A Day in the Life…

Well I went to the dentist as promised.  It was not as good a visit as I had been hoping for.  It turns out that I broke my tooth down below the gum line and it was not savable.   So with just a local, the dentist grabbed my tooth with a pair of pliers and yanked it out.  It took a full 20 seconds from start to finish.  It took longer to give me all the shots to numb the thing up than it did to pull it out.  Now I have a gaping hole in the very back of my mouth.  Tomorrow I get to go back to the dentist to have the 1st of 4 legs of oral repair done. 

The worst part of the whole visit was the anxiety.  I am terrified about the dentist and by the time he was done I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  Thankfully they noticed my intense anxiety and offered to give me a mild sedative for future visits.  I find out tomorrow if it works.  The only downside to taking this sedative is that I cannot drive myself to the appointment.  That means that Melinda has to take the time off to drive me there and back.  Bummer. 

However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing tomorrow.  She got a little jealous of all the attention I was getting and decided to go ahead and break one of her teeth.  I’m not kidding!  It was the night before last and she bit down into a meatball and there was something hard in it, possibly a bone fragment or a tough piece of gristle, and her took just snapped.  It broke the entire side of her tooth off.  So she is not going to just have to sit there, she' gets to be a patient there as well. 

So much excitement, so much drama, so much fun.  But that’s a day in the life of Jasen and Melinda. 

Let here be Food

So yesterday the doc said I could be on solid food as tolerated.  Not too bad.  It took awhile but I finally got up the nerve to eat something this morning.  The breakfast of champions—egg and cheese English muffin.  On one of the last bites of the muffin, I broke a tooth.  Go figure.  I go nearly a month without being able to eat and the first time I do, I hurt myself.  I go to the dentist tomorrow to have things repaired.

On a happier note, food seems to be going good with me right now.  I can’t complain yet and with any luck, won’t be able to complain at all.  So to all of you who sent their prayers and happy thoughts, I say thank you.  You are the best.  God bless all of you.

10 Days and Counting

Today marks the 10th day that I’ve been on a soft/bland food diet.  This in response to my little bout with a partial intestinal blockage a few weeks back.  But after 10 days things are still not 100%.  I have had a few problems of feeling excessively bloated after meals and it unfortunately lasts for several hours.  But on a positive note, the signs of the blockage have disappeared.  So tomorrow the doc is supposed to call with instructions on what to do next.  Along with the soft/bland flood diet, I have been on a high dose of steroids.  Steroids, for those who don’t know, are the bane to my existence.  It’s because of the steroids, prednisone to be exact, that I have osteoporosis and have broken 18 bones in the last 6 years.  So it’s imperative that I get off this stuff as soon as possible.  A special thanks to my doctor for keeping me out of surgery. 

Good News, Bad News

Wow!  I got some not so nice news from my doc.  But first a little background info…

On the 3rd of May I was still feeling pretty bad in the gut.  So I finally folded and went to the ER.  There they did an CT scan and gave me some meds via IV.  After a couple hours they came in and gave me the news.  It was great news.  There was no complete obstruction of the small intestine.  However, there was lots of distention throughout the entire length of the intestine.  So they gave me some more meds and told me to follow-up with my doc the next day.

At my doc appointment, he gave me the bad news.  There is definitely a partial obstruction in the works.  It is being caused by one of two things—either a nasty flare of my crohn’s disease, or adhesions.  For those who don’t know, adhesions are places where the small intestine are stuck to the abdominal wall, other portions of the small intestine, or other organs.  That is bad because in order to do its job, it must be able to move freely within the abdominal cavity. 

So the doc put me on a high dose of prednisone, my arch enemy, and told me to remain on a liquid diet until further notice.  And prednisone is my arch enemy because it is what caused my osteoporosis which has led to 18 broken bones over the last 6 years. 

So that’s it.  I am sort of in limbo.  Until the partial obstruction clears or becomes a complete obstruction, we can’t really move forward.  So if I’m a little late with my updates here, I hope you’ll forgive me.  Until next time…