The Downward Spiral: Part 4 — In Between Catastrophes
There is so much to my story that I feel like I’d be leaving out, but I also don’t want to lose you. Mostly I just want to cover this particular health episode cause it was so weird.
Once upon a time I was a zombie, almost jaundiced and I felt like I was living in a haze and I was so fatigued, so tired as if I had been in a coma, disoriented from the long sleep. Thankfully, no cravings to eat brains.But it came on me gradually, it was like a slow death. I’m not even sure how I ended up going to the walk-in clinic but I did. I remember that I was laying down on the examination table. So tired, unable to keep my eyes open.
Somewhere between my fog and when it lifted, I was subjected to a battery of blood tests. There is no possible way I can even put it into a time-frame, I don’t know if this happened over a week or a few days or whatever but the blood results came back and they said I had some hepatitis. They were specific in mentioning that it was not any of those B, or C, or whatever it was just some type of liver inflammation.
No idea as to what caused it, they kept an eye on certain blood levels, such as bilirubin, ALT, AST, etc. They classified it as an episode, their best guess was that I had a rare reaction to an oral contraceptive. Yes, it is one of those rare things that can happen. During this time, I must have complained about pain in my stomach or liver area as I was ordered a sonogram on that particular region where they didn’t really notice anything except for some sludge or a spot on my gallbladder. They were visibly able to see that my liver was swollen to about two times its normal size, part of the reason my breathing was very labored.
Over the recovery period, I drank a lot of water, drank a lot of Gatorade and was told to try and remain as hydrated as possible. Drink less pop, drink more water and Gatorade. It did seem to help, but I did resume my bad habit of drinking pop again. I don’t think I ever stopped during this period, just consumed less. It was either six or eight weeks; where once a week I had my blood taken out. Good news, my heightened levels were going down. Frustrated, however, of not knowing exactly what happened.
Due to this strange reaction that I had, I was forced to get over my fear of needles, although I still don’t like them, it’s more of an annoyance to me now.
Honestly, I wasn’t totally convinced that I didn’t have Hepatitis so I had subjected myself to what was like twelve to sixteen different vials of blood, to get a full system scan and made sure they tested for HIV, Hep B, C, plus a whole bunch of stuff I don’t remember. It all came back negative, I just wanted to be sure for everyone sake. My vein collapsed, they had to use an IV to suck me dry, they almost didn’t get everything they needed and said to come back the next day. Like nope, poke as much as you have to, just get this over with.
Overall, to me from now to when I explain when it all falls down the overarching theme of troubles outside of the physical issues, seemed to be related to my liver. However, I did have my gallbladder taken out and I really wish it could have been avoided. When all this kind of weird random crap happens to you, how do you not in a way become your own doctor?
You become afraid not to look into something, you don’t want to die. Our nature is to keep ourselves alive and between all the waiting, what was I to do to calm my fears over what this was and what it could be. My brain had to come to a logical conclusion about what was happening to me so that I could get through the days and the weeks where all this was happening to me.
I truly wish that if you are healthy, do whatever you can to stay there. Don’t obsess, but be mindful of your life and how to treat yourself physically and mentally.
You don’t want to wake up one day like me and wonder how your health got so messed up, that you feel you just can’t unravel the crap you’ve done to yourself and ultimately end up blaming yourself for being exactly where you are.
Please follow me here on Medium, and if you wish to support me consider doing so on Patreon, where I am hoping to establish a unconditional basic income from loyal readers. If you would prefer to support me but not on a monthly basis, consider buying me a drink.
Image Credit: Pixabay