Hospitalized

The main thought going through my head as I was wheeled out on a stretcher was, “I can’t die yet, J’s name is not on the house.”

It began with the UTI. It was a pretty nasty one, and I had waited a couple weeks to hit up my urologist for medication, because she had driven it into my head that antibiotics are not something I should be constantly asking for. In order to prevent my particular colony of bacteriai becoming resistant, we needed to use antibiotics sparingly. When I finally ask for help, there was a huge mix-up with the actual medication. Rite aid didn’t have it, and they didn’t bother telling me that it went several days before I found out, and they dropped the ball ordering the medication. My infusion nurse wound up calling them to figure out what the fuck was going on, and they promised be medication would be ordered the next day and a rush would be put on filling it. They lied. They lost the medication order again. In the meantime, my doctor prescribed a different medication. I never did get that first script filled.

The practical upshot of this is that I had a UTI for almost a month before I got medication in me to get rid of it.

It was late Friday night, early Saturday morning about 2:00 A.m. Jay and I had just said good night and I was preparing for bed. I became aware that I was breathing kind of shallow. My breathing got worse to where I was struggling for breath and I figured I was having a panic attack; I asked my mom for Ativan and waited for it to kick in. It didn’t kick in. I asked her to sit with me and talk with me and distract me, but my breathing didn’t get any better. In fact it got worse. I was practically panting when I asked her to get J. He came in and assessed the situation and asked me if I wanted to go to the ER. While sitting there panicking, my brain had thought about going to the ER but it just brought on more panic. But at this point I can see that there was something else going on besides panic and indicated that he should call 911.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in breathe out.

Every breath was shallow and quick, I felt like I was getting just enough oxygen to maintain consciousness and not much more. I couldn’t think. Nothing beyond, I need to get a breath in me. The paramedic showed up and took their sweet time getting oxygen on me, despite me asking for it the moment they came through the door. I think they believed I was having a panic attack. The EMT kept asking me questions, but I couldn’t answer anything because I couldn’t talk and I tried to indicate that I couldn’t talk and I tried to indicate again. Please, oxygen. They checked my 02 level and I was hovering around 84%. They finally acquiesced that hey, maybe something was going on and put oxygen on me.

It really didn’t help that much.

I don’t remember a lot about the ride in the back of the ambulance, only that I had to keep focusing on each new breath, I couldn’t lose consciousness, because then I would go unresponsive, and they wouldn’t try to revive me because I had told them not to with my POLST form. I couldn’t die because J’s name is not on that house. Once that’s settled I can die. But not before.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Remain conscious. Breathe in breathe out.

After the very bumpy ride, we arrived in the emergency room and I’m not entirely sure what medications they put in me, but whatever it was, combined with the BiPAP machine they put over my face, I began to breathe a little easier. Not great, but I felt like I wasn’t going to pass out at any given moment anymore. They cut my shirt off of me with my permission and asked even more questions. I was finally able to answer them, and supply information on my own. My O2 SATs or normally around 91, 92, but I have ALS so that’s normal for me. I have a UTI that is currently being treated, I am on day 3 of a seven day course. I experienced no symptoms at all up to this. It was a sudden shortness of breath with no lung problems before, no sickness, no pneumonia. They did a chest x-ray to verify that my lungs were clear. The rhythm of the BiPAP kept me going. Jay was there suddenly while the nurses worked around me, I took off my watch and handed it to him. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so worried or so scared. I think he calmed down once he saw that I was breathing better.

They spurned the IV the EMT had started, and stuck another one in my arm. Again I don’t know what drugs they gave me. A lot of this was happening over my head, medicine being done at me rather than with me. They said something about ” we’ll get you admitted first and then..”

Admitted. My first hospital stay. I guess if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it properly. J had brought me my phone, to keep in contact with him as things turned up. Eventually though, they kicked him out and he went home to sleep.

I was in the hospital for a total of 4 days. During this time, we learned that this episode was probably brought on by the UTI. I didn’t quite understand the mechanism, but I knew from experience that every single time I get a UTI it leaves me weaker. Permanently. So it made sense to my brain that it was due to the UTI I was having issues. I cursed myself for not taking my problem to the doctor earlier. J cursed the doctor instead, for drilling it into my head that antibiotics weren’t something to be used right away.

I learned a few things during those 4 days. One, hospital food really is that bad. I didn’t really feel like eating in the first place while I was there, but the hospital food didn’t give me much of a reason to look forward to it either. It was on day three that I discovered I could ask for Pepsi, which was a game changer. The caffeine headache I’d had for the first couple of days finally was addressed. Two, the fact that the UTI was to blame. Three, I would be in the hospital four days to get the IV antibiotics through me. Four, it’s really really annoying to try to sleep in a hospital. Every 5 minutes it seems they wanted to do something to shove a pillow under my butt so I didn’t get bed sores, to give me another blanket that I didn’t want, to give me a wipe down bath.

They almost used chlorhexidine.

I am so grateful that I caught it. Their usual wipes to clean patients are chlorhexidine. I would have been itching all over my entire body. As it was, I was allergic to something they put under the dressing for the IV in my arm. It itched for days afterwards.

Seriously with the jostling though. They wanted to turn me this way in that, and flatten the bed every time they did so, which was a no-go for me. I found that I was able to breathe somewhat with the BiPAP going if I was laying flat. So that was okay but I couldn’t do very long.

Number five. It was literally impossible for me to poop while sitting in a bed. The hospital didn’t have a hoyer lift. They had rooms that had lifts built into the ceiling, and for some brilliant reason they hadn’t put me in one of those. So I could not be transferred to a commode. Instead, they shoved a painful rigid bowl under my ass and asked me to poop in that. I was unable to comply. I wound up having a minor accident at one point, but it didn’t get it all out and I would have to wait until I got home. I don’t have any idea what would have happened if I had gone longer in the hospital.

Number six. Having someone wait on you hand and foot is actually kind of nice, so long as the person is being compensated for their time. With my hands being what they are, I wasn’t able to take the BiPAP mask off on my own. This put me at a high risk in case something happened, I wouldn’t be able to as they put it, self-rescue. The upshot of this is that there was a nurse or someone in my room at all times. I felt bad that they had to waste their time watching me sleep, but it was kind of cool to have someone at my beck and call if I wanted anything at all. Mostly what I asked for was bed adjustments. Can I sit up a little more, can I lay back a little more? My hands couldn’t work the bed remote. Hopefully I didn’t annoy them too much. Since they were getting paid to be there though, I felt a lot better about asking them for these things.

The first day when J came to visit that afternoon, I pretty much slept through the entire visit. Didn’t want to, but I was so tired from everything. I pretty much only woke up otherwise when they asked me to, for a blood draw or to take my meds; we actually had to bring one of my meds in, they didn’t have it in the pharmacy. And it wasn’t even the ALS drug. I was on a infusion routine at the time, which meant that I was accessed and they took full use of the port, but it also meant that I needed to have doses of radicava while I was in hospital. Jay brought in all of the medicines and everything and took care of the infusions. We skipped the first day obviously. When it was time to go we actually accidentally left the meds there and had to go back up for them.

I had a lot of time to think. Mostly what I thought about was that I really really needed to get my will together. I need to contact the bank and find out what needs to happen in order to get his name on the loan. I need to make sure that all of my things go to the right people. I have my will in a document on Google drive, but I don’t have anything official. I don’t think my brother or J know how to get to it either. Surprisingly, I didn’t actually think about my own mortality that much. Just the mundane bits of business surrounding my death, nothing specifically about worrying about the afterlife or lack thereof or anything metaphysical or deep like that just.. I need to put my name on a bunch of pieces of paper. I should finally write goodbye letters. I don’t have as much time as I thought I did. This is only going to shorten things.

We had me on the BiPAP at night, but during the day they swapped me to a nose cannula. On the very last day, they tried pulling me off of the oxygen entirely but my O2 levels dipped below 90 when they did. The practical upshot of this is that I was sent home with oxygen. My world suddenly got much much smaller. Going anywhere became exponentially harder. I thought about the medical research appointments, how was I going to get a spinal tap if I’m on oxygen, carting around a wheelie tank? Again. Practical aspects to everything. Not so much of what it signified except everything was more of a pain in the ass. Things in my house where there’s already no room. now, I have to put a sign in my windows stating as such so that if a fire ever happens they know to avoid the tanks because they might go exploding. Which sucks because they live in my room where I sleep and where I would be if I needed rescuing. I’m sure they would come in anyway just with caution. But because I had these oxygen tanks, I can’t burn scented candles anymore. Poop.

The oxygen concentrator is hella loud. 

I got used to it, luckily it’s rhythmic enough. It emits this high-pitched scream when it’s first turned on though that makes all of the cats run to the other end of the house. It’s one more hose attaching me to something else to go with my feeding tube and the super pubic catheter and the IV for infusion. One more ‘hey you’re sick’ reminder.

My neurologist was exasperated that they sent me home with oxygen. Apparently people with ALS don’t do well on oxygen, it makes their lungs get lazy. I had to make an appointment with my pulmonologist to follow up with all of that. Unfortunately right now I’m between pulmonologists, mine retired. I was referred to one specific one because he works with the ALS clinic, but the schedulers refused to schedule me with him because they didn’t understand why I needed to see him specifically. I had seen another provider in their office why wasn’t I going with him. I tried explaining about the clinic but they were unmoved since the previous pulmonologist also worked with clinic sometimes. This conversation took 4 days. I called to make the initial appointments, they said they would find something on his schedule and call me back, they called me back to challenge me. Fine I said, I will take an appointment with the previous doctor I don’t care. They said they would find a slot on his calendar and call me back. They didn’t. I wound up calling them again – with at least a 10-minute whole time every single time I need to contact them. They offered no apology for failing to get back to me, only said they would try to find something on his schedule right now. I was put on hold for 5 minutes while they found something. He didn’t have any openings until October they said. They could try to find something a little earlier with another provider if I wished, and I said I did prefer thank you. They found something earlier.. with the provider I had originally asked for. It was also not until October but it was slightly earlier. I asked to be put on the wait list in case someone canceled.

They did actually contact me to tell me they had an appointment the next Friday. I requested a virtual appointment and accepted. Friday when I had the appointment, I sat by myself online for 20 minutes before I call them with another 10 minute hold time to ask what was going on. They had failed to flag the appointment as virtual, so the pulmonologist had been sitting in his office waiting for me. I asked if there was something I could have done to make sure that the appointment was virtual – I had an email invite to the meeting room so the system knew I was meeting virtually, and they said no it’s not your mistake at all it just didn’t get flagged properly. Luckily the pulmonologist didn’t have another appointment that morning and was able to meet with me.

Can I just say that I’m really not impressed with the Portland clinic?

The pulmonologist however, was lovely. I really liked him. He explained a lot about ALS and how it works, and showed me my CT scan. My diaphragm is sitting really high he said which squishes my lungs plus I’m heavy so that doesn’t help. Which honestly kind of pissed me off because I was told to gain weight. I was 160 when I was diagnosed, they said to put on some pounds so I did. I guess I overdid it. Anyway, he said I don’t have to be on the oxygen during the day if I don’t feel like I need it. Just make sure that my O2 levels stay around 91 92. Use it at night though, in conjunction with the machine I use for night time breathing.

The other thing that happened post hospital is that I had a ventilator delivered. It can be used with a face mask, but it can also be used with a tracheotomy. It is the last machine I will be issued for breathing. Once I graduate this machine, the only option is to get a vent surgically installed. 

I had been asked several times if I wanted a mechanical ventilator. The first time was in the ER, and I panicked because I thought that was my only option if I wanted to breathe again. And I don’t want a ventilator at all. It’s prolonging the inevitable, and is a huge pain in the ass – you have to get a certified nurse to take care of you afterwards, regular caretakers can’t touch it. Nurses are very very expensive. I had also read a blog post from a fellow ALS haver that detailed getting her trach changed out and it sounded like it was a nightmare. She basically just has to sit there not breathing while they pull the tube out of her throat and put the new one back in, there’s always blood. It takes up to 2 minutes to do everything, and the idea of just not being able to breathe for two whole minutes freaks me the fuck out. I don’t want that. But in that moment, if she had said that was the only way I was going to survive this particular episode, I would have accepted. Just to get all of the paperwork out of the way, long enough to settle all of those things. And then turn me off. The doctor also asked if I wanted to be on a ventilator when I met with him upstairs after I had been admitted. Again with the panic thinking that was what they were going to say was mandatory if I wanted to survive this. Turns out that wasn’t what he was saying at all, it’s just that if I am decided to take a ventilator eventually anyway, they can skip all of the troubleshooting and just go to that. Why go through all the trouble finding leaky hoses if you’re just going to replace the entire engine? I understood the logic. But no vent for me today thank you.

The ventilator machine I was issued is standing on a little tray table in my room, because we’re not quite sure where the hell we’re going to put it. I don’t have a bedside table since that’s where my wheelchair parks. If I’ve been freaking out about any of this, it’s the issuing of this machine. What it signifies. The final frontier as it were. The lack of time it represents.

I’m okay with dying, but I’m sure as fuck not in any hurry to do so.

I come away from this experience with two key takeaways. The first is that I am extraordinarily lucky to have had 8 years and I really need to get off my ass and get my affairs in order because I have less time than I would like to think I do. The second is that UTIs are seriously nothing to fuck around with. My stepfather’s mother died of one. It’s entirely possible that I almost did. I have orders to talk to my urologist about potentially getting on a small dose of antibiotics as a matter of course to prevent UTIs from happening. It’s one more pill to take, but if it spares me another uti, it’s all worth it.

So that was my first adventure! My first hospital stay! My first death scare!

And this is what I mean when someone asks what I’ve been up to and I reply “nothing much, but that’s a good thing.” I’m just not built for this kind of excitement. You can have it.

NOW if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some paperwork to get in order.

Demoted


It’s time to add another entry into the reverse baby book. Baby’s lasts. Baby’s last step, baby’s last time cutting her own food, baby’s last time tying her own shoes, etc.


Baby’s last time getting off the toilet by herself.

That’s a new thing that I just don’t get to do anymore apparently. I’ve been struggling with it lately, my wheelchair seat is 2 inches taller than the toilet seat, so it’s always been a bit of a haul to get up back into my chair when I’m done. Transferring to the toilet is getting difficult, but it is much easier than transferring off. As long as I am transferring from a high surface to a lower one, I can do it. But the last three times, I haven’t been able to get off of the toilet very easily at all. And last night I had to call J in to help me.  After giving me some Ativan because I had a panic attack about the whole thing.


It’s weird how I come up with these little physical tips and tricks to get my body to do the thing, workarounds that I create to make up for the loss in strength, that I cannot for the life of me remember how exactly they function when my strength starts to go beyond that point. Now, was it that I put my foot here and lean forward? Or was it more like the other foot was in the back? And did I grab the bars or did I push off the seat? How the hell did I do this simple thing before? And why isn’t it working right now, what’s different? It’s a bit like asking the caterpillar how it walks, once you stop to think about it, you can’t do it again.


He was able to grab me under the arms and swivel me onto my seat. Surprisingly easy. So that might become our game plan for a little while. The other option is to start using the hoyer to get in and out of there, but that’s just a logistical nightmare. I’m glad I’m still able to stand for a moment so that we can get thunder pants around my ankles and up, I’m not sure what we’re going to be able to do about that when I can’t stand anymore. We’ll figure it out. It’ll be demeaning and horrible, but we’ll figure it out. 
I feel like it’s a demotion. I have lost an ability I had before through no fault of my own and I get to live with a consequences of that. I wasn’t quite ready to give up using the bathroom on my own. I knew it was coming, but I’m still not ready for it. It is easily one of the worst parts of ALS, how humiliating it is while it’s killing you. I still maintain that Alzheimer’s is the worst disease to have, and I’d very much rather have this than that, but it’s a pretty close race.


There will be many other entries into the baby book of Doom, this is just the most recent. But it’s one I’ve been dreading for a while. I don’t mind being helpless as much as I mind being gross. It’s unpleasant for literally everyone involved. In a very special demeaning way. I should have asked if I could have them reroute my intestines to a bag while they were doing my feeding tube. Then I wouldn’t have to use the toilet at all anymore. It would bring a whole other set of problems I’m sure, but God damn it.


I have a much happier post to write! But I needed to get this one out of my brain while it was so fresh and the timing was here. I’m sorry to bum you out. I’m doing okay really, these things are going to happen. Incrementally, with prejudice, for the rest of whatever’s left of my life. It’s just how it is. It doesn’t make it any easier, but I should know to expect things like this by now.


Enjoy pooping in private my friends, it’s a privilege.

Fuck you, it’s funny.

“Should I throw these out,” J asks me, indicating a pile of adult diapers beside the toilet. They have tabs to close them on the sides rather than being the step in brief kind I usually wear. I’m not able to stand and pull up briefs on my own anymore, so I bought these to try out, in a bid to hold on to my autonomy. It was a massive failure; I’m not able to get them under my ass properly, never mind operating the Velcro-like tabs with my failing hands.

“No, keep them,” I tell him. “Once I’m not able to get out of bed at all we’ll want them. You’ll need to undo the diaper, get me in the sling, lift me up, get the diaper off me, get me to the commode or whatever to do my biz and them lay out a fresh diaper. We’ll need the tabbed diapers.”

“I thought we said we didn’t want kids,” J tells me.

We laugh our asses off.

*************

The clip on my catheter bag has somehow come undone and there is a pool of pee next to the bed. I’m mortified, of course, and feel terribly about J having to clean it up.

“Someday I’ll be dead,” I tell him brightly, smiling like a television ad, “and you’ll never have to clean up my bodily fluids again!”

He eyes daggers at me while I laugh, like, “what the fuck is wrong with you.”

*************

Some days, the gallows are hilarious.

Scars

ALS is whittling my body, and marking it as it goes.  Most of the changes to my body are slow, gradual shifts that are only noticed once the damage has gone pretty far.  Holy shit, I’ll realize one day, the palm of my hand is concave at the base of my thumb.  Huh.  My calf just tapers from my knee to ankle, instead of the graceful curve it used to have.  A slow, glacial injury without drama, but still with much import.

Some of the marks ALS has left on me were more sudden; sharp, violent signs of change.  I’m no stranger to scars – I used to self-harm as a teen, into my twenties, and what is a tattoo after all but a pattern of scars filled with ink?  Each of these little marks my disease has left me tells a little piece of my story – a concession, a loss, a search for an answer.

The first scar is the first nail in my coffin.  One and a half inches, on the outside of my left thigh.  A thin, straight line of white against pale skin, flesh tone once described as “ghost-ass white”.  I’m regaining sensation there, but for a long time it was a patch of numb skin.  I got this scar from the biopsy that sealed my diagnosis.  A little chunk of flesh taken to examine for nerve degeneration, degeneration that was confirmed and my fate thus sealed.

The second scar was First Blood. An L shaped mark behind my right side, under my rib cage. I took a fall getting out of a car, catching my flesh on the corner of the door as I went down. My first disease related injury, and sadly not the last – but so far the only one to leave a mark on the map of my body.

The third scar is two-part. A dash and a dot. The scars of my port surgery. A dot over the right artery in my neck, where a line was fished through, snaked into my system of valves and tubes and blood, and connected to a bubble of plastic that rests under the second scar. A one inch line cut and pulled apart for the port to be shoved in and connected to the plumbing. This was a violent scar but a relief to get; it’s made infusions of medicine indescribably easier. My only visible to the public scar, a surgical badge of Legitimately Sick.

The fourth scar is one of persistence. A year of puncturing the port for infusion has left a pink dot under the incision line. Scar tissue building up with each stab, eventually making the stabs less painful. A welcome scar.

I have an appointment on the 20th of May to discuss acquiring my fifth scar, the scar that will hopefully make my life oh-my-GOD so much easier. I’ll speak with a urologist actually familiar with ALS and therefore not liable to suggest that I do some motherfucking Kegels to keep from peeing myself all the time. I’ll ask for a superpubic catheter to be inserted, and hopefully get approval and a surgery date. And hopefully then I can go back to wearing clothes that I don’t have to strategize how to get out of in 30 seconds or less otherwise they get peed on. I wanna wear my shark onesie again.

I’m willing to get a scar over it.

Hilarious

While in the company of a good friend, we talked about serious and silly things as I usually do, and found myself devolving into a rant against billionaires. Hoarding that much money should be illegal. No one should ever have a billion dollars in today’s economy, it’s unconscionable. How the hell do you have enough money to literally end world hunger and then just…not?

After awhile, my friend sighed angrily. “It just…makes me sick,” she fumed.

“It’s pretty bad when you’re talking to a terminally ill person and my disease isn’t the most depressing thing,” I agreed.

And then we both laughed and felt better, and THAT is why gallows humor rocks.










My First Death Positivity Experience

When I was very young, barely old enough to even know what death was, I saw a show on PBS about the (still very new to the public at the time) AIDS epidemic. I don’t remember anything else about the show, but there was one segment that stuck with me for the rest of my life.

A man, in a hospital gown, sitting in a wheelchair. He was emaciated, very clearly capital-D-Dying. And he made eye contact with the camera, and then sang a very jaunty song about his own, very eminent demise from the disease. I remembered clearly three things: that it was basically about why you should be kind to him as he was going to die soon (particularly a phrase “forgive me when I’m mean”), a quirky little instrumental break during which he tap danced while sitting in his wheelchair, and the chorus phrase “cause I’ve got less time than you”.

And it stayed with me. I was…let’s see when this was released….ooh. I was 13. I remember clearly thinking that the song was funny, and not being sad for him at all, even though I knew he was going to die, and I knew that he knew it, too. The emergent Spooky Kid in me delighted in how morbid the whole thing was, and i loved the twisted sense of humor, but what resonated with me 30 years later was not the morbidity. I actually admired him for knowing that he was going to die, and having made peace with that, he was able to be so forthright with his needs. Since he knew there was literally nothing he could do about it, he decided to have such a wicked sense of humor about the whole thing. It was a quiet, desperate, dare you not to look away from it strength. LOOK AT ME, I AM DYING AND THERE IS NOTHING ANYONE CAN DO. NOW LAUGH WITH ME. He saw his own pending demise, and owned it. I wanted to be like that, too, if I could. Strong, unafraid, and funny.

The image of the tap-dancing dying man never left me, and indeed after my diagnosis, any time I prioritized my own needs over those of someone with a muddier, less terminal future, the chorus would pop into my head. I justified inconveniencing people (whether they actually felt inconvenienced or not was irrelevant to my broken brain) with a jaunty internal chorus of “cause I’ve got less time than you”.

I finally remembered to look for it online, not really expecting to find it. It was (exactly!) 30 years ago, pre-internet, and all I had to go on was “man in wheelchair AIDS song less time than you”. But I did find it. It took some doing to find an actual video (especially one that wasn’t an impossible-to-understand audience recorded live version), but my Google-fu is strong. His name was Rodney Price, and he died two weeks after filming this. He is my role model to aspire to while dying today, and he was my very first Death Positive Hero.

I give you Rodney Price, “Song From An Angel”.










Welcome New Readers!

O hai.

Today is my last day of work, before a three week vacation and then MLOA. I sent out an email to my coworkers with a link to this blog, in case they wanted to keep up with how I’m doing. I got a lot of questions asking how they can help, and so I was brave and gave out this link. You can help by listening to my story, by learning about ALS, by becoming part of the Death Positive community, maybe by sliding a few bucks to my crowdrise fundraiser on the left there.

Thing is, yesterday was a Very Not Good Day and it required a verrrrrrrry swear-laden rant, and I didn’t want that to be peoples’ introduction to this blog. So here instead are a few of my favorite positive entries to get you started.

My diagnosis story:

The Road to Diagnosis, Part One

Death Positivity:

Death Cafe

The Walk to Defeat ALS:

This is What A Lucky Girl Looks Like

How Intel can improve the lives of people with ALS:

Talking the Talk

What an ALS Clinic Day is like:

Let’s Get Clinical! Clinical!

So, if you’re new here, welcome. I hope you find this somewhat educational, maybe entertaining a little bit. There are a lot of useful resources on grief, death, and dying up there, too. I hope you like it here.










Here’s another excellent primer

Caitlin Doughty is a mortician. I can go on about this woman, about her job, the relationship we as a society have with her job, buuuuut I won’t. Not yet anyway. BUT I agree with her views, she’s entertaining, and I love her a lot.

She has a video about how to deal with grief. Specifically, how to talk to someone who is grieving. It’s good advice when dealing with people going through terrible times in general.










Madam, My Card.

OK kids, quick diversion. This is something I wanted to do for a little while now and I finally got my act together to make it happen.

*squee*

I have calling cards now! I’ve had a lot of occasions where I’m talking to someone about my blog, and it’s not QUITE got enough Google Juice to find by ALSFTS, so I wanted something proper to hand over. “Yeah, I actually wrote all about how I came to the diagnosis and what my symptoms are. It’s at my blog which is..oh hell. Here’s the info.” And then hand over the card like a pro.

Of course I wanted a cheap option, and there are all kinds of sites out there that do the “250 cards! Free!” and then charge you for everything. “Oh, did you want INK on those? Well that’s $5. Gloss? That’s $5. Shipping? Fifteen dollars.” Pffffft. I wound up at Printastic because I found they had the best templates and I’m NOT about to design my own shizz yet, I just wanted something quick. They had the usual free 250 cards thing, but only like two bucks for gloss and then I think 7 for shipping, so it’s not bad at all. I didn’t expect much, something better than a Post-It.

But they actually look really COOL (even if I do say so myself!) and are decent quality, not flimsy or anything. So hooray! Here’s what they look like!

Networking! With Swears!
Madam, my card.

Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to go hand these things out like a BOSS.