I Made It Again

Last week Thursday and Friday I had appointments at the clinic. Thursday’s was a Venous Doppler to see how the blood clot in my left arm was doing. The appointment on Friday was with my pulmonologist to hear the results of Venous Doppler and to see if I would be allowed to stop taking the Coumadin. However, the Doppler showed that the blood clot was still there but that it was a bit smaller so the decision was that I remain on Coumadin.

Even with having a busy Thursday and Friday I was determined to get to church on Sunday which I managed to do. I think it is always better to be in church rather than listening to the message at home by yourself.

Then on Monday the lunch lady brought her 10 year old son along so he and I could play a rematch game of Uno. Earlier, he won 2 games to my 0 games, and I wanted a rematch. It turned out that I should have been satisfied with only losing 2 games. We played 3 more games and I only managed to win one of those games. So now the score is J. 4 wins to my 1.

Then came Monday afternoon when all the busyness caught up with me. I fell asleep mid afternoon, managed to wake up with P came home from work and had supper. After supper I went back to sleep and didn’t wake up until Tuesday morning. I figured out that I’d slept 12 hour with only a little spot of being awake to eat supper. It is times like these that remind me that I really don’t have any stamina or energy reserve to call on.

However, it was fun getting out of the house even if it were to go to the clinic. I loved being able to make it to church and had loads of fun playing Uno even if I lost most of the games. So all and all it was worth having to sleep so much to recover.

I Made It

I made it to church this past Sunday for the second time this year. Once the flu season was over, I was fighting yet another lung infection so I wasn’t able to get to church. However, I now am free of any infections and the flu season is over, so now is the time to get to church. As you see from reading It Was Approaching a Ten , I didn’t make it that Sunday. So I hoped to make it this past Sunday only to find out that P was going to her niece’s church because her niece’s baby was being baptized and that would be too far and too long for me. So I called daughter K and went to church with her and her husband.

There is just something that I like about being in church rather than listening to the sermon at home. Hopefully I will make it to our church this coming Sunday.

It Was Approaching A Ten

On Saturday I planned on going to church for the second time this year. I took thing easy, managing to take a two hour nap in the afternoon and still managing to fall asleep early Saturday evening. Fine I thought come Sunday, I really will make it to church.

However, when I woke up Sunday morning, I was just exhausted. That exhaustion that causes tears to run down your face, there was no way I was going to be able to make it to church. In fact even before P. left for church I was taking the first of a couple of yesterday’s naps. Even with those naps, I was exhausted all day yesterday and then mid to late afternoon the pain started. My feet and entire legs, lower arms, palms and fingers all felt as if they were on fire. I thought about taking an additional pain medication, however as tired as I was I didn’t dare risk taking the pain medicine. I didn’t want to cause more medical problems with my feeling so tired and not wanting to go to sleep and not waking up. At my next appointment with my neurologist I need to talk to her about this issue of taking pain medication when feeling so exhausted.

The pain continued to get worse. By early evening I couldn’t find a comfortable spot. Nothing I did helped with the pain. I would manage to fall asleep only to awaken by the pain a couple of minutes later. I finally gave in and took by evening medication which contains a pain pill a half hour early and that seemed to help. I returned to reading my book and shortly after midnight was able to fall asleep.

At 2:30 AM I was bolted out of sleep by a return of the pain. This time I didn’t feel so exhausted and because the pain was once again approaching that dreaded level 10 on a scale of 0 to 10, decided that it had been 6 hours since I had taken the last pain medication so I took another pill and managed to fall back asleep after a half hour. This morning I am still tired with a pain level of 4 to 5. I now face the issue of “Do I take a pain pill in order to get ahead of the pain”; however pain medication has side effects that sometime are as bad as the pain. A decision I will have to make in the next hour or so because it has been 5 hours since I’ve taken my last pain pill and I must wait at least 6 hours between pills. So do I take a pain pill and feel drowsy and doped, or do I take my chances on a repeat of yesterday?

Not an easy question.