Frustrations…

I had the first three month follow-up CT yesterday morning.  To clarify, as I’ve re-entered the Land of Remission I will be enjoying a three month interval CT to make sure nothing is sneaking up on me.  I knew going into yesterday that it wasn’t going to be that great of a day.  I hadn’t slept much the night before and forcing myself out of bed before seven in the morning, I work nights you know, was rough.  More about the sleep thing later.

So, I arrived, drank my yummy orange flavored contrast stuff, had an IV inserted and after an hour or so got to lay down for the ten minute cruise through the CT donut, complete with my ever present mysterious guardian with the vaguely Australian accent reminding me when to hold my breath and when to breath.  Always glad he’s aboard as I might just forget to breath or something.

I was back home around 8:45AM and was taking off my coat when Marvina woke up and asked what I was doing.  I told her that I was just coming home from getting my CT.  She sounded a note of disappointment and expressed a bit of annoyance that I hadn’t woke her up to go with me.  This from someone who has way too much on her plate as it is and needs me to take on more of the load starting with the taking care of me.  But, while I still had one arm remaining in my coat, she switched over to asking me to drive her to her appointment with her psychologist.  I was pretty tired but more than happy to be her chauffeur.

After her appointment we came home, splashed water on ourselves and went out to purchase me a new laptop computer to replace my dead desktop (RIP).  Nice laptop too at a very nice price.  It lets me get back to doing the things that I do which largely involve a computer like blogging.  But first things first…

We heard from my Oncologist today.  Even though my appointment with him isn’t until next Monday he wanted to call to let me know that the results of my CT were in and that everything looked great.  There was a very minor case of hydronephrosis of the left kidney but that seems to be my normal operating mode.  Bottom line though is that I am still cancer free after stopping the chemo therapy back in June.  Now, about that sleep thing…

I had written in the past about some of the health issues, both physical and mental, that my wife has been enduring for the past couple of years.  Knowing what we know today it’s likely that those problems have been present to greater or lesser degrees of recognition for much longer than two years.  What the hell does that mean?  Greater or lesser degrees of recognition?  Huh?

Well, a few weeks ago there was a sudden and rather dramatic change in Marvina.  Her psychiatrist had decided to remove some of the nearly eight antidepressants Marvina was taking and replace them with new ones rationalizing that those being removed had somehow began to loose their efficacy.  Whoa!  With no warning Marvina became extremely agitated.  She could not sleep, could not sit still, was constantly on the move.  You would almost suspect that she was on some kind of amphetamine.  This came to a sudden crashing halt when she went to an appointment with her psychologist who took one look at her and told her to go immediately to a hospital emergency room.  No detours, straight to the E.R.  And it was on…

First we went to the hospital who, up to now, had been our primary choice for medical care.  The very same hospital where my cancer was found and removed.  The hospital which, again up to now, we had liked.

As Marvina was mobile and as we had our granddaughter with us, I dropped Marvina off at the E.R. door and with the granddaughter strapped into her seat went to park the car.  By the time we walked in the other grandmother had arrived to take the granddaughter for us and the hospital E.R. staff had committed a HUGE error in judgment.

You see, after signing in and getting her little plastic patient ID bracelet, Marvina collapsed at the E.R. sign-in desk with its staff of three.  They didn’t seem to notice until a stranger told them that there was a woman laying on the floor in front of their desk.  Being the vigilant and attentive health care professionals that they were they immediately responded by, and I shit you not, leaning over the counter and asking Marvina why she had decided to lay down on the floor.  Then, for icing on the cake, when Marvina didn’t respond, they brought a wheelchair around and told her to get up off the floor and into the chair.  No, they didn’t offer to help her up, just told her to do so.  I’m surprised they didn’t give her a kick in the ass to get her moving.  Marvina was, eventually, able to pull herself to her feet and, declining the chair elected to lean on the wall and wait on me which is about precisely when I walked in.

Marvina told me what had happened and my immediate reaction, other than the visceral desire to hurt someone, was to remove the ID bracelet from her wrist, slap it down on the counter and tell the three amigos that they were fired and that we would go to a different hospital.  This we did and Marvina was immediately whisked into E.R.

The initial diagnosis?  Serotonin Toxicity.  What’s this?  Okay, it’s simple, it’s when you have a massive overdose of serotonin in your body.  It attacks the core nervous system and can be fatal.  In effect it’s a poisoning of the brain.  How can this happen?  That’s what we’d like to know since it’s apparently an easily diagnosed and known problem that occurs when too many serotonin producing drugs are ingested, oh, like one might get from the eight fucking antidepressants prescribed by her psychiatrist.

Well, just telling that was starting to piss me off again.  I’ll wrap this up.  Marvina was admitted to the hospital where they stopped all of her antidepressants cold turkey.  Withdrawal has been hard and scary.  But we have noticed that symptoms she has had in the past that the doctors couldn’t explain and, in one case arrived at what I think is a bullshit diagnosis of fibromyalgia, all of these symptoms have disappeared or are in the process of doing so the longer she goes without the drugs and the more time her body has to shed whatever remains of them are still floating around inside.

So, here we are today.  On one hand we are happy about the results of my CT.  On the other we are very angry about what she has been subjected to over the past few years.  Very, very, very angry…