would kill me inside).

and just to finish off, in case you didn’t get it…

ENDOMETRIOSIS SUCKS BALL!

Thanks for reading

 

Pottery

I LOVED it!  It was sooo much fun.  Frustrating but tons of fun.

Normally when  I do something… anything, my mind wanders and I think of what to make for supper, what to do tomorrow, what I have to bring here, etc.  But during the pottery class, I’m totally focused.  I can’t think of anything else or my “masterpiece” will be ruined.  Its so hard though, you think, “oh, I’ve seen Ghost, this will be nothing”  (HA HA HA) but no… not at all what I was expecting.  But I love it.  Our teacher goes around and looks at our techniques and he looks at me and says, “ok, I don’t know where you got your techniques, but they seem to be working for you”.  Not at all what he showed us.

As I was leaving, I was walking with this lady that’s in the course and she told me that I was very talented, and that she thinks my pieces are the best of the class.  Um, thank you!   Loved to hear that, it just stroked my ego a bit more.

Pictures are to follow soon…