This is a picture of me that was taken Saturday night. Believe it or not, I was, once again, in the hospital. This time I stayed from Thursday, February 11th to Tuesday the 23rd. I spent a LOT of time having tests...most of which I failed. This picture was taken in the middle of the night Saturday when one of my favorite nurses was putting a new IV in my left arm to replace the one in my right arm that had infiltrated. That's when the IV moves out of postion and the fluid enters your tissue surrounding the vein that the IV should be in. It leads to pain and swelling, which you can see in the picture if you look near the Band-aid up by my elbow. (At least you could see it on the larger picture, it seems smaller on this post.)

Anyway, long story short, I have an ischemic bowel. I've been having some symptoms lately that led me to think I was developing yet ANOTHER cancer...but all they found was the ischemic bowel and the painfully dilated common bile duct that has been annoying me ever since my cholycystectomy in '97. Also, when my oldest was born, he weighed 84 pounds and so did I. Instead of giving me a hysterectomy to get that Leviathan out of me, they did a "fourth degree episiotomy" which is when they "make one opening out of two". That's how it was explained to me back in '77. They gave my twat 5 months to "heal itself" and by the following May, it hadn't. So...they fixed it by redoing the episiotomy. No baby, just the same pain upon sitting down.

It seems as though THAT sucker has broken open again and as happened before, bodily gases, waste and blood all gets confused when choosing an outlet. That problem seems to be causing the other problem...the one with the ischemic bowel.

I had two procedures to see if they could fix that sucker but they didn't work. I have to call immediately to get an appointment to have another surgery done because, for some stupid reason, they couldn't do it as an in-patient.

By the way, I was put under with propofil and when they told me in the OR, I warned them that I better not hear anyone break out into a chorus of Thriller. Thankfully, they obliged.

I have so much more to tell you but it's really late and earlier today I was lying in a hospital bed so I think I'll grab some shut eye and be back tomorrow!

See ya!