Quiet Month of August

Here are some synonyms for the word quiet:

"buttoned up, clammed up, close-mouthed, could hear a pin drop, hushed, inaudible, low-pitched, muffled, muted, noiseless, not saying boo, peaceful, quieted, reserved, secretive, silent, soft, soundless, speechless, stilled, tight-lipped, uncommunicative, unexpressed, nonspeaking, and whist."

I feel like this month, I have been reserved and uncommunicative. The bad days in August outweighed the good. That is extremely upsetting for me as I have had pretty good months since February. My husband had his appointment yesterday and we have two different views on how it went. I left feeling pretty rotten about the whole appointment and he left uplifted. Just goes to show you how different we are. Let's just make it succinct to say that he will be getting 6 IV's which will hopefully take care of a deficiency he has.

The good of the IV's will be that he *should* get more energy and it should bring up some nutritional levels that are really low. Since he's never had an IV before, our nurses should have no problems getting a vein. That will be very beneficial for him. The bad of the IV's is that we are finally *almost* out of the woods with my debts because of the things we've had to do financially. In September, he'll have 4 IV's. In October, he'll have 2 IV's and we'll both have follow ups. This doesn't include the financial burden of all new supplements for both of us. He says we'll make it and I just get really nervous and "clammed up." The other bad part is that these will take 4 hours out of his Saturdays. Fortunately my doctor's office is open on Saturdays, but who wants to spend their Saturday's at the doctors. Not to mention, these IV's are similiar to ones that I received at the beginning of my treatment. I know what they did to me and I fear they will do the same to him. I was able to be awake enough to drive home, but as soon as I got home I fell asleep for hours. They gave me tremendous headaches and he's already got those with the new medicine for Candida.

Speaking of Candida, He's already feeling the effects of Candida Treatment and he's talking about things I talked about 2 years ago. I think we found the bulk of his problem. Not Lyme, but Yeast. I won't even go to all the Cardiac problems we think (know) he has. It's too scary to think about. The good news is that he's lost many pounds of weight since his last visit. We're headed towards the right direction.

Now on to me: I have yet to start my LDN and I just get so nervous when I start new things. I need to just suck it up and take it, but the fear of the unknown has had me stalling for the last week and a half. I got one part of my blood work back and 3 of the numbers are out of range and 3 of the numbers are close to out of range. I have a fear that this means he'll want some IV work again on me. Two of us on IV's at the same time? There is NO WAY. I fear what the other blood work will show, but am grateful that they were able to show me the things that have come back.

So when do we go back?

The hubby goes back the first Saturday after Labor Day and goes for 6 Saturdays. On his 5th Saturday, I have my follow up appointment. On his 6th Saturday, I have my follow up appointment. I speculate we will both have bloods after that and then go back in 6 to 8 weeks unless we both are in need of IV's still at that point.

And PICC is a 4 letter word that I don't ever want to see again. Neither is PORT. The doctor says "IV" and those are the two four letter words that come straight to my mind. Well you might ask, "Well you've not had a PICC since February and prior to that no IV insertions since July of 08, why would it automatically mean PICC? Aren't your veins healing?" Well let me tell you a lil story.

A bit after my PICC was removed, they drew blood. You would think that after 7 months of no IV insertions or no regular blood draws that this would be a simple task. Uh no it wasn't. It was absolutely one of the worst experiences that I've had thus far. That was in February of this year. Fast Forward to August 19th. Keep in mind, I hadn't had an IV stick in over a year and I had only had blood drawn ONE time in over a year. The other times were through my PICC line.

I prepare for the blood draw by drinking LOTS of water. I see the Phlebotnist and warn her that I can be quite difficult to stick. Now in the last 3 years, I have yet to meet a Phlebotnist that could get me on the first stick. So I had high expectations of my dear friend who had never had the pleasure of drawing blood from me because only a qualified nurse can draw blood out of a PICC. She promised me it would be simple and easy and that the 13 vials of blood would be a piece of cake!

Because I have passed out in the past and I knew that I had passed out on a "simple" 8 vial draw, I requested to go to my old PICC room so that I could lie down if necessary. She gets things set up and says "Oh there is a beautiful vein." I do my breathing when the lady jabs me so hard that I felt my ears pulsing. She says she got it and starts filling the tubes. The whole time I'm praying, "keep flowing blood .. keep flowing" because I know what happens every time.

The blood always stops after 3/4 of a vial and then they have to jiggle the needle to squeeze blood out of turnip and it always turns into .. "Oh I have to pull this one and try again." Uh yeah it happened again. Two of them were pulling and prodding my arm trying to get the blood to come out, but in the end they pulled the needle and were ready to start again. I told them to go on to the next easy stick and come back to me later. They left me with my heating pad and water. The RN (whom I absolutely love) came back and said she'd work on finding the right vein for the blood draw. We worked together and finally found one.

After an hour, I finally left. Now I still have a small bruise on my arm where they manhandled me to try to get blood. SO you can see why when they say IV .. I think PICC.