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lighterthanair) wrote2013-02-09 08:15 am
lighterthanair) wrote2013-02-09 08:15 am
Another batch of updates
Okay, I know I said I was going to make a real effort to stay positive and stuff, but the past 3 days have really pushed me to my limit, and right now I'm about ready to say to hell with the world, I'm-a bust out of this toothpick house and just curl up in a corner under a blanket and forget everything else exists.
Massive pain in my lower abdomen, and very heavy bleeding. So heavy that I bled through again after only 10 minutes at one point... Problem was, I was at work, and work has made things very clear that if I miss any time without a doctor's note to cover me, well, I'm in deep trouble. I'm already on my second write-up for attendance issues, in spite of the fact that they have forms from my doctor explaining what's going on with me.
But the pain was bad, I couldn't concentrate. Hell, I could barely walk upright. Sitting was a chore. I was in tears. People who saw me crying said that what work was doing to me was unfair. One person offered to drop by that night and give me marijuana if I thought it might help with the pain.
I called my family doctor, and was told I couldn't see him until Wednesday, which was the day of my specialist appointment anyway. But ultimately, I couldn't get a doctor's note that day.
I caved. I told my sup I had to go home. By that point I'd already bled through both my skirt and the pair of pants I'd brought with me that day. Sure I'll stay, if you want me sitting in blood the entire time I'm here, in so much pain I can't think straight.
So I went home to rest, fearful for my job. When I got home, my roommate told me that I looked really pale.
Pain wasn't any better on Friday, and I was still bleeding fairly heavily, so I took the plunge and went to the urgent care unit at St. Joe's. I didn't want to, because my Medicare card has expired and they haven't yet sent me a new one, and while I know the hospital wouldn't turn me away, I till didn't want to deal with the hassle of getting the bill, submitting the bill to Medicare later, all that annoying stuff.
But I went anyway. I hoped that maybe a doctor could at least give me a scrip for more cyklokapron, which they usually give to patients after surgeries to help cut down bleeding. It worked last time.
Problem was, for the first time ever, my body decided to behave. My bleeding had slowed, to the point where the doctor who saw me couldn't even detect any when she gave me a rather uncomfortable personal examination. I'm fairly sure she thought I was faking. It was hard to convince her to give me a note to prove to work I was there. I told her I'd like to go home and rest from everything that's happened, and she said to me that it didn't look like anything was happening. She refused to give me the prescription. I'm fairly sure she thought I was malingering, trying to get attention, wasting her time so I could get a day off work. She did at least acknowledge that I was pale.
Good thing she ordered a blood test, though. Just in case. Because a few hours after I got home, she called me to ask how I was.
Turns out I was anemic. Very anemic. Low-normal hemoglobin for a female is 120. Mine was at 70.
Easy to fake prior heavy bleeding and pain. Not so easy to fake a blood test like that.
She told me to rest. She told me that she called the specialist I'd been seeing, and advised me to skip this week's sugar pills and instead to start taking the actual birth control again, this time at double doses until I see said specialist on Wednesday. She called in a prescription for cyklokapron to the nearest pharmacy. She told me to eat dark green leafy things to get iron into me. She did everything except admit that she made a mistake in sending me away empty-handed, but since she actually made the effort to follow up and get me what I needed, I can forgive her. The fact that she told me she'd call the prescription to the pharmacy was what really convinced me she knew she'd made a mistake. I had to have lost that blood from somewhere, after all, and with the blood test she had proof that I wasn't just bullshitting her.
Today, we're under a blizzard warning. Which would be bad enough on its own, but after the past two days, and I'm still not feeling that great, I'm really hoping they pull the buses off the road so I have an excuse not to go in to work and so I can get some more rest.
Turns out I might have to call in anyway. Why? We have no water. A pipe burst, and another main water pipe froze completely, and so half the city is without water.
Including the area where my workplace is located.
Normally at times when the water's gone out for a while there, they tell us we can have extra time for breaks, so we can drive uptown to use a washroom in the mall.
Can't do that today. For one thing, the weather's too bad to risk driving much, if at all. For another, the entire uptown area is out of water.
For a third, my doctor has told work that I need extra unscheduled bathroom breaks, due to the bleeding problem. If I can't get to a bathroom that actually works... Sure, my own bathroom may not be working at the moment either, but at least it's my bathroom, and I can arrange a solution more easily at home than I can in a semi-public bathroom.
So even if work is open but has no water, and even if the buses are still running, I can't go in even if I feel great. And if they try to get me in trouble for that (as I'm sure they will), I will haul them through thorns and fire to defend myself, because even if my family doctor was a moron and said I shouldn't miss work due to my health problems (let's see him bleed from his crotch for 4 weeks straight and go through extra heavy bleeding and pain and see how much work he misses), he did say that I need those unscheduled bathroom breaks, and work is not in a positive to provide me that in a sanitary and safe fashion if they have no water during a blizzard.
But no water means no tea, or hot chocolate, or about 75% of what I actually drink at the moment, and no way of going out to buy more in the bad weather. Toilet issues aside, today is going to be very uncomfortable no matter where I am...
At least I still have heat. That was actually a worry, because last night the landlady came up to tell us that her furnace shut off... for the second time this week. She had to call the repair guy again. I'm pretty sure she's starting to believe us about her furnace not delivering enough heat and needing to be replaced now. I get that she doesn't want to spend much money, but fuck, she's got 3 apartments to heat, that are paying for heat, and if she can't provide it consistantly... But no, we have heat.
I'd think about stealing water from the heating pipes, but with no water flowing at all, that would just mean the place would be heated less, and that would be worse than going thirsty.
So one way or the other, I think I'm staying home to nurse my anemia and to recover in comfort. Maybe catch up on some reading. There are worse ways to wait out a blizzard when you're sick, after all.
Massive pain in my lower abdomen, and very heavy bleeding. So heavy that I bled through again after only 10 minutes at one point... Problem was, I was at work, and work has made things very clear that if I miss any time without a doctor's note to cover me, well, I'm in deep trouble. I'm already on my second write-up for attendance issues, in spite of the fact that they have forms from my doctor explaining what's going on with me.
But the pain was bad, I couldn't concentrate. Hell, I could barely walk upright. Sitting was a chore. I was in tears. People who saw me crying said that what work was doing to me was unfair. One person offered to drop by that night and give me marijuana if I thought it might help with the pain.
I called my family doctor, and was told I couldn't see him until Wednesday, which was the day of my specialist appointment anyway. But ultimately, I couldn't get a doctor's note that day.
I caved. I told my sup I had to go home. By that point I'd already bled through both my skirt and the pair of pants I'd brought with me that day. Sure I'll stay, if you want me sitting in blood the entire time I'm here, in so much pain I can't think straight.
So I went home to rest, fearful for my job. When I got home, my roommate told me that I looked really pale.
Pain wasn't any better on Friday, and I was still bleeding fairly heavily, so I took the plunge and went to the urgent care unit at St. Joe's. I didn't want to, because my Medicare card has expired and they haven't yet sent me a new one, and while I know the hospital wouldn't turn me away, I till didn't want to deal with the hassle of getting the bill, submitting the bill to Medicare later, all that annoying stuff.
But I went anyway. I hoped that maybe a doctor could at least give me a scrip for more cyklokapron, which they usually give to patients after surgeries to help cut down bleeding. It worked last time.
Problem was, for the first time ever, my body decided to behave. My bleeding had slowed, to the point where the doctor who saw me couldn't even detect any when she gave me a rather uncomfortable personal examination. I'm fairly sure she thought I was faking. It was hard to convince her to give me a note to prove to work I was there. I told her I'd like to go home and rest from everything that's happened, and she said to me that it didn't look like anything was happening. She refused to give me the prescription. I'm fairly sure she thought I was malingering, trying to get attention, wasting her time so I could get a day off work. She did at least acknowledge that I was pale.
Good thing she ordered a blood test, though. Just in case. Because a few hours after I got home, she called me to ask how I was.
Turns out I was anemic. Very anemic. Low-normal hemoglobin for a female is 120. Mine was at 70.
Easy to fake prior heavy bleeding and pain. Not so easy to fake a blood test like that.
She told me to rest. She told me that she called the specialist I'd been seeing, and advised me to skip this week's sugar pills and instead to start taking the actual birth control again, this time at double doses until I see said specialist on Wednesday. She called in a prescription for cyklokapron to the nearest pharmacy. She told me to eat dark green leafy things to get iron into me. She did everything except admit that she made a mistake in sending me away empty-handed, but since she actually made the effort to follow up and get me what I needed, I can forgive her. The fact that she told me she'd call the prescription to the pharmacy was what really convinced me she knew she'd made a mistake. I had to have lost that blood from somewhere, after all, and with the blood test she had proof that I wasn't just bullshitting her.
Today, we're under a blizzard warning. Which would be bad enough on its own, but after the past two days, and I'm still not feeling that great, I'm really hoping they pull the buses off the road so I have an excuse not to go in to work and so I can get some more rest.
Turns out I might have to call in anyway. Why? We have no water. A pipe burst, and another main water pipe froze completely, and so half the city is without water.
Including the area where my workplace is located.
Normally at times when the water's gone out for a while there, they tell us we can have extra time for breaks, so we can drive uptown to use a washroom in the mall.
Can't do that today. For one thing, the weather's too bad to risk driving much, if at all. For another, the entire uptown area is out of water.
For a third, my doctor has told work that I need extra unscheduled bathroom breaks, due to the bleeding problem. If I can't get to a bathroom that actually works... Sure, my own bathroom may not be working at the moment either, but at least it's my bathroom, and I can arrange a solution more easily at home than I can in a semi-public bathroom.
So even if work is open but has no water, and even if the buses are still running, I can't go in even if I feel great. And if they try to get me in trouble for that (as I'm sure they will), I will haul them through thorns and fire to defend myself, because even if my family doctor was a moron and said I shouldn't miss work due to my health problems (let's see him bleed from his crotch for 4 weeks straight and go through extra heavy bleeding and pain and see how much work he misses), he did say that I need those unscheduled bathroom breaks, and work is not in a positive to provide me that in a sanitary and safe fashion if they have no water during a blizzard.
But no water means no tea, or hot chocolate, or about 75% of what I actually drink at the moment, and no way of going out to buy more in the bad weather. Toilet issues aside, today is going to be very uncomfortable no matter where I am...
At least I still have heat. That was actually a worry, because last night the landlady came up to tell us that her furnace shut off... for the second time this week. She had to call the repair guy again. I'm pretty sure she's starting to believe us about her furnace not delivering enough heat and needing to be replaced now. I get that she doesn't want to spend much money, but fuck, she's got 3 apartments to heat, that are paying for heat, and if she can't provide it consistantly... But no, we have heat.
I'd think about stealing water from the heating pipes, but with no water flowing at all, that would just mean the place would be heated less, and that would be worse than going thirsty.
So one way or the other, I think I'm staying home to nurse my anemia and to recover in comfort. Maybe catch up on some reading. There are worse ways to wait out a blizzard when you're sick, after all.