Sunday and Its Sundries

Bell's: don't even think about settling in!  OMG! Do I always look this cruddy?  At the end of a day when our daughter was yet again taken by ambulance to the "major med center" hours away, all while hubs was getting emergency surgery locally, his first hospital anything ever!  Do I look like I'm in a mood to take anything else on...or worse, to suffer fools gladly? 

When I started "Friday Tidbits," this is the sort of post I had in mind: to just report on this and that, once a week, about the little things that can make our lives a bit easier to navigate.  Or: to catch up with random thoughts that I always manage to come up with. (I can hear that collective sigh - y'all know that, right?)  Or just to vent and shed the occasional tear.

Instead, Friday Tidbits has seemingly turned into simply a deadline I've forced upon myself. But today we'll have a Friday Tidbits in spirit, although it's a Sunday. And BTW: there IS a Friday Tidbits that was written on a Sunday. (Is anyone able to follow that?) Are there any sharpshooters out there who picked up on them when that happened?  Should I give clues? There are a couple of other doozies I managed to sneak in, which I didn't catch until many months later when it seemed right to leave them as they were - as proof of my fibro-brain. If I had any sort of extra strength, I'd turn the hunt for these - shall we say "anomalies" - into a contest with a prize.  Unfortunately, my brain is too fried to go there.  However, if you do find what I'm talking about, please feel free to leave your finding(s) in the comments.  Now what other blogger has scavenger hunts, albeit the CFIDS/CFS/ME and fibromyalgia sort?

On with my random thoughts and "things."

• At the risk of jinxing myself, I think I may have been handed a huge pass. The Bell's Palsy, which I wrote about in Friday's Tidbits, appears to be minimal .  Yes, my face is crooked, swollen on one side, leaking tears (quite the pretty picture I'm drawing here) with drooping eye, sagging cheek and an extra jowly jowl (singular), but that appears to be it for the moment.  Pain is manageable (again, a knock on wood!).  Oh my! If things could just stay this way, not get much worse, and not take an inordinate period of time going away, plus not getting to be too much worse - and not become a permanent thing - I'll be a mighty happy camper. (Wow! That's a lot of conditions! But then I do like my face to be somewhat symmetrical, Diva that I most obviously am! ;))

• Onward!  How I wish I'd had my "ring toe" "buddy taped" when it first got stoved (and possibly broken) three weeks ago. What a difference a piece of tape makes! Considering how much "we" seem to walk into doors and windows (as I gathered from my twitter friends after they read this post) this bit of "trivia" is probably a good tip to keep in mind! 

My final "thing" is a bit lengthy.  Sorry.  But I've been meaning to write about this for quite some time now.  (I don't think I wrote about it but who really knows?)

• I never realized that I was "allergic" to the sort of tape hospitals use.  When I had that nasty central line taken out while still in the ICU (gag! and sorry for THAT visual!) the doctor placed a gauze over the open "wounds" to protect the area where the stitches had come out.  Well, the scars from the tape used to keep that gauze on left a rather nasty bit of scars - and I had the tape on for less than 24 hours!  Even new nurses coming on duty would notice the ugliness there - get a bit grossed out - and insisted on covering the mess with whatever "healing balms" they had on hand. (Thank you, nurses!) Two plus months later, my neck is still scarred (like a promiscuous teenager's!) and recently it hasn't improved much more than what it had in the first couple of weeks. I've tried seemingly everything I have in my arsenal and no luck!  I suppose that adding fuel to the fire, the tape was put on the very sensitive neck/throat area where it doesn't take much to mess things up.

• So, if you have even the slightest sensitive skin, ask the hospital staff to use "paper tape," or "silk tape."  Every hospital has it but since it's a bit more expensive than the regular tape, staff usually won't use it unless requested - or you find yourself with a young doc in the ER who does care how your neck looks for the rest of your life - even when you're an old bag such as me!  In economizing, the hospitals have become "penny wise but dollar foolish."  But don't even get me started on that! Example: two of the almost three weeks I spent in the hospital were freezing, so much so that the staff wore coats and jackets when away from their stations and kept them on until a supervisor of some sort would give them a nasty look which would say, "do you realize how unprofessional you look?"

And finally, may I say how much I'm loving the summer TV shows?  But I suppose that's another post.  At this point I can only say, "Thank goodness for cable" and OnDemand!  Now if I could only figure out how NetFlex works, as well as downloading movies onto my iPad, I'd be an ecstatic camper!

As always, I hope everyone's doing their very best - only better!  Ciao and paka.


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Friday Tidbits: WHAT's With My Face?

An extremely short post today since life hasn't been too "good" this past week.  It was a wicked week with a dental appointment which lasted 4 hours in prepping me for some more dental work to come in about another two or three weeks.  That was the highlight of my week.  The appointment itself was actually easy-peasy since my dentist was as supportive and kind as ever (knock on wood!).  Getting out the door, however, was a different story.  Orthostatic Intolerance and POTS was out the wazoo.  My BP was bottoming out once again with numbers in the 75/50.

The highlight of my week, on the opposite side of the spectrum, is that I was thrown a curve ball.  It appears that I have either shingles or Bell's Palsy of my left eye/face. Yesterday we ran over to our local "Med Express" (or whatever they're called) since we realized it was too late to run over to my GP, not to mention too inconsiderate even if he were still closing up for the day.  The doc checked for corneal abrasions, but after taking into account many factors (all the CFIDS/ME/CFS and fibromyalgia things) - poor guy - he said, "get yourself to the ER STAT."  We did.  But not before I asked him to look at my banged up toe - the one which walked into the door a few weeks ago.  I keep re-injuring it by just walking on it inadvertantly for a step or two. We decided I needed to buddy wrap the toe after all.

At the Emergency Room we found a bit of a story... and I happened to luck out with a really kind and take-his-time-to-listen-and-answer-questions doc. Since there was a woman in another ER room with Bell's Palsy, the ER doc felt that I was in the early stages of most-probably Bell's.  According to the ER doc, Bell's is contagious enough that once it gets into a community, it spreads and he suspects he'll soon be seeing a lot of Bell's Palsy. It was extremely painful: my normal BP of 90/60 was a whopping 155/90 - a definite "tell" of how much pain I was feeling.  Boy did I fall in love with the numbing medicine they put into my eye when they needed to examine it!

I was given a lot of "maybe's."  It might not get any worse than it is already.  It may get much worse.  It might be over soon; it might take weeks or months to get over it.  It may be shingles but it may be Bell's, but he thinks it's Bell's.  It may not be an infection, but it could possibly be an infection.  I got so confused with the many "maybe's" that I've forgotten what it is that I'm supposed to be looking for today!

Finally, this is a field I know nothing about so it looks as if I'm going to have to do a bit of research on the matter.  However, the problem is that I'm exhausted as in my normal "CFIDS exhausted" and exhausted as in "sick" exhausted.

However, the good news in all of this, that is, this week?  It's Greek Festival time!  You have no idea how much I look forward to this time of year.  Those Greek ladies at our church work at warp speed and their love of cooking and baking is loud and clear.  Further great news: it lasts from Wednesday through Sunday, so each day we pick up goodies and feast!  It's the one time of year that I eat cooked spinach, in the form of spanakopita.  Yum.  Moussaka: delish.  The list goes on and on.  During Greek Festival time, I don't even feel guilty about all the weight I put on.  It's the only time I think that eating for two is applicable.  This week the calories don't count - that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

At any rate, if you don't see me hanging around my blog much in the coming weeks, you'll know that I'm trying to fight this newest challenge.  And did I mention that not only is the eye painful, but that it's hard to see - thus read - out of it.

Bell's Palsy...really????  Seriously?

Until next time, I hope that everyone is feeling their very best - only better.  Ciao, paka, and αντίο!  Opa!



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