Feed Me, Seymour

Well hello. It’s been a minute.

I’ve had a couple of doctors appointments which I guess I should tell you about, since I tell you everything. (Just about. More than I ever thought I’d tell someone. Never did I ever think I’d be telling absolute strangers about my poop. Welcome to this!) I had MRIs done to make sure there weren’t obvious physical deformities causing the problem and there weren’t – the MRI came up normal, except I apparently have a growth on my adrenal gland? because of course I do. We’ll check on that in six months to make sure it hasn’t grown. What’s one more medical problem to keep tabs on? Add it to the pile! I mean, even if it IS cancer, the fuck are we going to do about it except have a race to see which one kills me first? Winner literally takes all.

ANYway. We started down the road of gastroenterology to figure out what was going on there, and that whole appointment was a complete farce. It started out as a disaster before we even got there -literally everything went wrong in getting me out of the house and to the appointment to begin with. The first ice of the season needed to be scraped off my windshield, and I don’t have an ice scraper in the van yet (hooray for hotel card keys!), we missed a turn, there was an accident on the road causing a delay, and then we wound up going to the wrong place altogether, which was totally my fault for assuming I knew where it was. There is a huge Providence Hospital which contains many professional medical offices inside, and that’s where my urologist was, so that’s where we went. It turns out on that very same street there is a little business park next door, which is where I should have gone. It was ridiculously close but just too far to walk in the literal freezing cold. So we had to go back across to the parking structure, load me into the van, strap my chair down, drive half a block, park, unstrap, unload, get inside. I arrived 11 minutes late for my appointment and was told that exactly 10 minutes is the cut off and I would need to reschedule. She wasn’t even allowed to ask for an exception, she cheerfully told me. I had tried to call them to tell them I was running late, but wound up in a phone tree to press one for physical address, two for the fax number, and if this is an actual emergency etc. etc. and no way to speak to a human being at all. So, irritated, I conceded defeat and made an appointment for later that afternoon with a different doctor and apologized a lot to J for making him wake up at 6AM the day after Christmas for nothing and now he had to miss even MORE work because of me.

At that rescheduled appointment, the doctor was 25 minutes late coming in (because when doctors are late it’s fine), hadn’t even looked at the MRI which had been done, and so he wound up leaving the room to go do that while we waited some more. The doctor came back, confirmed that everything looked normal there and there seems to be no physical reason for my issue. He suggested a load of tests for bacterial infections, and a host of other possible issues in my guts. Also he told me to cut out caffeine and artificial sweeteners for week and see how that went. All of this can cause loose stools, he explained, so we’ll start with the basics and go from there.

All of which has absolutely nothing to do with the main problem.

In the meantime, collect a stool sample with hands that don’t work! Poop in this thing and then stand up and grab it from under you without spilling everything – you can do that right? Here’s four tightly capped containers – threemwith liquid to spill everywhere! – and tiny little spatulas to collect the sample. And gloves that you can’t put on because, again, your hands don’t work. Easy peasy!

I am legitimately afraid of the prep work that will be required when he decides I need a colonoscopy. I quite literally do not know how I’ll pull that off.

I’m sensing echoes of my treatment course with the urologist, where we try a whole bunch of stupid things that aren’t going to make a lick of difference, but at least we can be said to have tried something. And then we’ll get tothe invasive as hell tests and conclude that welp, there’s weak muscles there and that’s probably the problem. BECAUSE I HAVE A NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASE. Because of course actually listening to me in the first place and taking into account I have a disease that’s killing all of my muscles is just crazy talk. My urologist outright stated I had no strength in my pelvic floor and then still wanted me to try Kegel exercises. YES LET’S EXERCISE MUSCLES THAT DON’T EXIST SURELY THAT WILL SOLVE EVERYTHING. My gastro apparently is focusing on the loose stool part of the equation as if somehow that’s magically going to help me retain poop. I guess the problem WILL go away once they get me constipated enough, and we’ll just ignore that that comes with its own problems. And as with my urologist, I am 100% certain that the ultimate solution is going to be surgical, it’s just a matter of waiting for the specialist to arrive at that conclusion.

So there.

This last Thursday was my follow-up with Dr. Goslin. I reported in everything that I just told you about, and she agreed that the ultimate solution will probably be surgical. And in the worst segue ever, like, “oh, speaking of surgery… ” she asked if I had given any more thought about a feeding tube.

I hadn’t come prepared to have that conversation. I repeated what I had told the pulmonologist, that I knew I was going to get one eventually, but I hadn’t really thought of it happening yet. She repeated his point about the breathing being the accelerator of the timeline; it’s not that I can’t eat on my own, it’s that my breathing is declining and is making the surgery more dangerous. She said that she really liked to strongly consider it once breathing hits 50%, and I’ve been hovering around 48% for a little while. It’s a bit different from the 40 to 20% that the pulmonologist told me. Whereas he had told me somewhere between six months and two years, she made it sound like, “so what are you doing on Wednesday?”

Even though I’ve been mulling over since last clinic, I still haven’t actually visualized that happening in a practical way. It’s an idea, not a visualization yet. It looks like I have to start that process now. She pulled out a rubber torso that had feeding tubes installed in it, to show me what to expect. She went over the basics on how to take care of it, and stressed that I’m welcome to eat for as long as I can, this won’t interfere with anything, it just needs to be flushed with water once a day. She gave me a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopied pamphlet titled “So They’re Telling You to Get a Feeding Tube”. It was written by one of her patients and was actually pretty informative. It talked about who pays for supplies, how to get supplies, recommended procedures for care, what to expect from healing, and things like that. It kind of read like one of my blog posts if I’m being honest. Without the sarcasm. I’m grateful it exists, and really, really grateful I’ve got friends who’ve dealt with them personally, both as patient and provider to answer all the questions I know will come up.

It’s an outpatient surgery, but she said they like to keep you overnight for this one, just to make sure everything’s okay. It’ll be my first overnight stay in a hospital ever. For now I’m thinking it over and tentatively making some minor plans, but nothing set in stone yet. We’ll talk about it more in depth next month at clinic. I need to schedule it around the clinical trial that I’m still participating in. It shouldn’t be that big a deal. Physically. Psychologically, emotionally, it is a Very Big Deal.

It’s just that with the catheter, this, and a colostomy bag in my future, I’m beginning to feel like a reverse porcupine. A little more Capital-S sick. A little closer to the end of the journey. It’s hard to think about. I don’t want to think about it. I’m death positive as hell but that doesn’t mean I’m in a hurry. I’ve still got a lot more to say. More I want to do. So much more food I want to eat. None of this means I can’t do those things, it’s just a reality check that my timeline is more abbreviated than I want to admit.

And that really sucks.

In the meantime, I’m going to eat all of the delicious food that I can and get remarkably fat. That’s gonna rule. March is Portland Dining Month, where a lot of local restaurants serve a special menu on the cheap, and this year I’m going to take SUCH advantage. Food is awesome. Eat something delicious on my behalf, darlings, because food is amazing and so are you.

Inappropriate Friends are the Best Friends – Part 7

…Why is it most of these stories are about Jack?

Anyway, we’re chatting about VR rigs, like ya do, and I mention my mom can’t use them because she’s legally blind. He asked how that happened, like, did she stare at the sun or something (because Jack is Like That).

“It’s age related,” I told him. “Hehe it’s literally called Age Related Macular Degeneration.”

“Ugh I hope I don’t get that. I get feebles floating in my eye and that’s bad enough.”

“Yeah. It’s genetic, too, so I’m dodging THAT bullet! Hooray!”

“Though points in your mom’s favor, she’s not likely to see Death coming unless he’s trying to do a sneaky and flank her.”