my attitude/baby got back

so, 5 days ago, a surgeon removed some of my roommate's back.

and, like, i knew that was going to happen. we knew. i was actually looking forward to it. she's been in pain for the past year, at least, and probably a lot longer. and this was the cure.

can i just say, no one should ever, ever have back surgery. ever.

i have these cycles with myself. everyone probably has them. love cycles, and hate cycles. i currently love myself a lot - love my creativity and my relational tendencies. what i hate right now, though, is my attitude, and that's been rough for me because i never realized before what a bad attitude i have, and it's been more noticeable lately now that i'm not working with children and i can't blame it on them, and, more specifically, that i work with adults and i can't usually blame it on them. (although i do try. and being called out on it by beejay, and having a good attitude modeled by abby, that's what's helping me).

so i hate my attitude, anyway, right?

and then my best friend/roommate/non-romantic life partner has back surgery and turns into this whole new person, AND PEOPLE I CAN NOT DEAL. i can't hang. i'm about TO LoSE IT i'm SeRIouS.

in the meantime, i've got it. my dream job. it's happening. i've got a real job at the church and i'm moonlighting as a publicist/event coordinator for possibly the coolest person in the whole world, standing behind philosophies and theologies and values that i believe in with my entire heart.

and i'm horrible this week at everything i do because i have a bad attitude and i can't hang and my heart is weak and i'm sad and selfish and i almost cried yesterday at starbucks.

this is the thing. i have a really low frustration level. (Lord hear my prayer: please fix this. and if you can cut me a break, and fix it without having to, like, teach me how to be more tolerant or patient or flexible, that would be stellar. just, MAKE me more all-of-those-things and then tomorrow i'll be a much better servant.) a really low frustration level. my expectations are really specific, and in my opinion, they're really fair, but it's hard for me to understand or tolerate people deviating from my expectations. and, let me just say, in my line of work, it's kind of understood that i have a good way of doing things - a good system, and i make good plans. so, if everyone would just stick with them and do things my way, everything would be fine, right? well, wrong, and that's the problem.

so, throw into the mix that my life gets flipped upside down when the roommate, who's usually the strong one, is rating her pain at a level 9, and i'm sleeping in a hospital room with nurses interrupting every 2 hours to take vitals. that's when my attitude gets real sweet.

i'm being really selfish. it is destroying me to watch her go through this. it's causing me serious emotional pain. also, because it's my blog and i can cry if i want to, i have spent so much money on food and so much time driving back and forth to and from the hospital and i haven't been sleeping since this all began. i know, i'm selfish. i want our life to go back to normal. i liked our life. and, as i'm trying to explain, i had enough trouble with my attitude before.

i wish i were a boy. they can compartmentalize and keep work at work and home at home. or, okay, the hospital at the hospital, i guess. i can't. i couldn't. i'd be at work, trying to think about the church service or my announcements or the women's retreat or Wholly Jesus and i'm totally tied up inside (yep, love those physical symptoms) or just exhausted or completely scatterbrained.

meanwhile, especially when working on the Wholly Jesus stuff, i've got this message - the book's theme - pulsing through me with this dull conviction. don't you believe this? don't you believe that Jesus isn't your Lord on sundays, but right now? didn't He die to redeem you from your own cynicism, as well as from the wrath of hell? so continues the self loathing.

can i tell you what's helped? getting outside of the situation. my dad talked me off a ledge once this weekend, and i called tammy yesterday as i was about to lose it. and i think what i did with her was ask for help. i think. i don't really remember the conversation, but by the end she'd promised to keep me and my family fed, and i felt better. (for now, jenni and her mom and her boyfriend count as my family.) it's the compassion of people outside of the situation affirm that i'm in the midst of a really stressful situation that's made this all seem more bearable.

plus, it's almost over, i hope.

and when it is, i have to address my attitude issue again.

spinal musings

There are two tiny scabs on my back right now, two holes. One is from a lumbar puncture, and the other from the procedure that was necessary to correct damage done during the lumbar puncture. The second was worse than the first.

I am recovering. I can tell because I am less tired than I was yesterday, although I’m still very tired. I am also hurting less. I have fewer moments of sharp, stabbing pains when I bend or twist in a way that apparently compromises my wound. The wound of, as my pain would tell it, a 5-inch needle, which, if actual, would have come out of my stomach on the other side. I’m certain, after watching Dr. House perform an LP, that the needle for that is only about 2 inches long.

There were needles in my spine.

Before the test and subsequent procedure, I had not really felt my spine. I’d had chiropractic work in which my spine was manipulated, so I felt the bones moving, but I’d never been so intimate with the nerves of my spine. Right now, if I (for example) have to crawl under a table at church to unplug a power strip, this sensation is sent from my wound that clearly says, “let’s not stick any more needles here, shall we not?” and it’s said in a very bitchy British accent.

My spine is alive.

This week, 4 doctors and 7 nurses worked on my spine. During my epidural blood patch, as the doctor injected some of my own blood into my spinal sac to patch a leak in my spinal sac. He was assisted by a real-time x-ray machine (we won’t even begin to talk about how I’ll pay for this) and 4 nurses, and I could hear music playing in the background and I felt warmth in my tail bone as the extra blood (my extra blood) was absorbed into the area around my tail bone.

I am tired. My body is exhausted from whatever made me sick in the first place and then all the tests and procedures that came afterwards. But I’m healing. I’m healing in places I couldn’t feel before, like my spine.

i'm home from the hospital

thanks for your concern, friends. here's the whole story:

i woke up tuesday feeling nauseated. shortly after i arrived at school, i took a trash can outside and said, "miss farmer needs to go outside for a minute," and threw up in the hallway. twice.

i got a substitute 2 hours later and went home.

i slept until 4 that afternoon and when i woke, i felt like i'd been hit by a truck - really achy. i thought i had the flu. and i knew that if you have the flu, you have to get a prescription within the first 24 hours. so i wanted to go to urgent care but knew i couldn't drive myself. i called goose laugh.

she took me to urgent care and i felt like hell. i couldn't sit up - my body hurt and i was tired. i lay down on the dirty, rough carpet in the waiting room and rachel told me stories. eventually, a lab assistant brought me a blanket out of compassion. then, an x-ray assistant offered me a place to sleep while i waited, so i spent the rest of my urgent care wait laying on an x-ray table.

i finally saw a doctor after 3 hours. he poked me and looked at me with lights and made me pee in a cup. keep in mind, i'm convinced i have the flu. he made me do a blood test and wait an hour before finding the results - which were nothing. so, 9pm, he comes in to tell me that i can go home, and one last time, pokes my stomach. i say, okay, well that sort of hurts. and he says, "if that hurts, i need you to go to the emergency room. you need a CT scan. that may be appendicitis."

rachel and i groan and roll our eyes and reluctantly agree. i just want a comfortable bed and some advil - i've had a headache for hours now, and the dr. won't permit me medicine or water, in case i have to have surgery. oh, lord.

the ER waiting room was fun. i have a headache, can't stand on my own 2 feet, and there are crying babies. "can you tell him to stop?" i asked goose laugh regarding one of the cryers. jenni showed up with my pillow, which was amazing, and they fashioned me a little bed to recline in as i waited another hour to see a doctor.

finally, i had a real bed. but i was freezing because i was now in a hospital gown. drafty. jenni tried to cover me up with my sweatshirt and a nurse yelled at her. "she has a fever - you don't want her to get any hotter!". the doctor came in and basically told us he was very weary of the appendicitis diagnosis, but that it was possible, and it would be best to just do the test tonight. i needed an IV and the sketchy nurse did it wrong on the first arm so had to redo it. rachel grabbed my hand - i was kinda scared. i had to drink this giant cup of dye and wait for 2 hours. i mostly slept, rachel and jenni played sudoku and told me stories.

jenni kept asking the nurse for things for me. "can she have some water?" no. "can she have a blanket?" no. they put pain medicine in my iv to try to counteract my headache. it made me feel foggy but my headache didn't really go away - i just didn't care as much that my head hurt.

i had a CT scan at 1am. than we had to wait a few hours for the results to come back. jenni sent rachel on her way and stayed with me. i slept. another doctor came in after a few hours to tell me my CT scan showed no appendicitis but a cyst on my ovary. i was really foggy and couldn't really understand. is that a bad thing?

the next thing i understood were the words, "pelvic exam". ugh. that's not fun. apparently, she was concerned about the cyst and wanted to check. great. jenni stepped outside for a moment, and the exam was pretty fast, but hurt like hell. she said she was concerned about this or that (words i don't know) and that she was going to have a few things tested. i was just glad it was over. and could i please have some headache medicine?

next thing i know, another doctor comes in. it's 3 in the morning. he says that the combination of my headache, vomiting, and fever, they need to do a spinal tap to rule out meningitis. MENINGITIS? how could i have gotten meningitis? (there are lots of ways, he said). have my kids all been exposed? (yes). i HAVE to have a spinal tap? (yes). aren't those horrible? (yes).

jenni asked how much longer that would be. poor thing needed to be at work at 7am.

i asked one nurse what would happen if jenni went home home and i got finished up in a few hours. if it was 8, i could get someone to come get me - margaret, ben, rachel could come back... but if it were 5 or 6, could i just stay in my bed in the hallway? no, she said. she'd put me in a cab.

i was not going to take a cab home from the hospital. so i called my mom. woke her up, told her i'm in the hospital. i don't recommend you do that to your mother. she lives 2 hours away, but wanted to come, but realized she wouldn't be there in time and could not miss work the next day.

so i called my dad. he got all crazy. yes, he was coming down, but could he also talk to the doctor and find out why i need a spinal tap? i was worried but reluctantly handed the doc my blackberry. he managed to convince my father, and was calling him walt by the end of the convo, so i figured i was in safe hands.

before i could get a spinal tap, i needed another CT scan, so i went in for my second of the night. when i got back, jenni decided she'd go home, because my dad would arrive in about an hour. i asked for some more pain medicine for my headache.

a little later, one of the earlier doctors came in for my spinal tap. she tried to get me to sit up and lean over, but i was super nauseated. she let me lay down while she did it. i could feel the anesthetic going in - like a bee sting - but couldn't feel the real needle. it wasn't that bad. the doc gave me some anti-nausea medication.

some combination of the two medicines made me sufficiently loopy for the next 8 hours. the doctors kept coming in to tell me what was going on and had to continue waking me up as they were talking to me. my dad showed up but the same deal - i kept checking out. i remember a few words: "no meningitis". one doctor tried to explain something about my pelvic exam - there was some bacterial infection in my lady-business and she was prescribing me an antibiotic. but i'm like, is that what made me throw up and gave me a fever? "well, no." okay, well, what made me sick?

the basic answer: "we don't know." they didn't know. but they knew it wasn't appendicitis, or meningitis. they said i could go home with some tylenol codiene, some anti-nausea pills, and the antibiotic.

my dad brought me home a 7 and i have been pretty much sleeping since. i still don't feel good - headache, body aches, wierd temperature, and just inexplicably exhausted. i think i'll be home again tomorrow.

that's what i know for now. thanks so much for your prayers and sweet thoughts. hope to see you soon.