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I was stuck for a ride to this morning's physical-therapy appointment, so I decided to try driving my own car. This was the first time I've tried to drive a stick-shift since my leg surgery.
(Giant Thank You to William Pike for swapping me his automatic car for two weeks last month, and also to Tom Luongo for the same favor for a few days last week.)
This morning was a good time for such a test: not rush hour, not far, not new, not late enough in the day for my ankle to have swelled too much in advance. (Even better timing would have been on a less humid day and under less time pressure.)
Although my ankle hurt during the appointment, undoubtedly from driving my car, the convenience of being able to provide my own transportation felt nothing less than miraculous.
After I was done shouting Halleluyah I recited the She-heHeyanu. And when I got home I took heavier pain and swelling meds than usual, and rushed my leg back into the Machine for a little while.
The Hebrew word "Halleluyah" really does mean "Praise the Lord." Hallelu is the plural imperative form of the verb to praise, and Yah is one of Gd's many Hebrew names. Praise Gd, Y'all.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Bowel Blockage
Ouch, today I'm suffering from a bowel blockage. It is excruciating. This one has been going on since about 7 AM. It's very serious, actually life-threatening. But I'm afraid to go to the ER because the first thing they'll do is pump my stomach using the dreaded NG (nasal-gastric) tube. I'd almost rather die than submit to that again. My rule of thumb is that if the blockage goes on for more than 24 hours, I promise to find a ride to the ER. Fortunately this blockage seems headed for self-resolution before the 24-hour mark, which means I have once again successfully avoided the ER.
This can happen to anyone, including people with full, normal, functioning digestive tracts, but I never had it before I lost my colon. I've learned that there's so much more room in my lower torso minus that large organ that there's now space in which my small intestine can get kinked and twisted. This is why people who've had complete colectomies get bowel blockages more often.
This is the first one I've had since my leg surgery. Thank goodness I can walk enough to do some of the right things for the blockage, like heat up the Bed Buddy in the microwave for applying heat to my mid-section, and carry it into the other room where I can lie down on the couch. I also made hot, sweetened tea for slow sipping. I couldn't have done any of this by myself during the first two weeks after the leg surgery. Thank Gd it didn't happen then!
One of the other blockage-management tools is to take a hot bath, but I'm not allowed to immerse my leg yet, so that option was out.
What caused this particular blockage? Must be something I ate. Most likely it was those innocent-seeming beets I polished off yesterday evening. When will I ever learn: Do not eat beets after 1 PM, Natasha! Or, if I must, at least eat them in tiny quantities only. Hard to remember when I love them so much.
This can happen to anyone, including people with full, normal, functioning digestive tracts, but I never had it before I lost my colon. I've learned that there's so much more room in my lower torso minus that large organ that there's now space in which my small intestine can get kinked and twisted. This is why people who've had complete colectomies get bowel blockages more often.
This is the first one I've had since my leg surgery. Thank goodness I can walk enough to do some of the right things for the blockage, like heat up the Bed Buddy in the microwave for applying heat to my mid-section, and carry it into the other room where I can lie down on the couch. I also made hot, sweetened tea for slow sipping. I couldn't have done any of this by myself during the first two weeks after the leg surgery. Thank Gd it didn't happen then!
One of the other blockage-management tools is to take a hot bath, but I'm not allowed to immerse my leg yet, so that option was out.
What caused this particular blockage? Must be something I ate. Most likely it was those innocent-seeming beets I polished off yesterday evening. When will I ever learn: Do not eat beets after 1 PM, Natasha! Or, if I must, at least eat them in tiny quantities only. Hard to remember when I love them so much.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Imagine Feeling Like Yourself Again
So, get this: Dr. Jacobs wants me to bring my cowboy boots to my next Normatec appointment! With appropriate socks and everything!!! Of course, I had to wonder, aloud, which cowboy boots? The red ones? The green ones? The black ones? (I didn't even mention the original brown ones, or the Dan-Post multicolored ones, or the blue ropers.) Hm, I'm thinking maybe the red ones. Nurse Mary said she wants to see the whole outfit.
Well, the Normatec brochure does say, right up front: "Imagine feeling like yourself again."
Well, the Normatec brochure does say, right up front: "Imagine feeling like yourself again."
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
My First Squat Toilet
[This is my first posting about guts.]
The first place I ever saw a squat toilet was in Tokyo. In the airport bathroom, May, 1982. Long rows of stalls in the women's room, just like in any American airport bathroom. But each stall door had a label, either "Western toilet" or "non-Western toilet." If I remember correctly, there were about equal numbers of each! I was seventeen years old, had never heard of squatting or anything. I was overcome with curiosity about what a non-Western toilet could possibly be and peeked behind one of those doors to find out. A single glance at a white porcelain flat thing on the floor was enough to scare me and I fled to a Western toilet. (I had just been diagnosed with colitis the year before; I think my bowel problems were beginning to affect me by this point in time.)
Eleven years later, somewhere in the Atlas mountains of Morocco, I finally used a squat toilet for the first time in my life, and it wasn't by choice. In colitis-related desperation I had found myself in a really icky, dirty, rural, impoverished dark place, with a flushable hole in the ground and a bucket of water, to which I had been ushered by a non-French-speaking Moroccan man. I remember being worried about germs, infection, disease, kidnapping, etc. So imagine my surprise when, upon "relieving myself" there, I found myself thinking: "Wow, that was so much easier and less painful than on the toilets at home!"
The first place I ever saw a squat toilet was in Tokyo. In the airport bathroom, May, 1982. Long rows of stalls in the women's room, just like in any American airport bathroom. But each stall door had a label, either "Western toilet" or "non-Western toilet." If I remember correctly, there were about equal numbers of each! I was seventeen years old, had never heard of squatting or anything. I was overcome with curiosity about what a non-Western toilet could possibly be and peeked behind one of those doors to find out. A single glance at a white porcelain flat thing on the floor was enough to scare me and I fled to a Western toilet. (I had just been diagnosed with colitis the year before; I think my bowel problems were beginning to affect me by this point in time.)
Eleven years later, somewhere in the Atlas mountains of Morocco, I finally used a squat toilet for the first time in my life, and it wasn't by choice. In colitis-related desperation I had found myself in a really icky, dirty, rural, impoverished dark place, with a flushable hole in the ground and a bucket of water, to which I had been ushered by a non-French-speaking Moroccan man. I remember being worried about germs, infection, disease, kidnapping, etc. So imagine my surprise when, upon "relieving myself" there, I found myself thinking: "Wow, that was so much easier and less painful than on the toilets at home!"
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