Shit Happens

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Brainiac4 and I were trying to figure out when the shit started…

We figure it was after his brother got divorced. That was expensive (we funded it) but functionally a good thing.

And it probably wasn’t my sister going through invitro. Once again, expensive (we didn’t fund that) and stressful, but the baby is due in July.

So maybe it was when the his brother had a motorcycle accident late last summer. He walked away, but scrambled his brains and is now on long term disability with memory problems.

Or maybe it was when one of my coworkers had her baby girl treated for cancer. She’s fine now. That was last Fall that that started.

One of my dear friends lost both her parents within six months of each other. Her mother from an unexpected heart attack. Her father from alcohol. But that didn’t seem immediate.

Then we discovered my sister’s boyfriend was beating the shit out of her. That was right before Christmas. We pulled her out.

By Feburary she was in rehab for alcohol abuse. By April she was back in outpatient. She is halfway across the country and we aren’t sure how she is doing now, but the middle of the night phone calls have ended - and she has stopped accusing every male she knew as a child of sexually abusing her.

My brother in law (the one with memory loss) moved home. … that was great. And he started seeing a new girl who seems really nice. What wasn’t so nice was when she fell in front of our home breaking her leg and wrist, requiring five days in the hospital, two surgeries, and rehabiliatation. That was - late May?

Then, last week, a very old friend of ours and his wife had a baby. And the delivery didn’t go well. The first few days were a matter of survival, now its survival plus finding out how disabled she will be should she be able to live without the respirator. I suspect it will be severe, since she was without oxygen for twenty minutes.

And yesterday I had to pick up the kids…normally Brainiac4 does that, but he was busy accompaning a coworker to the emergency room after she had a seizure.

Anyway, stay far away. We seem to be carrying a cloud of misfortune…

2

Holy COW! When it rains it pours! I’m sorry to hear of all your troubles Dangerosa! It’s gotta end some time!

3

{{{{{Dangerosa}}}}}
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and all that.

Is it your friend’s wife or their baby who is on the ventilator? I assume the baby, but I wanted to check. Either way, I’ll be thinking good thoughts and saying a prayer for everyone you mentiond.

4

You poor thing. I don’t know why life happens this way. I work in a very small office, and in one 1-year period, my family and the family I work for had one bad life experience after another (many similar to the ones you describe). Usually, going to work is an escape for me from my life problems, but during that time, there was no place to lose myself. I know humans have a huge capacity to deal with adversity, but I’ll tell you…it beats you down after a while, it really does.

All my prayers & good thoughts are with you…hang in there.

5

Baby…placental seperation meant no oxygen for the baby until the c section was completed and the baby had been resuscitated.

6

I had a similar spell. At one point in my life, I called 911 over twenty times in a span of two months. Then, poof it was over. Other than a blip two years ago, all has been well (knock on formica sheathed particle board).

7

There are rants to go along with each of these misfortunes - one is that when my brother in laws girlfriend fell, 911 did not work from our house phone. We got that “fast busy” signal. Since my cell doesn’t have GPS on it, I got routed to FOUR different emergency response systems before finding someone who could send an ambulence to my house!

(you can search up one on recovered memory syndrome)

8

While by no means mundane or pointless, I’m moving this thread to MPSIMS based on the anticipated replies.

Good luck with everything you and your family are going through, Dangerosa. Hopefully things can only get better from here.

9

I completely understand how you feel, Dangerosa. In the past two years we’ve had:

October 2004- Me in the hospital with an unknown infection (I spent 4 days there)
December 2004 - Middle child with tonsillectomy (outpatient surgery) after two solid months of illness and antibiotics
March 2005 - Youngest child with tubes in ears (outpatient surgery)
Running in the background this whole time, my stress-related hives outbreaks, and tummy discomfort.
We had about a year’s reprieve, and then…
January/February 2006 My tummy discomfort escalated, and so did the hives, since my tummy hurt.
March 6, 2006 - Youngest son hospitalized with severe pneumonia- we spent 4 days in ICU and 4 days on the regular floor…
March 2006-During that hospital stay, I went across town to have my gall bladder removed on March 10…
March 2006-On the day my son was discharged, my mother was involved in a serious car accident (someone T-bones her car at an intersection)
March 2006-After missing two weeks of work for my son’s hospital stay and my outpatient surgery, I had a car accident on the way to work. (also someone else hitting me)
April 2006 - My grandmother goes in for her checkup (she had a bypass a couple of years ago)…and they find a huge aortic aneurysm. She has to have a very tricky surgery to repair it.
June 2006 - My brother has a motorcycle accident. (this was on this past Sunday).

Sheesh.
I begin to feel like I have somehow pissed off the cosmos. Here’s hoping both our lives get less hectic.

10

If I let go with the string of expletives I don’t have the energy to unleash regarding people who tell women that most c-sections are unnecessary and there doctor is just classifying their pregnancy as high risk to make his tee time, believe that, end up with a midwife who tells them a 38 year old woman with gestational diabetes, pregnancy induced hypertension, 100+ pounds over weight, whose first eight pound plus baby was delivered via c section is not a high risk situation, you’ll move it back for me, right?

11

{{{{{Dangerosa}}}}}

The immortal P.G. Wodehouse penned, “Life is just one damn thing after another.”

He was/is right. I hope it gets better soon for you.

12

So, the co-worker who had a seizure… the ER doctor says: She needs to see a neurologist, she is NOT allowed to drive, she should not be alone overnight. He’s also concerned about the meds she is taking for depression, and her blood sugar level, so she needs to see her primary physician. She asks if the seizure could be related to the potential diabetes. He says no, it’s almost certainly alcohol withdrawal, by the way, no drinking either.

Okay, she accepts that, her boyfriend is on the way, she wants a nap, I leave her for boyfriend to pick up and take home.

Today, she insists that the reason for the seizure is that she’s diabetic, has not made the appointment with the neurologist, told another friend that the not driving is “well, that’s what they said, but…”. She called me asking where I was. I answered four times – “I’m in the car”, “I’m on Highway 61 at Warner Road”, “I’m near my house”, “I’m on my way to a friend’s house” – before she gave up. I was not trying to be difficult, I was trying to figure out why she was asking and give her the right answer. She seemed to have difficulty understanding my responses, her speech was slurred and she seemed confused.

I asked how she was doing and she said “not good.” Two minutes later she got mad at me for being worried about her, and wondered why I was making such a big deal about all this. “Because you had a grand mal seizure yesterday,” I said. “That is a big deal.”

She called back to tell me that she was okay, she just needed to sleep more. I said okay, you get some rest, I will talk to you in an hour.

She called back again two minutes later to tell me she was okay, she just needed to sleep more. That is not me repeating a line in my post, that is her calling me two minutes apart with the same information. I asked her if she had been drinking. She said “No.” I said “Is that an honest answer?” She made a noncommittal noise.

If she drives to work tomorrow, I have to figure out what the fuck to do. If she has a seizure while driving, she and other people may well die. I’m going to have to tell someone.

This sucks. Any advice would be welcomed.

13

Brainiac4 People can be very confused after a seizure. They can also be confused if their blood sugar is too high or low, if they’re withdrawing from alcohol, or obviously, if they’re three sheets to the wind.

She needs to see a neurologist, and in the meantime, she should not be left at home alone while she is in this state - accidents can happen.

Obviously, this isn’t your responsibility to arrange, but, at the very least, if you or another co-worker live near enough to give her a lift to work, you should arrange to do that.

None of this is your responsibility, and if she wants to make bad healthcare choices, she has every right to do so, although it will make others suffer, it’s probably not a good idea to take it so hard personally.

Any chance your boss could talk to her and arrange time off work for the neurologist’s appointment?

If you’re really concerned, a phone call to the doctor who treated her earlier might help, at least then the medical people would be clued in to her attitude towards their advice.

14

Ooooooh please do, I wanna learn new bad words!

Mom sometimes says “God doesn’t send anything He hasn’t given you the strength to deal with, but I sometimes wish He stopped loading a tad early”

Here’s to hoping the load starts coming off soon…

15

Time off work for the neurologist isn’t the problem – our entire management structure up through senior VP is aware she had a seizure and wants her to get well, so will give her weeks off if needed. The problem is that she’s refusing to make the appointment.

We’re trying to get her to accept a ride to work if she’s going to come to work. I know she gets to make her own decisions and can drink herself to death if she wants. That’s going to be painful to watch. I’m trying to focus on what I can and should do. Right now, that’s making sure that she’s not driving. If she is, I will contact the ER doctor (whose name I do not know, more fool I for not getting it) and tell him she is not following his directives and is a danger to herself and others.

16

If she’s had a seizure, the doctor should report it to your state DMV, who will pull her license. (At least that’s how it works most places I know of.) Here, you have to be seizure-free for at least one year to drive again.

Notifying the ER doc is a good idea; he should know to be sure and report this. The ER desk should be able to help you figure out which doc it was.

17

HOO BOY! :eek: :eek: :eek:

Here’s hoping it gets better.

18

Hope things get better. When it rains, it pours, right?

I had a weird childhood, and then for three and a half years I had a great life because my dad got sober and everything was fine.

Then my boyfriend broke up with me. I moved to PA with a friend of mine and her mom kicked me out of the house and I was homeless. One of my best friends listened to someone lie about me and completely severed contacts with me. My other best friend moved to Washington with her new husband. I lost two very valued teachers to cancer, my great-grandfather to old age, and two very close family friends - one to a car accident, and one to suicide.

But, on the plus side, I learn all kinds of stuff from this bad crap, and I had some good shit happen in between.

At least you’re not another of my friends. Every time something good happens to her, something bad happens to compensate for it. The other day she got really good news - she’d gotten hired by this gaming site for a lot of money, and Logitech gave her product placement, which meant they were sending her their entire catalogue for her to review. Then she got bitten by a black widow and spent the second half of the day with me in the hospital.

Yesterday she got the news that she was making even more money and Sony was sending her Loco Roco and a new PSP. I was terrified even having her in the car.

~Tasha

19

If her alcohol withdrawal is bad enough to cause seizures shouldn’t she be in some kind of rehab?

20

I don’t have any words of comfort that relate to most of the crappy circumstances you related, but I might be able to offer a little bit of hope on this one.

Our first daughter was diagnosed in-utero with hydrops fetalis, shich is basically a collection of fluid in the chest, head, and abdominal cavities. After a few crazy days of ultrasounds, amnio-reductions and testing the docs decided that she’d do better out (where they could drain the fluid) than in (where the fluids would retard organ development, esp. lungs.

So she was delivered 6 weeks early via c-section. She came out puffy and swollen, not moving or making a sound, and it took 20 minutes of CPR before they could even intubate her for the ventilator (her throat was swollen shut from all the fluids).

Before the delivery they told us she had a 50/50 chance of making it, and after they had stabilized her somewhat they told us that even if she did make it, brain damage was a sure thing.

That was ten years ago, and today she’s a happy, healthy girl who is on grade-level for math and above grade-level for english and reading. We haven’t seen a single sign of any damage or disability. (She’s a little small for her age, but then so are her three brothers, who were all full-term routine delivery babies. It’s more likely genetic than an artifact of her difficult birth).

Of course there’s no guarantee that your friends’ story will have as happy an ending (although I hope and pray that it will), but there’s definately hope and room for optimism.