him: "It was soooo awesome, not like anything else. I pretty near passed out. I just wanted to crawl inside you and hug your soul"

"They" always said the way to a mans heart is throught his stomach, but I'm pretty sure it's through a blowjob...

I have a doctor's appointment on Monday. This is not a normal appointment - a routine checkup. This time there is something wrong. I 've actually waited quite some time to visit my physician, but things are making it hard for me to wait any longer.

A few years ago I visited my gynecologist for my yearly exam. I told her that I wasn't having regular periods, so as a precaution she did a blood test before starting me on the pill. My test came back showing high levels of prolactin, and the doctor told me that it might be a good idea to go in for an MRI. She didn't explain anything in detail, and I shrugged off her suggestion after the pill regulated my periods.

I didn't think any more about it until recently. I went off the pill for about a year, and I started up again about 2 months ago. In the last few months, I've had some symptoms that I'm really concerned about. I feel weird describing them, but at the same time I feel like I need to talk about it. Basically, I've been getting severe headaches on a daily basis. I haven't really told anyone about the amount of pain that I've been in, because I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me. I've also had discharge from my breasts, and pain with sex. These symptoms, along with my previous blood tests, point to prolactinoma.

Prolactinoma is a pituitary tumor which produces the hormone prolactin. This hormone is responsible for lactation in pregnant women, and it is completely unexpected in women who are not pregnant. The tumor is responsible for all of the symptoms that I've exhibited, and it is virtually the only cause of this combination of symptoms. For this reason, I am 100% convinced that this is my problem.

I go to see my doctor on Monday, and he will hopefully tell me what to do from here. I am really afraid that my suspicions will be correct. The worst thing that could happen to me is that I will end up living my life in a similar way that I have been - in pain. Infertile.

That's another thing that is very strange to me. I don't want to have kids now, but the idea of not being able to is scaring the shit out of me. I was watching tv today, and I saw this 18 year old girl who was having trouble delivering on the discovery channel. I started thinking about how unfair it is that teenage girls can have unwanted pregnancies, but someone like me who may actually have something valuable to pass on to another generation may never have the opportunity to have children. It started me thinking about all the time I've put into not having kids. Now I am starting to think of the process in a completely different light.

So I will go to the doctor on Monday. Hopefully he will help me to end this immediate suffering. Hopefully I will not be introduced to any future pain.


October 30, 2002 UPDATE: I went into the doctor and had a blood test, which confirmed normal levels of prolactin. This pretty much clears me of the prolactinoma scare, which is a really good thing. I feel kinda silly for making such a big deal out of everything before I had any confirmation, but I appreciate everyone who sent me their good wishes.

First off, I would like to thank the editors for helping me clean up all my copy and paste nodes. When I started out here on E2, I created a lot of these nodes from FAS.org thinking the information there was open and in the public domain, so I didn't worry about it, I thought everything I had noded was free of copyright. However this was not the case. I have been working with one really great editor who was really patient with me and did not put too much pressure on me to clean up my act. I sent several emails back and forth with FAS.org and they have let me know that everything is indeed copyright them. So now I have cleaned up my and ready to get nodding again.

Second... Its converstion weekend here still. We are still plugging away at cleaning up the core banking system we used and implementing the new system. THe CIF 20-20 program we will be using is a lot better and easier to use, plus it has a lot of new features. While its still a green screen emulation from AS/400, it is menu driven instead of command driven, making input of data more user-friendly.

It has been a lot of balancing and verification of data, to make sure we do not lose any money in the process or even any history. Things are going quite smoothly, except for the fact that its 8 o'clock and I am here at work, instead of home sleeping.

Ack.

Well the guy we have here is schizophrenic, not to mention completely insane, and he won't shut up, especially about thigns that I don't care to hear, such as which babe on tv he would like to stick it to, and how.

And my car is officially dead.

Started it up this morning, and it sounds like a lawnmower, it chugs and its lost all its power, I can't even get the thing to go past 20kmh with my foot flat to the floor.

My campaign to get my soon to be little sibling named "Crab" is failing. Dang.

This is the week from hell and it just needs to be over, right now.

It started last Saturday at 12:30am when I had to take Mom to the ER because her CHF (congestive heart failure) was acting up. They, of course, admitted her. They generally do, in order to make sure she get rid of the fluid that is in her lungs, etc. However, they decided that she needed a heart catheterization to figure out if her heart was working properly. And, since this is the week from hell, of course it wasn't working properly. One of the bypasses from 4 years ago had become 99% blocked in 2 places and thus Mom needed heart surgery.

We are now up to Tuesday afternoon, just about the time Mom is going into the surgery she had to be transported to Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, OH for. Sara, wonderful thing that she is, volunteered to drive me up and stay with me.

Mom gets out of surgery, but there have been complications - the collagen plug they put in the arterial puncture to stop the bleeding popped out, and Mom had to have some very painful, torture-device lookin' thing that put constant pressure on the puncture side. It was decided that Sara and I would stay in Columbus that night, in case Mom needed us, and off we went to sleep at the Radisson for the night.

Meanwhile, back in Marietta, Dan was not dealing well with my being gone. This was the first time since we'd been together that we spent a night apart, more than 20 minutes away from each other. 20 minutes, 2 hours. Big difference. Dan dealt by getting quite drunk and then babbling at me on the phone about missing the small things that show that I am there. Then, I couldn't say that I was feeling too much better, myself.

Forward to Wednesday morning, I call the Invasive Recovery Unit to find out how Mom is doing. They tell me that she is going to have stay another day, because she had some bleeding problems during the night. *sighs as a few cracks find their way into her wall - the wall that is holding her together and keeping her from breaking under the stress* Sara and I stuck around until after dinner, and then returned to Marietta. It is now 11pm, on Wednesday. Now, mind you, I have missed 2 days of classes while I was in Columbus, and 2 days of work. Just remember that those stressors are indeed still a factor in hell-week. Thursday dawns, and I find out one of the decent pieces of news for the week - the PN test I had on Monday, 1 hour after I was told Mom needed heart surgery, and for which my brain was very much elsewhere, some how managed to score an 83%. Woot.

I went to work for the first time all week, and actually found another decent bit of news - I didn't have to get complicated with the guys' dinner, which made life easier for a couple hours. After work, I knew Dan was at work, and wouldn't been home until 11pm, and so I took a drive. And somehow ended up at his grandmother's. And then his mother's. Teresa made sure I ate dinner, and relaxed for a bit before letting me go home. This was the eye of the storm, this few hours at Teresa's.

I got home, and not 5 minutes later, my aunt Sheila called while I was on the phone with Kayte. She needed to tell me that my uncle John was in the ICU, very sick, and they did not know what was wrong, and could I please call my mother to let her know. *watches more cracks spread in the wall, as she breaks for a few minutes* I clicked back over to Kayte, to find that Sara was on the phone. This meant that Sara got to hear me break down. About 10 minutes later, she showed up at my house. *smiles* I somehow managed to find sleep that night, which was good, considering that I had a new clinical rotation to start at 7:45am on Friday.

I made the determination that I really don't care for Selby General Hospital, as I was running around during clinical. Any hospital where you have to wait for the single washer and dryer to finish the laundry so you can have clean linens for the hospital beds is just wrong... Add to this, my aunt Sheila, cousins Tabitha and Deborah, and other assorted family members being just within sight to me all day, but my being forbidden by my nursing instructor to go down to ICU while I was on the floor. My aunt Sherry (uncle's wife) came out to talk to me for a minute, and collapsed on my shoulder, scared and crying and trying so hard to be strong and brave for her very ill husband. Thank gods for "nursing mode" or I would have collapsed then, too. But no, I'm learning to be detached, yet caring. Able to help someone else through a situation, without being drawn down into it, myself. This only works when there is someone to help present. As soon as I retreated to the nurse's lounge, I broke. Just as my instructor came in. Mrs. Long was treated to a crying, hiccoughing student when she entered the lounge. Thankfully, she just told me to take a few minutes to pull myself together, and to not worry about picking up lunch trays - that the other students would get them.

Then we heard "Code Red, Medical Records" over the intercom. Code Red is fire, by the way. Myself, the other students, and the nurses were running all over the place, shutting patient doors, moving carts, wheelchairs, etc. to one side of the hall, shutting fire doors, and so on. Blessedly, the fire was quickly contained, and as far as the patients knew, it was a fire drill.

I held it together through the end of clinicals, and got myself off the floor and over to ICU. This is when I got the details about my uncle - that his kidneys had completely shut down, his liver was trying to shut down, he has peritonitis (an infection in the abdominal, or peritoneal cavity), and massive toxins in his blood due to all of the above. *frantically tries to patch the cracks that are appearing* I went home, changed clothes, got some food, and then went back to the hospital. The decision was made to send uncle John to Columbus for dialysis, since Selby General did not have dialysis equipment. Unfortunately, Life Flight was grounded somewhere, so he would have to travel by ground in the Mobile ICU Unit. This was about the time The Family started arriving. Uncle Bill (sick with leukemia, himself) and his wife Joyce drove in from Virginia. Sonny, Bill's daughter, drove in from Michigan, all John's kids were here, John's other half-sisters were here, his cousin drove in from North Carolina, etc. This is generally what happens when our family goes onto a kind of "death watch."

Yeah, this has been the week from hell, and I will be heartily glad when it is over, or I am going to go quite noisily crazy.


Update: My mother is home from the hospital now, sporting a black-purple bruise from 3 inches above her left knee up to the lower abdomen. Uncle John is no better, no worse, though they have found out that all of it is caused by a reaction to a medication he was known to be allergic to.

It rained all night last night. This afternoon the football field looked like chocolate pudding with green sprinkles.

And we had to march on it, when one of the songs in our performance is played at a tempo of 170 beats per minute. In 3/4 time.

I realize that anyone who has never been a member of a marching band does not understand how hard it is to march in time at such a fast pace. Even when the field is in good condition, this is somewhat of an incredible feat.

It is about 30x more difficult when the field is more mud than grass.

It was like marching through chocolate cake. Our feet stuck and we stumbled, we worked our muscles to their fullest potential to keep from sinking into the gooey mess.

The girl beside me almost fell three times.

Amazingly, we made it through the entire performance without one person falling. I'm actually rather proud that we made it through it, but if I had the chance to relive it, I'd probably make sure it didn't happen.

I'm officially unemployed. This isn't news, really. Anyone who knows me already knows this.

I'm in a small town, with few friends, few opportunities to acquire same. Again, not exactly "stop the press" time.

The same small town which makes seeking friends difficult, also make seeking employment difficult. I've got four local newspapers here (where "local" is "anything within about fifty miles") and still effectively zero job prospects. I can't even wait tables.

And then Saturday came along.

I've been writing letters to (and, less frequently, even receiving letters back from) the lovely Christine, my favorite ex. I never had quite gotten over her (even though, at least the most recent time we broke up, it was my fault, er, my decision), and I realize now that I never shall.

On Saturday, I pulled myself out of bed entirely too early, and drove down to Cape Girardeau to see her. It's been three years, and she's every bit as beautiful as I remember. (If she were reading this right now, of course, she'd be laughing hysterically at the notion that she's beautiful. The fact that she's wrong would do nothing to change this.)

The subsequent thirteen hours were a lot of catching up, and more than a little bit of (re)discovery.

Some people laugh at the notion of a "spark" -- the notion that, just by touching someone, you can actually feel the connection, and know, on some very deep, very ancient level, that THIS is meant to be. It can happen, and it has happened. It happened between her and I in 1995, and again in 1998, and again on Saturday.

And after those thirteen hours, simultaneously the shortest and longest in my life, the only thing that was resolved -- and I think "resolved" is a somewhat specious word to use here -- is that neither of us seems to know what's going on.

She's there, with her decent paying job and at least two other men to deal with, and I'm here, with nothing but faint dreams and impossibly empty hopes of her.

Maybe I'm a hopeless romantic. I prefer to think I'm a hopeful one, but I don't know whether I can say that without lying.

maybe I'm just hopeless.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.