This is not a Rant

On Advice, Part I: Real LIfe Advisors

I understand the need to help someone out. Really, I do. What I do not understand is how it is helpful to point out something that both of us know that I know and understand. When someone is sick and makes some poor choices, they get that those choices were likely not the best ones but made them anyway. Given the choice between bad and worse, generally we choose bad. Given the choice between temporary relief and more suffering, I was weak for the past few months and made a really bad choice that gave me temporary relief until it exploded in my face. It was not worth the mess, since I had to clean it up – while still sick mind you – but you can’t put a price on the that little bit of relief.

                Some background may help. I have stomach issues and type I diabetes. Together they are a super power team of hideous. The diet for both is pretty well the opposite ends of the spectrum and when one goes a little off course they join hands and jump off the cliff together. Fun times for all. Sort of. At least my middle child thinks its fun since Dad takes him to stay at Grandma’s house and they all four share one huge bed and get to talk all night and eat way past bed time and drink tea before bed too. And sometimes they stay up until midnight. While I get poked and prodded and lectured in the hospital. Usually by that time, though I am seeing double or triple, can’t focus or remember anything and hardly am able to keep my eyes open. Last time I woke up to the doctor apologizing to me since she had a really long needle stuck in my wrist and she was moving it around trying to find  the artery since arterial readings are much more accurate. I didn’t wake up because of the pain, I actually woke up because I think she swore or something close to it and it sounded funny. I had a bruise from wrist to elbow the next day and a promise from the nurse not to be gone when the doctor came to take another reading. Anyway, that aside. I end up in pretty bad shape. This last time I have had trouble keeping anything inside me and so decided that for the most part I wouldn’t put too much inside of me. It seemed a good idea in theory. If you discount how you need nutrients and sustenance and all that stuff that helps you survive. Well, by the week marker I had dropped another almost fifteen pounds and was the weight I think I was when I was twelve. Needless to say, it wasn’t pretty and although I have never really been overweight or really out of shape in my life I was never really skinny either. Skinny is not easy like people think. I gave myself bruises from sitting on hard surfaces; you are too bony for your own good. I was also malnourished so I was weak and tired all the time and my cognitive abilities were reduced to that of using all my energy to concentrate on breathing and walking at the same time. So, I was in pretty bad shape and saw how I was doing it to myself but by that time I couldn’t eat because I would just puke it back out within the half hour and I really tried not to. There was little I could keep in, I resorted to drinking so many slushes because it was cooling on the heartburn that preceded the puking and since it was in there for such a short time it was cool coming out and didn’t hurt like even water did. Still does it to me but I am handling it slightly better. I also can’t see all of my bones anymore, a slight improvement. Scales and mirrors are enemies. My husband would try to understand but it gets tiring for me so I understood his frustrations, even when he tried to hide them from me. And then the inevitable hospital stay came. And that is when I got more advice then I knew what to do with. Well, I knew what I wanted to do but it isn’t their fault that the people around me just didn’t think before talking.

                I went in because I couldn’t stop puking, which I knew would end up in a week or more in hospital if I didn’t get it under control, plus I was down under 110lbs, so I really didn’t have much more weight to lose (I am usually happy around the 135 mark, sometimes a little more because these sick times tend to happen and I just drop suddenly so it is like extra insurance). Got the fluids I needed and a great doctor who told me that he could keep me in if I wanted to, if I was leery of going home or I could just go since there isn’t too much to do for me except readjust some things with my regular doctor. He gave me the urgent paper to fax to her and I was on my way home. Not fully recovered but enough not to pass out when I go up the stairs. It worked enough for me. I am on a tight leash now, if anything happens I will go back and make that stay but for now I am happy where I am, or at least content not to be there.