Feeling better doesn't mean much

So apparently feeling better doesn't mean that I'm all better. I had my check up on Monday and the physician told me that over the next couple months I still have to watch myself because of the type of complications I had after the first surgery. Speaking of the complications from the first surgery... So they finally told me exactly how bad it was. For any of you that know anatomy, you know where your small intestines are and how they're situated. For those of you who don't, basically they kind of sit smushed together in the center of your abdomen kind of near your navel and your large intestine kind of makes a circle around it. So anyway, my adhesions were so bad that my small intestines had gathered near the site of my removed appendix. Isn't that insane?! My body hates me.

Oh and our flat has officially become the sick bay of Bachelors Walk. Because of my multiple trips to the hospital, Meghan is now sick too! Totally my fault... I feel so bad. At least now I can kind of take care of her? Ha ... not really. I went shopping for like 45 minutes today and had to lie down for like 3 hours. I'm so lame. What did I do while laying down? Watched one of the two Korean dramas that I will watch, My Name is Kim Sam Soon. Mostly because I'm basically her... without the crazy contract relationship.

Anywho, Meghan has now started a blog too! Hers is megsmindful.blogspot.com check it out!

Lough Eske Castle

Yesterday Meghan (my flatmate) and I rented a car and ventured up to Donegal where we had a one night "romantic" stay at Solis (Hotel) Lough Eske Castle. I have only stayed at a castle one other time in my life, back in high school with our choir in France, and it was just as good as I remembered... if not better. Better because I wasn't thinking/stressing about random people seeing me (and a bunch of other folk) sing and judge us. Haha. I got a TravelZoo voucher which included a full Irish breakfast and a 25 euro credit to the spa for each of us! And it was only 77 euro all together for the stay! http://www.solishotels.com/lougheskecastle/ ... I'll admit it. I looked at their wedding packages. The only issue (besides me not having any money nor any prospective husbands) would be you kind of never know if the weather will hold in Ireland. Ha. I wouldn't mind but I'm sure many people would.

But oh my goodness this place was gorgeous. (Pardon the crap photos but I of course forgot my camera so had to use my iPhone.)

Meghan really excited for the castle

Meghan really excited to eat lunch at the castle

That night I had half a roast duck with apple and pear chutney with some vegetables and a warm chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream for dessert. Oh and I finally had my first Jameson and cranberry after my surgeries! I was definitely ready for a good night's rest and it surely was. I forget how nice hotel beds can be. And it was so beautiful and quiet!

Today we woke up and Meghan went for her spa treatment and I went down to shove my face with food. It was your regular buffet Irish breakfast food. So good though because you could put as much or as little as you wanted. I also had a small chocolate croissant with coffee. Oh the deliciousness. I then went to my own spa appointment and had the BEST MASSAGE I HAVE EVER HAD. This girl was amazing. She got the two ginormous knots out of my low back that have been plaguing me since the surgery. It definitely was "hurt sooooo good."

Any who, tomorrow the Queen of England arrives but I leave to go to England! Go figure. It's okay everything is getting shut down anyway so it'll just be a hassle to be here. So expect a post about England soonish!

Feeling better doesn't mean much

So apparently feeling better doesn't mean that I'm all better. I had my check up on Monday and the physician told me that over the next couple months I still have to watch myself because of the type of complications I had after the first surgery. Speaking of the complications from the first surgery... So they finally told me exactly how bad it was. For any of you that know anatomy, you know where your small intestines are and how they're situated. For those of you who don't, basically they kind of sit smushed together in the center of your abdomen kind of near your navel and your large intestine kind of makes a circle around it. So anyway, my adhesions were so bad that my small intestines had gathered near the site of my removed appendix. Isn't that insane?! My body hates me.

Oh and our flat has officially become the sick bay of Bachelors Walk. Because of my multiple trips to the hospital, Meghan is now sick too! Totally my fault... I feel so bad. At least now I can kind of take care of her? Ha ... not really. I went shopping for like 45 minutes today and had to lie down for like 3 hours. I'm so lame. What did I do while laying down? Watched one of the two Korean dramas that I will watch, My Name is Kim Sam Soon. Mostly because I'm basically her... without the crazy contract relationship.

Anywho, Meghan has now started a blog too! Hers is megmindful.blogspot.com check it out!

The sick saga continues

It has now been about a month since my second surgery and I thought it would probably be time for an update. Since I don't really do much else besides sit on my computer, attempt to do my assignments and end up watching "So You Think You Can Dance?" and other shows/films that I love.

So what's been up the last month? I entitled this post the way I did because I still am, and I'm not saying this to invoke any kind of "Aww poor thing" responses, sick. At the beginning, I was okay with not being able to walk more than five minutes and getting super disgustingly sweaty if I did walk five minutes. I was okay with (unfortunately) not being able to shower every day because of the open wound (which by the way has closed, hooray!). This "being okay" lasted for about five days. Then it just got annoying.

And I'm still there. Yeah the achy, stingy pain on either side of the scar is waning and I can confidently say almost gone but now I've lost the will to eat. And this getting tired after walking (and maybe it's the speed at which I am walking) is getting real old, real fast. Going back to the losing the will to eat... If you know me, at all, you know that one of my primary joys in life is eating delicious food and enjoying it, especially with people that are important to me. I like giving food, I like getting food, I like judging food (most of my judgments are degrees of deliciousness, it's hard for me to find a food that I don't like. Honestly one of my "dreams" is to be a food critic but I'd be so bad at it because there aren't many food that I don't like).

So with all that in mind, and again for the folks that have seen me eat and the crazy quantities that I could eat, you may start to see how crazy this is driving me. Not only am I not hungry, for the second time in my life, I don't want to eat. Don't worry it's not because I'm going anorexic. It's because every time I eat, I get this searing, knife-stabbing pain in my upper abdomen. I was going insane last night because of the pain. Like the nerd I am, I started thinking about what organs were by the area of pain. Then I thought, "Wait a tick. Referred pain.... What organ refers pain to this area?" Of course about 95% of my brain was concentrating on not yelling in pain so I wouldn't freak my flatmate out and the 5% just had that thought so I resorted to my Netter's Anatomy app on iPhone. You know what organ refers pain to the area that I was experiencing pain in? THE SMALL INTESTINE. My body is literally telling me to not eat so I don't have to digest and send anything into my intestines. Again, I feel as though my body is rejecting me.

Not only that, and again please do not misconstrue this next part as a plea for sympathy, I think I wrote about this before but the depression kicked in at the hospital and persisted. It doesn't help that I'm going through some other personal issues but being cooped up inside and feeling like a burden on my flatmate is starting to make me feel even worse. To make matters worse, she is sick and last night she told me that she thinks it's because I'm sick and she's getting sympathy sick. I know that it could happen but it didn't make me feel any better at all. In fact, it made me feel like a total jerk for being sick. What can I do though? I try to shut myself in my room so she doesn't have to see me but she likes to come in and check on me. She is such a trooper and I feel terrible for putting her through this.

BUT we've got things to look forward to. We're going to a gig on the 1st of June, I think we may go visit one of my dear friends in England and we're going to Galway (it'll be the first time for me seeing as how the ex never took me for my birthday)! I'll finally get to see the famous west coast of Ireland and take more photos! Oh, and for sure I will back update about March. Now actually so scroll on dear readers!

Home!

Thank God I'm home! Seriously thank God because the doctors told me after the surgery I went through I was supposed to be in hospital for another couple of weeks but through the grace of God I'm OUT!!!! Had my first sleep at home and it felt good. I forgot how comfy my bed is. Oh and Flufferson likes it too.

My lamb that Eddie got me

Anyway, sorry if the last post freaked people out. I will be back updating about March soon-ish. Ish.

The sick saga

Being sick sucks. (warning gruesome photo ahead)

I started out last week with what I thought was period cramps. The next day I started yelling and screaming in excruciating pain. Meghan thought it was the contraceptive cramps and reminded me of how bad hers were. It made sense. So I told myself to suck it up and take it. But it seriously felt like dengue but concentrated in my abdomen. It was like stabbing and wrenching altogether in my body. Oh and also that my body decided to reject all my organs. That was fun.

The next day (30/03/2011) wasn’t much better…. I stayed in bed and  realized that I may in fact have appendicitis. So, I texted the trusty flatmate and she said “Hospital?” And thank the Lord we went because it turned out that my appendix actually burst. And there was pus around it and other organs. Good times. That was one of the most excruciating cab rides of my life AND I walked to it. I’m not one to brag but I was a soldier that day. They pretty much admitted me right away and put me in the plaster room at the time because there was no space but then they ended up putting me in an actual room. Doctor after doctor after nurse after nurse kept coming in and telling me “soon… soon… soon” and also the timeline. I was getting a bed first and THEN going into surgery… but thank GOD again that a theatre opened up and I was wheeled straight to surgery.

In the anesthetist’s room I was sooooo discombobulated. So many things were going on and I didn’t know where to place my concentration. It didn’t help that I couldn’t see so that was out. Eventually they got everything together and then they had me hold the mask on my face and the next thing I remember is being in recovery! No, “okay countdown” or “we’re going to start now…” just BAM! Gone.

Then I was wheeled up to a room of 6 people and I was the youngest by at least 20 years. Well, four out of us are 69 and above. One woman was around early 40s I’d say. But in any case, there was this one woman, who was excruciatingly annoying. Like she was all in everyone’s business all the time. Such a gossip. It was almost like God’s way of saying, “See? This is what happens when you’re a gossip.” Oh and I ended up looking like this:

Hospital fashion

The next day I felt pretty okay but then the horror began. It felt again as if my (now non existent) appendix blew. Every time I moved it was painful. I had been vomiting like crazy and so I had an NG tube put in… That was so not fun! They started sucking everything I had in my stomach out because nothing was going the other way. Good times. It took a few days but I got an x-ray and then a CT and it was confirmed that I had an obstruction. I had an open surgery and this time I made sure to take more notice of when I was going to sleep. In the anesthetic room, the doors broke so for a while it looked like we wouldn’t be able to get out. It was pretty funny actually. They had me hold the mask again and I tried to really take notice of what was going on but it was not happening. OUT super fast again. Haha.

(At the end of this paragraph is the promised gruesome photo... I just know some people like this stuff that's all... Haha) Since the surgery, I’ve been in a lot of pain again but honestly more than anything, it’s been more like I just want to get out of here. I was on a self-administering morphine drip but it kept making me sick. So then they put me on Demerol but that made me dizzy. So then I was on basically nothing much for a day and that was like the most excruciating day of my life. I was in so much pain. It felt like I was dying all over again. But I think that was an important turning point. Since then, I’ve been on oxynorm and oxycontin but I try to not use it very much because of the constipation factor. But I definitely feel SO much better! Even though I look like this: 

March comes in like a lion, goes out like a lion?

To try to fit a month in one blog post is seemingly ridiculous and impossible but I'm going to do it. And I will try to do it as concisely as possible.

The beginning of the month started of absolutely swell. It was the second to last week of class AND the week of gigs. The first of the month started off with one of my favourite bands, Yellowcard. They are back and with a FORCE. Their new songs are not only reminiscent of their old stuff but shows a maturity as well. I may have been the oldest there, save the parents of the children, by like 10 years but it was still a great show. Then the fifth, the flatmate and I cashed in on my Christmas/birthday gift to her... Ray LaMontagne! Although we were the only non-couple there, it was a great time. He is absolutely phenomenal live and we were both in tears at one point or another.

Then it was the last week of lectures for our programme, which went really well. It was nutrition and global health and while I knew a lot of the stuff they were talking about, it was cool to see/hear a lot of the articles that I've read materialised. But enough about the boring stuff...

Now March... and Ireland... what could possibly go on in March, in Ireland? Oh that's right ST. PATRICK'S DAY! Celebrating this day in Ireland was on my bucket list and I am so happy that I got to strike it off! My friend Esther and I went to watch the parade and froze our heinies off but it was a very interesting parade.

The theme of the parade was based on a short story called, "Brilliant!"  Hence, the weird craziness of a parade.

See? Super weird parade things

Pinkified version of the Fluffy from Harry Potter

Then the flatmate and I went and started the evening off around 5pm with a pint of Guinness! I told myself that I'd last until 10pm and I did! Just barely. Our friends were having a little too much fun with me being a lightweight so much so that I called it quits right around 10:02pm.

Ah but the day after St. Paddy's was a glorious one indeed! We started off with brunch at a fantastic little place called Elephant & Castle and then we went to St. Stephen's Green (not a pub here like in Mountain View, a beautiful city park) armed with Club Orange (poor man's version of Orangina) and champagne. The flatmate and a new friend insisted on the champagne mostly because they said that if they didn't start drinking again, they'd have the worst hangovers. I believed them and wasn't going to let a thing like a hangover ruin that beautiful day.

St. Stephen's Green

Cheers!

Yes we robbed that Care Bear from a chipper...

After a weekend of recuperation, it was time to start the assignments. And I tried, I really did. I got my ethics in and everything. I was getting geared up for my Kenya trip and was getting more and more stoked for it. God had a different plan. On the 29th of March, I started having severe abdomnial pains which I attributed to lady cramps. The next day did not get much better... and if you want to know the rest of the story read the "The Sick Saga" post.

Fin. (of March)