Lately people don't seem to be taking what I say about my health as meaning anything. Of course, since 2009 I haven't said a whole lot because each day was true gift from God as I ran out of my medications. Just as I wasn't supposed to live by a few years beyond 2000, by quitting all my medications in 2009 I, by rights, should have died within a year. But God gave me the smarts to go looking for some alternative natural supplements to help me survive, and I have taken them very religiously over the past 4 years, even adding some others as I learned about them.
But my health has begun to decline in the past 6 months, slowly at first but more rapidly as of late:
1. The Left Hip
My left hip was hurting more and more and more. An x-ray showed that the hip joint was literally chipping away. I wasn't yet 60 years old and I had a very bum hip. The problem: avascular necrosis. The hip was not getting a sufficient supply of blood (or air) and it was dying, quickly. I went from a cane to a walker to a cart in a matter of weeks. All walking was unbearable. Sitting was unbearable. I was on a lot of pain medication and that fact was not pleasant. I hate not being in total control of things.
In Mar. 2000 I had the hip replaced, but there is a complication: the spike which is driven down in to the femur caused the femur to split, like a green-stick fracture. Soooo, I had a broken leg as well as a new hip. I recovered and my activities slowly increased. I did away with the cane and the then the scooter. It was an amazing day when I walked in to a grocery store and just grabbed a normal shopping cart and walked my way through the aisles. I was pretty giddy about the accomplishment!
My titanium hip, good for 10 to 15 years of use, in at year 13, and I am having troubles. At first I wanted to go to the ortho doc and get started on pain meds and make an appt to replace it, but something held me back. That something was a deeply buried memory about how acupuncture helped me out so much back in late 2008 that I went from unable to walk with Kent supporting me to walking on my own in just 2 visits. So I have an appt. with the same guy tomorrow 2-21-13 to see if he can help me out again. If not, then the old Plan A is back on my plate. Last weekend I took onl old hydrocodone 7.5 tablet and it broke the pain cycle. I slept without pain. I awoke with out pain. I walked for 3 days without pain, and when I did have pain again, it was lesser than before. That spoke very loud and clear to me about not an immediate need for surgery. We shall see.
2. Respiratory Function
I haven't been breathing properly since Thanksgiving, when I had a touch of the flu. Shortness of breath. Waking up in the night and having to sit up until the phlegm went down, or until I used Ventolin to open the airways. Always tried waiting first.
This goes back to my childhood. As an infant my eyes swelled shut from nastiness during my first summer. I am allergic to dust, trees, weeds, and mold. Nowhere on earth can I go to escape the except a "bubble".
I was restricted from playing outside in the spring and fall because of all the pollens. I couldn't mow the grass or rake the leaves. I was never able to attend a church camp because they didn't administer allergy shots during the week there, and I was getting shots twice/week. Yes, this breathing problem impacted my childhood! Of course it made me a very avid reader and a watcher of television, but first and foremost, an avid reader with a very wild imagination!
I had bronchitis at least 4 times per year up until I was 12, and at age 12 I had the first asthma attack. My doctor had to shoot me up with eppi in his office because my lips and fingers were so blue. Mom and I moved out of the house, but that night I took a turn for the worse and I was hospitalized for asthma. Oh that was a wondrous experience for a 12 year old! I was in the hospital for several days until they asthma broke. Imagine having to sleep propped up on 2 to 3 pillows or else not being able to breath. This is something a kid with bronchitis or pneumonia might experience once in a lifetime, but this was everyday life for me. Had to take my own pillows when I went to sleep over...
That marked a change in my life where I started to have to endure allergy shots from a specialist for the next 13 years. I was so sensitive to the weakened serum that I could only take one shot/week instead of the 2 they wanted me to take. And this for a girl who was terrified on needles and who would scream her bloody head off when given a shot for many of her younger childhood years (I used to have to have shots from a non-specialist for many years, starting when I was age 5, through age 12). I think I quit screaming about age 6. Still hate those blasted needles!
The average length of time a person stays with a specialist who gives shots is 5 years. I was with the specialist for 13 years. Bet I messed up the average length of years formula for lots of people after that! But it reached a point where they were no longing doing anything, so we decided to stop them and see what would follow.
In the mid 1980s I found myself back at the specialist (the one who had bought the old one's practice), and he put me on some medications. It was a big problem to find those which would work in concert with me and each other. I had boxes and boxes of unused sprays and inhalers that hadn't panned out well for me. I agreed to restart the shots again to see if we could build up some immunity, and this continued for a while.
3. Cardiomyopathy & Congestive Heart Failure
Then in 1999 things took a deep dive to the bottom. I started retain fluids, my legs started oozing plasma (and I still have the scars of those lesions,13 years later), I was having trouble eating, sleeping, functioning. I was totally fatigued each and every day. I had no life what so ever except to try and find the strength to keep it up. I was finally diagnosed with cardiomyopathy. After that fact we determined that I was retaining 25 pounds of body fluids. After Dr. Ravindra got me on Lasix, he turned me over to a cardiologist, Dr. Annan. As it turns out, I had an ejection factor of 15. That is roughly the pressure of the blood pumping out of the heart. Considering that and EF of 0 means the heart wasn't pumping at all, I was one sick little puppy. Dr. Annan was honest with me about my chances to live. Out of 100 patients equally as ill as I was, only 5 of would be alive after 5 years. My chances of living 5 years was very, very low.
It was the congestive heart failure that lead to all the water weight gain, and why I was on a high dose of Lasix. Fortunately, I was no longer retaining water by 2009, so I stopped taking it. Loss of benefits didn't impact this, for which I was grateful.
I had some problem with the digoxin, troubles which are described in dictionaries, word for word. as digoxin poisoning. Bloodwork didn't reveal excessive levels of the stuff, so I was told the start taking it again. In a pigs eye! This is when I came to understand that all drug dosages and side effects were geared for the mainstream. The one person in a thousand who has an different outcome is generally ignored because that person probably "didn't do something right". Right then and there I decided to become the squeaky wheel when it came to my side effects. Causes me stomach distress? Offer me something for the distress find me another drug that is better tolerated. Makes me hurt all over? Offer me something for that discomfort or find another drug that is better tolerated. If I report atypically signs/symptoms, I have them documented and maybe even photographed. I can be that one in a thousand patient, and I don't give a hoot if 9,999 other people tolerate it well, I do not and I refuse to take it. Find something else in your arsenal that might work. Think outside the drug rep box and find something for ME.
Just like when I had the hip replaced, my pain was poorly managed early on. One day I couldn't even get out the room and in to the hall to walk. The doctor came in and we discussed pain management and I suddenly found my pain relived. The rehab staff came back in for the afternoon session and I walked so far they decided to get me a wheel chair and roll me back to the room. Heck, I wanted to walk even farther that afternoon! I told that all it took was proper pain management. After having seen me
in the AM and in the PM, they agreed with my assessment.
Manage MY conditions, use drugs which work for ME, not for the friggin' herd out there, but for ME.
4. Loss of Health Benefits
I was forced to retire from Delphi in 2008. Everyone except a few executives with 30 years and over were all in the same boat. Come 2009 the company said that we care going to stop paying you any health benefits and life insurance all you salaried retirees. We think we can save millions of dollars by fucking you over this way. And they did. And oh, by the way, we are turning your 76 percent funded pension fund and turning it over to the PBGC, who will take up to 70 percent of what you currently earn and give you 30%. I lost 50 percent of my pension. Others fared worse than I , but many more did much better. And there was nothing that I could do. So now I am on a half pension that can never increase in payout for as long as I and Kent live. Not a single cent. There was one option to get in to retiree health care deal but it took all but 600 dollars of my reduced pension. Like I could afford THAT. So we've been without any health insurance since 2009. Don't think that this little deal didn't depress me! I went in to depression and haven't yet crawled completely back off. Need meds!
5. Meniere's Syndrome
I been living with Meniere's Syndrome since I was a child. I called it being a klutz back then, but looking back, the roots of my balance problems lie there. Pre-teens. This means it precedes asthma. I think that if my parents had paid attention, they'd have noticed the Meniere's too. But they attributed it to me being a tom boy. And no one really knew much if anything about it back in the early 1960s. I've seen the looks on doctor's faces when I tell them I suffer from it: yeah, right, she is just faking it. Walk a mile in my shoes, folks. Walk a mile in my shoes, where I can't walk a straight line stone cold sober. I can't walk from one room to another without having to touch a wall or a piece of furniture. And I lose my balance and literally fall from the outside of a tub IN TO the tub. Sounds like a balance problem to me, and I have the bruises to prove it.
It reared a very ugly head in the early 1980s, when I was at work. Everything was spinning, I had no depth perception, and I was nauseated. In fact, my step mother had
to come pick me up from work I was so bad that day. I've had other days just as bad, a few even worse. In 2008 it was so bad that I couldn't drive the car for several months. I didn't care if I wrecked the car, but the idea of causing harm to someone else was reprehensible, so Kent drove me to work and came and picked me up at the end of the day.
Spent time with neurologists, who just gave me Valium. Spent time with ear specialists who just triggered my problems but wouldn't declare it as Menieres. Then found a specialist who truly listened to all the testing I'd been through, read the list of signs and symptoms, and promptly announced that no matter that the ear specialist couldn't find I was clearly suffering from Meniere's. He gave me a pill that I just had to take once a day and lo and behold I began to see an improvement. The pill could also be had in the blood pressure medicine I was on, saving me one pill a day (when you take 13 prescribed pills twice a day, getting rid of one pill is wonderful!). To me, this neurologist walked on water! He agreed that if the new pill didn't work we'd try the Valium (which I'd taken myself off of months earlier), just let him know. That meant the world to me - a doctor who was listening and was willing to work with me!
6. Herbal and other Supplements
Amazingly, I have survived into 2013. No heart attacks, no severe asthma attacks which needed me to go to an ER. No injuries or other illnesses laying us low. If you don't think that God hasn't been watching out over us, someone needs to have their glasses change!!! We've found some herbal supplements which have helped. We've religiously taken Citrical plus D plus Magnesium, Zinc, Potassium Gluconate, Acai Berry, Cinnamon caplets, Black Chohosh capsules (me, not Kent!), Vitamin C, Flax Seed oil (Kent) and a combo of Borage, Fish oil and Flax seed at a dose my stomach can tolerate) for me. When we feel a cold coming on we use Zicam and up our C intake. Mucinex is our defense against coughing.
The doctors may not believe in it, but for nearly 4 years this has kept us,- mostly me - able to go on functioning without prescriptions drugs until at long last we now have health benefits!
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