Mothlady

When things go badly wrong, AKA The Hospital Saga

Yeah, my MS is back with a vengeance. And as a result, all kinds of things happened.

Before

As an amusing side note I'll tell you this first: I started taking ephedrine for the MS fatigue. This is not some sissy pseudoephedrine we're talking about here, this is the stuff that athletes take to enhance their performance. I had heard good things about it from other MS patients, so I was eager to test it. The effect was indeed fairly rapid: I was alert, I could think straight and for the first time in weeks I felt alive. Okay, I admit I got heart palpitations, hand tremors and my better leg started to tap dance, but who cares? I felt good, I could work, I could knit, I almost blogged. Did I mention this stuff is related to amphetamine? LOL. I did a bunch of mental notes like "remember to save some of this stuff for Christmas, re: Christmas mania and knitting", although I was afraid I might end up like Beavis in his Cornholio phase. "I am Cornholio..." But I digress.

But pretty soon I noticed the drug lost its effect, and in fact I was even more tired after taking the pill. I soon found out the reason for this.

My MS relapse was so bad that my neurologist suggested I would check into a hospital for the corticosteroid treatment, which was okay by me because I only had to spend the days there and I could go home for the night. They needed to do some lab tests before I went to the hospital, so a vampire dressed as a nurse punctured three holes in my arms before she could draw enough blood, so I had massive bruises on both arms. The next day I got a call: my blood sugar was 11.5 mmol/l. (It should be less than 6.) This was a new record for me, especially considering I hadn't eaten anything. So my type 2 diabetes (so far treated by diet) was acting up on top of everything else, and that and MS together were making me really tired. But that was just the beginning.

During

So I checked into the hospital which is supposed to be rated as number one in this country. (We'll come back to this later.)

The bulge on the right side of my hand is the intravenous cannula I had for three days. (The half-finished scarf under it is the Besotted scarf.)

I got the first dose of cortisone and everything seemed to be fine, except I was so sleepy I dozed off while waiting for the fluid to drip into my vein. On the second day they checked my blood sugar as a routine measure and it was 23! Cortisone can cause the blood sugar to rise so it was no surprise, but 23 was way too much. Anything above 15 is considered hyperglycemia, so I was passed over to the endocrinology department. This was when things started to go wrong.

They took one blood test and told me to go home for the night, when in fact I should have been given insulin. But the neurologist wanted the endocrinologist to do it, and the endocrinologist thought that the neurologist had done it. So, no insulin at all for me.

The next day I got the third and last dose of cortisone and my blood sugar was a staggering 27. I was feeling of course rather poorly, so they decided to give me six units of insulin. But at the last minute the nurse decided to give only four units because I was a first-timer. Of course it didn't help much because, as the doctor told the nurse, I really should have been given six units. Right. By this time I didn't pay much attention to them because I was so sleepy and dizzy, and I was discharged from the hospital. The only advice I was given was that I should keep a healthy diet. Diet? I was so ill that I couldn't even think of eating! Oh, and did I mention they erased all my info from their superduper computer on the first day? Apparently some secretary had been too eager in pressing the 'yes' key, so everywhere I went I got a blank stare and the words: "Umm,  you don't exist in this country." Yeah, right. They had of course the paper file too, but after it was lost in the hospital mail room the nurse asked me what my cortisone dosage was. As you can see, I was in really good hands.

After

When I got home I was so ill that I knew I needed more than just a diet to get healthy again. I called my doctor who told me to contact a nurse specialized in diabetes. Unfortunately none was available, so I ended up with one who knew next to nothing about diabetes. When I then went to see her on a Friday, she told me that I was supposed to learn how to inject insulin during the weekend - unsupervised. When I told her I would do no such thing, she still insisted on showing me how incredibly easy it was to check your blood sugar with a glucose meter. The thingy had twelve lancets which you use to puncture the skin of the finger, and after using all twelve of them the nurse hadn't been able to prick a hole in my finger. And I was supposed to check my blood sugar with it to decide how much insulin I needed? Uh-huh.

I then started taking diabetes medicine and it took some time to take effect. To tell you the truth I can't remember much about those couple of weeks. When your blood sugar is high enough, you feel awful. Really awful. Awful as in I'm-not-sure-if-I'm-going-to-live-through-this. Awful as in I-never-want-to-knit-again. I turned into a human camel, I couldn't stop drinking water. The scariest part was that I couldn't see. Blurred vision is one symptom of high blood sugar, so when I started knitting again I had to do it mostly by feel. My SO knew the worst was over when he came home and found me playing in an online poker tournament. (600+ players, and guess who won? Woohoo!) I knew the worst was over when I got an uncontrollable urge to start an Alice Starmore project.

I'm still recuperating and I have my good days and bad days, but I'm definitely getting better. The MS relapse is gone and I'm popping diabetes medicine, hoping it's enough. My doctor told me that this "very capable nurse" would call me when it was time to check my blood sugar levels again (as in once a week). Yeah, you guessed right. I'm still waiting for that call. Three cheers to our health care system.

October

"I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by." Douglas Adams

I finally mustered up enough strength to blog. My legs are pretty useless stiff, but the worst part is the extreme fatigue. Luckily I have the athletic prowess of a particularly lazy couch potato so it doesn't affect my everyday life much, but I'm practically housebound at the moment. I took the bus last week to see my dad and nearly lost one shoe! I didn't realize it had dropped on the floor as I can't feel a thing with my left foot and was about to hop off the bus when I noticed something was amiss. Thank goodness for that, it would have been sooo embarrassing. "Hey lady, you forgot your shoe!" etc. Heh.

I've worked as little as possible and spend most of my time resting and knitting. I felt like I needed some colour in my life and I knew that one yarn shop I had visited earlier had Fleece Artist merino in their online shop, so I was just waiting for an excuse to order it. And finally it came: my mom (who for example knitted all those socks for me) has cataract in both eyes and she had to go to surgery. One eye has now been operated on and she is quite excited about how different colours look all of a sudden, so I decided to give her something nice to look at. I bought five skeins of Fleece Artist merino so that she could choose which one she liked the best. Here they are.

If you want eye candy, go and can see all the colours here. That page definitely made an impression on mom. Oh yes. But the colours I've got here are (from left to right): Amethyst, Burgundy, Hercules, Marine and Origin. After a lot of oohhing and aahhing mom decided she liked Origin the best.

As I don't have the energy to do much, I use knitting to keep me entertained. (House, M.D. works, too. Have you seen it? Hugh Laurie is great in it!) Just today I've done swatches for Bpt, Rogue and Samus, but in the end I had to admit that the yarn wasn't right for them, so I ripped them. I'm itching to start something new, so I've been considering all sorts of projects. Of course it helps the planning process if you have a ridiculous amount of yarn. (Click on the pictures if you want to see them bigger.)

Next time (whenever that will be): a couple of FOs and one sweater that went to the frog pond.

TMI

This is a post I had hoped I would never have to write.

I have a neurological disease. Fortunately the subtype I have is a relapsive-remitting one, so most of the time you wouldn’t know there’s anything wrong with me. (So don’t think about Hilary and Jackie, that’s far too dramatic. Oh, and speaking of that film: Elgar’s cello concerto is the most beautiful classical music ever. Listen to it. Then weep.) But right now I’m in the middle of a relapse, and it’s quite a bad one. I’ve had this disease for nearly ten years so it’s nothing new for me, but the quiet period had lasted so many years that I had begun to hope that I'd never have to think about it again. So I stopped taking the medication. Or rather, I took it intermittently. Yeah, so sue me. But I didn’t always feel like sticking a needle into me three times a week.

So now I’m just hoping I don’t have to spend any time in the hospital. The treatment I get there is so severe that I always end up being in a worse condition. And then I have to take about three weeks of sick leave because I’m too tired to work. Which brings us to the good news. Oh yes, there is good news as well :)

Quite out of the blue, I was approached by a big client. Everybody wants to work for them because they pay a lot of $$$$$. So I was pleased when they told me that I was their first choice among the freelancers :) Remember how I blogged about my free weekends? I might have spoken too soon, because then ANOTHER client contacted me. If all goes as planned, I will work for three clients during this fall. So as far as work goes, everything looks good (except maybe for the free weekends).

38.7 C

Or 101.7 F. And no, that is not how hot it is in here, it's my fever. We got back on Monday and I've had the flu ever since. Bleh.

Wrapping up

Okay, where to start? Do you want the good news or the bad news? Let's start with the bad.

The employer that has been giving me problems lately is really going over the top with their antics and some people have even contacted their union to seek help. I feel like I'm watching a sinking ship. Also, I've had trouble with my health. Within a week I had discogenic back pain, migraine and cracked a tooth on a shrimp sandwich.

The good news is that for a person who's idea of a wild night is frozen pizza and some online texas hold'em, I've been going out quite a lot lately. I went to a concert with my SO, got an invitation to a film premiere and had a girls' night out. Oh, and we renovated the hallway. Well, actually we didn't do it. My sister's husband knows how to do these things and we hired him to do it. Now that we know how to do it, we might actually try it at some point because the rest of the apartment seems kind of shabby now... It's amazing what a coat of paint and new skirting boards (is it 'baseboards' for Americans?) will do.

And I've been knitting, too. But not much.

It's all about the process, peeps.

It was 25 C (77 F) today, so spring is here at last!

How tired can you be?

I've sleeping a lot lately, but I still feel tired. It seems I can't concentrate on anything for more than five minutes at a time, which is having a drastic effect on my work and knitting. And it snowed today, a lot. Usually this would cheer me up, but today I could have used the sunshine. Anyone else having the spring blahs?

Alyssa wrote:

Yowza! That's some big money! More yarn? :)

Yes, more yarn for the moths... No! I'm determined to use some of my stash before buying yarn. (This doesn't apply to any silk or cotton yarn I'm buying. Don't look at me like that, I have to get some summer yarn.)

And Cookie wrote:

Oh, cute kitty! Did you know the cat would like the bed before you made it? I've been thinking of knitting one for my cat, but she doesn't usually sleep in things like that, so I don't know if she'd use it.

Yes, I did know that Bettina likes to have an array of various beds and blankets. And if it gets too cold, she'll crawl under the sheets and bed covers (last picture).

Cookie then continued:

As for mohair, my skin is pretty sensitive to it too. I don't have a problem knitting it, but my arms and neck would have a problem with rubbing against it. So maybe not an allergy exactly? I'm not sure how that works.

I think she could be right, the rubbing seems to be the reason for the "rash" (if that's what it is). And yes, Agnes, the long-sleeved shirt takes care of that problem. The sweater is very warm as it is, and with a shirt underneath it I'm ready for an expedition to Antarctica.

Speaking of warm sweaters, Lillehammer is crawling along at a snail's pace.

Heh, I'm determined to finish it though.

Mohair allergy?

What used to be this...

...looks like a boat now.

What does Bettina have to say about it?

"It's my bed and I'll squash it if I want to..." (It's also inside out. The tentacles are yarn ends. The small brown thing is Mr. Ratty, the faithful companion.)

And do you remember this?

It's Banff, which I finished back in November. I've been using it on and off since then, but I must admit it hasn't been one of my favourite sweaters because the skin of my arms itches when I use it and I get a weird rash. I suppose you all see where this is going, but I was a bit slow to catch on.

See those silvery fibres? 15 percent mohair. I know you can be allergic to angora or even wool, but mohair? I didn't notice anything while knitting it and it only dawned on me after four months of scratching that I should use a long-sleeved shirt under the sweater. What, me a dimwit? Nonsense!

Books, books, books

Finally my neck pain has subsided so I can sit in front of my laptop (and probably develop more neck pain for the future). I mean, what is this? I have a massage once a week, I see my osteopath once a month and still my neck is killing me. Ack. The good news is, I've got only three weeks left of the giganormous work project. And I'm right on schedule.

We got our winter clothes from the attic on Saturday. Considering my aversion to shopping for clothes, I can't understand how my wardrobe is so full. And why do the clothes tend to shrink in the closet? Hmph. I went through everything and now I've got two boxes full of clothes which I'll sell in the flea market or will give to charity. There's always something cathartic about cleaning closets and getting rid of clutter.

I'm sewing the seams of Banff, which seem to be endless. Maybe I should go back to my old way of knitting everything in the round. But I don't mind really, because it's a good excuse to avoid that purple mass on the living-room table. Even finishing the long-drawn-out cotton projects seems like a good idea. Anything but the purple dental floss, which is driving me crazy.

Talking about crazy, I went a teeny weeny bit nuts on Friday night. It all started when I saw Rachael's beautiful Cromarty. I did a quick Google search and found one site that claimed the pattern was in Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting. I thought my memory was failing me once again, so I trotted off to the bookshelf to see for myself. Nope, no Cromarty there, only the lovely St Brigid. So off I go to Amazon to get the Cromarty book. And if I'm getting books all the way from the US, I might as well get that scarf book I've been meaning to buy for so long. Yikes, I still haven't read Yarn Harlot's two books. I simply have to get them, otherwise I'll be a social outcast in knitting circles and we can't have that, can we? And then there's that wonderful teddy bear book which Spinnerella has so shamelessly promoted in her blog. Into the shopping cart it goes... Ooh, and I have to get some gifts for Christmas.

I had to stop when I reached the limit after which one has to pay extra taxes. At least I'll have something to read in December. I can't wait.

Updating a bit

Today's post has minimal knitting content, so my apologies to anyone who's looking for some fiber-related action.

Norma gave some sound advice on preventing colds and flus, sinus infections etc. Go read it, if you haven't already done so.

We went to the local vet today with Bettina and I'm glad to say the news were fairly good. I'm always a nervous wreck before, during and after these visits, and it doesn't help that with a sixteen year old cat the news are not always good.  A week ago Bettina went to her usual checkup and her systolic pressure had skyrocketed to 200, but we thought the reason was that she hadn't gotten her medicine for hypertension. We put it in her food and she is really picky with it, so there's a real danger that she doesn't get enough of the medicine. Also, she had lost some weight, she vomited every now and then and her teeth needed cleaning. All classic signs of kidney failure (she was diagnosed chronic renal disease years ago) or thyroid problems, so we were quite worried. So, for a week we fed her all kinds of delicacies and made sure she got her medication. Imagine our relief when the tests showed that it wasn't anything thyroid related, kidney tests were okay, systolic pressure was down to a normal 140, her weight was up and vomiting has stopped. So we're all clear for the next checkup in three months, hurray!

We went to the circus on Monday. I was very dubious at first as I don't want to endorse any type of abuse of animals, but as far as I could tell, all the animals (dogs, cats and birds) were happy and healthy and they weren't forced to do any unnatural tricks. Sadly, this is not the case with all circuses. I'd probably still prefer that there were no animals, as human entertainers are enough for me at least.

I finished Melissa Bank's The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing some weeks ago and forgot to post about it. This book left me baffled. Cosmopolitan describes it as 'a sexy, funny, pour-your-heart-out, champagne tingle of a read'. Okay, the main character is really witty, but funny? The first three quarters of the book made me really sad, as it was all about the difficulty of finding and maintaining a meaningful relationship. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood for this, but all the relationships seemed somehow warped, abusive or otherwise doomed. Still, I'm glad I kept on reading because the last quarter of the book was really sexy, funny, pour-your-heart-out etc. I even went to the library and got the author's second novel, The Wonder Spot.

I got some Addi bamboo circular needles for the Mystery Shawl 2 and it was significantly easier to knit the second clue with them. But I'm still learning, all this lace stuff is completely new to me. I did put a lifeline after the first clue, but didn't need it in the end. Today I will tackle the third clue, hopefully I can catch up with the others as the fourth clue will be posted on Friday.

It's getting chilly, so we'll get the winter clothes from the attic next weekend. Thank goodness I have Eris to warm me now. I feel like Robin of Sherwood every time I look into the mirror, and even SO was saying how good it looks.

Up and about

This is the first day that I actually felt normal again. It's not fun being ill, but I noticed I had some good company. Norma, Yarn Harlot and Stitchy all fell victim to this. But now I'm up and about and I've got a million things to do that I should have done while I was coughing my lungs out. This heinous flu didn't prevent me from knitting, but there were times when even knitting didn't seem like a good idea. Here's Mystery Shawl 2 after clue number 2.

And I'm knitting the second sleeve of Banff.

Tomorrow: Bettina's visit to the vet because of hypertension, more on that later.