Thursday, September 27, 2012

Karma

Nearly one year ago, in October 2011, I was at a neighborhood baby shower.  Being that I don't have children these events are always something I loathe going to.  Who doesn't want to spend their weekend playing games like Pin the Diaper on the Baby, how many sheets of toilet paper does it take to go around Amy's belly, or (my personal favorite) guess what candy bar has been melted into the diaper so it looks like baby shit?

So the torture finally ends and I think I'm going to spend the rest of my Sunday afternoon relaxing at home.  I get one step into the house, literally one step, and my husband - who has spent his whole weekend at a continuing education seminar - jumps up from the living room and says "I can't see!  I'm blind!"  Being the compassionate wife that I am - and with everything I've been through I find everyone else's "small medical issues" quite trivial - I say "ya, ok...I just had to go to a baby shower.  So beat that." 

Well he did.

He was in the last day of the seminar when a "moon-like shadow" came into his vision and within a few hours he had no sight in his left eye execpt a small sliver of top periferal (example: if he was looking straight, he could only see a tiny bit of the ceiling).  Becasue he is the calm before the storm in our relationship (yes, that makes me the storm...I tend to be dramatic) he was searching the internet on what needed to be done and what might be wrong while I frantically called my mom, hysterical that my husband is now blind.  Steve and I must have gone three rounds debating on going to the ER or waiting the night and calling his eye doctor on Monday morning for an office appointment.  In the end, I won...obviously.

We were concerned it could be a detached retina - and WebMD says that can be an emergency situation.  So off we go to the best hospital in Atlanta for eyecare, Emory.

We arrived in the Emergency Room in the late afternoon, and surprisingly was wisked back to see the nurse and begin processing immediately.  Apparently when you have something more than "pain" you get the attention of the medical staff.  I should keep this in mind...

As we sat in a cell of a room, if it can be called that, off the main hall, the admitting nurse asked generic questions for the mountain of paperwork to be completed before we could get a room in the ER.  Questions like, your full name, address, age, height, weight, blah blah blah.  Then she asked him to come into the hallway with her, and it is here, in this long dim hall that my husband got to experience the competencies of the medical community for himself...

Steve (standing at one side of the hall - me, watching from a chair)
Nurse:  "Ok, hold up the eye blocker on your right eye and read what you can off the chart."
Steve:  holds up blocker.  "I can't see anything."
Nurse:  "It's ok, jsut whatever you can read off the chart."
Steve:  "I can't see anything.  I can't see a chart."
Nurse:  getting annoyed "Just read the top letter."
Steve:  "I can tell you what the top few letters are just because I know the chart, but I don't think that's the point of this test.  For testing purposes, I can tell you that I can't see the chart and I can't read any letters."
Nurse:  large sigh... "Well tell me what you can see then."
Steve:  "I can see a small bit of the ceiling if I look straight."
Nurse:  "What if you flip down the pin holes and look through that?"  (comes over and flips the eye blocker so now the person can look through tiny pin holes)  "There, now read the chart."

I wanted to strangle her.

Eventually we passed the test  - or didn't - and got entrance to the ER room, which was quite nice and even had a flatscreen TV where we conveniently watched football while waiting for the doctors.

An energetic young female doctor first came to examine Steve's eye.  She confirmed with an ultrasound (performed over his eyelid) that he did indeed have a detached retina and the retinal specialists would need to be called in immediately as it can be a vision emergency.

We watched football.

And just like he did for me, I was there for him...taking pictures



And got his version of the now famous "look, I'm fine" picture.



Nearly 8 hours later, many football plays watched, we left the ER after scheduling emergency surgery for the following morning.



They make you put the "YES" sticker over the eye to be operated on.



And off he went into the OR for this surgery (warning: the video linked is graphic)
To answer your question: yes, we did watch it before his surgery and it did not help with the nerves!

Two hours later, he was as good as new.  Maybe even better becuase he was totally high on drugs and making my mom and I laugh hysterically as we waited for him to be discharged.




The morning after surgery the doctor saw him in her office and removed the bandages.  His eye was really swollen and had some dried blood, but was doing well.  Amazingly, he could already read the large letters on the dreaded "chart" even through all the gunk in his eye!

He had to sleep with the patch over his eye so the buckle didn't move.  He hated it and whinned about it like a little girl.  Again, becuase I'm so compassionate, I put extra gauze arond the base to make it more comfortable and lent him a hairband to help keep it on through the night.  Wife of the year right here!


He got to rock these awesome shades for the next month, too!  He even wore them inside the first few days becuase the sunlight was too bright.



Now he gets to wear really big glasses!

JK, these are a sculpture!

Friday, September 7, 2012

Sorry for the delay...

Sorry for the delay...it took a while to find out how to properly post since the link is no longer valid.  Hope this helps!
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1DXH995HViAVjZ5c1Y1clZNWms



Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Article

I figured it out!  To all of those out there who want a copy of the article I talk about in this post, I will scan and put it up on the blog tomorrow.  Thanks kind readers!

This is what I've been doing

Ok Porphs. I know I was all "oh I'm still here" and then I wasn't. Well, my life is boring what can I say...literally, what is there to say when you have a blog and there's nothing going on in your life? So to catch up... it's been over a year since I started having bad acne. I introduced everyone to Dr. Derm who told me to wear opera gloves and scarves - which I did for like two weeks and then haven't since, but I did totally stock up on scarves from Target which I admire daily as they hang in my closet. Dr. Derm also let me in on a little secret - that truck drivers have a thing for opera gloves. Who knew? So long story short... trying to get my acne under control has been difficult to say the least. It's been a process of trying this cream, then that gel, then these cleaning pads... You get the picture. About a month ago I had had it and asked her to take it to the next level. So she prescribed me Minocycline, a common antibiotic used to treat moderate/severe acne. Great! Nope, not great. The ONE TIME that I didn't double check my new medication, yes you guessed it, it's not good for porphs and I got sick. Within 48 hours I couldn't stand straight, nausious, had dark pee, outbreak on my back and went outside to pick a few weeds in our yard and got a huge, itchy rash on both arms from sun exposure. Obviously I stopped the medication and started to feel better. I will say, that Dr. Derm took total responsibility and apologized for making me sick (gasp! Yes, take a minute to read that again - a doctor who apologized for making and admiting to a mistake!) She now has me on a different antibiotic that is not making me sick and is doing a good job of clearing up the zits.

Here are some pics of my reaction to the minocycline - yes, very sexy:
It's hard to see in the pics, but the rash is made of tiny little red dots. 



Much more importantly, I decided a few weeks ago that being blonde was boring and that I needed to spice things up...so I went red.  I talked to my hair stylist about it first and he agreed that I had "the coloring" for it - meaning I'm pale and have light eyes - and so we did it. 


Here it is red... and I'm laughing becuase I feel like the Joker.
I admit that it doesn't look bad in this picture - but trust me it was bad.  And look how the hair color highlights the red in the acne.  Just what I was going for.

So 48 hours later I had them "fix it" back to blonde.  Which it really isn't right still so I'm going to a friend's salon later today and hopefully they can fix it... better.


So that's what I've been up to.


One last thing - I think that recently my blog has been posted on a website or conversation board or something because I've had all kinds of new readers - which I love!  However, many of you are emailing me asking for a copy of an article I talked about...can someone be more specific?  Let's all remember I have a horrible Porph memory and going through all previous posts to try and figure out which one yall are referring to sounds like a nightmare.  If I can figure out which article you want - and find it again - I'll be sure to post it on this blog!