02/13/13Where
should I even begin?
Ugh! I’m not sure where to start. Last semester I went to school somewhat
part-time and started a job with many hours as an attendant/caretaker for a
young woman my age. The school schedule
was not a big deal; I had done that for about a half year before my new
job. Getting back into working was a
very big adjustment! It is not really a
physical job, but I was finding myself exhausted all of the time, it took about
2 months before I really got used to working again. And I used to always be very punctual for
work-early even, now I have a hard time getting my butt there in a half hour
time frame! I actually did not know if I
would be able to stick with it because I was so tired, but I just kept
going! This quarter I went to school
full time, I am taking 16-18 units and working even more hours. I feel very happy with myself that I can do
so much, for me, it is a major accomplishment.
I know I might not get amazing grades, but I am going to graduate-soon! I feel really good for the progress I am
making and returning to be a normal person, I think this would actually be a
lot for a “normal’ person.
I had my yearly
done and everything looked GREAT! My
arteries look amazing! The one thing
that went wrong is the opening they had to go into to do the angiogram would
not close, in fact it opened more. My
Everolimus causes problems with healing.
To get the opening to heal, I had change to another antirejection med,
Cellcept, which made me so sick. I have
rejected a lot on this med and this made me nervous that this might happen
again.
My
Zostress/Everolimus (one of my 2anti-rejection drugs) caused me to always be
really warm, like I was ALWAYS having hot flashes. But all of the sudden I noticed that I was
very cold all of the time. I went to New
York (my first trip there!) and I felt like I had fluid on me. I work compression stockings on the plane so
I did not swell, I took diuretics to get the fluid off, but nothing was coming off. So when I got home I called the doctors and
after a few weeks we decided to just go see them. I was not sure if I was having
rejection. I had a cath and it showed
low cardiac output and that I had LOTS of fluid (like they almost made me
stay-but thankfully there were no beds).
I have been trying for almost a month to get the fluid off and feel
better, but I have to be on a very, very heavy diuretic. This is hard to be on when I am working and
in class. Sometimes it makes me pee
every 20 min, it seems impractical. But,
if I don’t take the diuretic I immediately start to build fluid again. I think I am getting a handle on this, but it’s
been about a month. I am just not sure
what caused me to start retaining fluid to begin with; I the biopsy showed I had
absolutely no rejection.
The Everolimus
causes my magnesium and iron to be low, my iron got so low that I got exhausted
and am having to have weekly IV’s of iron to get it up and to give me
energy.
Some health things
not about me. Back in November my
Grandfather was diagnosed with lung cancer.
He smoked over thirty years ago, and was extremely health, walking at
least 30 min a day and still working most days mowing lawns and cleaning horse
stalls. He just had one small spot and
needed to have a lobe removed. He had
the lobe removed in November 2012. Since
then he had complications related to the lung (filling up with fluids and
secretions). He had been in and out of
the hospital since November, but permanently entered the hospital Jan 4. His lung that he had surgery on balled up, so
they decided to remove it. It worked for
a day. The next day the other lung
started to ball up and he passed away that day.
I never expected that to happen.
