Because I don't have enough crazy unexplainable medical problems as it is, I had to go add another one to the list.

I clench my teeth at night. Really hard. Especially when I'm stressed out. Over the weekend, I clenched my teeth and pretty much bit a whole in the side of my mouth. I spent the weekend loaded up on Anbesol and Extra Strength Tylenol, but it didnt help.  Monday morning I woke up with lots of swelling and even more pain.  Tuesday was more of the sam, and all of the swelling meant that I would constantly bite the inside of my already raw cheek throughout the day. Yesterday I woke up and it was just unbearable, so I called my dentist, who prescribed me some medicine and scheduled a follow-up appointment for next monday.

The interesting thing about this? The medicine is mixed with dental paste/cement. You know, the stuff they use to make these:

The catch? IT HARDENS.

Which basically means that I can't really talk that well, because I can't open my teeth. (obviously, the whole no-talking thing is impossible for me...)  So I put it all over the inside of my cheek, it hardens for 4-5 hours, then starts to dissolve.  Then I eat, then reapply. It's lovely.  But the good thing is that it keeps the inside of my cheek dry and lets the medicine actually work. I woke up this morning with significantly reduced swelling.

I have to do this until Monday.

WHY CAN'T I JUST BE NORMAL?

I'm about to walk out the door to have my eyes checked out again. I went 4 weeks with no steroid drops, no contacts, and no eye makeup.  Now he'll measure everything again and see if he can make a better judgement after a month with no stimulation in my eyes.

Hopefully, he'll say that everything looks PERFECT and that I can go home, put my contacts back in, and forget this ever happened.

But I'm not holding my breath.

Say a prayer for me and my stupid pansy eyeballs this morning, will you?

I'm not kidding.

I've been having continuous eye trouble over the past several months... well, over my entire life actually, but especially over the past several months.  My vision has suddenly gotten alot worse than normal in a really short amount of time. 

I recently went to a specialist, and he seems to think that the problems with my eyes are similar to the problems I have with the rest of my body... my eyes react to stress and anxiety just like the rest of the muscles in my body do.  It makes sense, really, that my eye muscles would act just like the rest of my muscles.

Plus, he says that I hardly ever blink and when I do, my eyes don't close all the way.  Plus they don't close all the way when I sleep.  So, muscular stress combined with the fact that my eyes are dry and tired from not being moisturized enough since they never close is taking its toll on my vision.

Another problem, though, is that my eyes arent responding to the higher prescriptive power they tried on me.  Basically, it didnt matter how strong of a lens he put in front of me, my eyes couldnt tell the difference.  My eyesight with glasses right now is the legal limit for driving, so if they get worse I can't drive. And since they're not responding to correction, there's not much they can do about it until we can get the muscles and dryness taken care of.

If that's what the problem is anyway. We're still not totally sure yet.

So, I go back to the specialist in a couple of weeks to see if there's more change and to continue trying to diagnose...and hopefully, they won't have gotten worse in the 4 weeks between appointments.

In the meantime, I've got to figure out a way to lessen my anxiety and de-stress, since according to the doctor, my eyeballs can't handle my lifestyle.

Stupid pansy eyeballs.

Okay people, I wasnt going to blog about my medical drama, but when it multiplies itself times 23094879847665098, it becomes blogworthy, despite its somewhat personal nature.  So here goes.

When did it all start? Who knows.  But there are several reasons why I'm TOTALLY USELESS right now and my family wont let me spend any time alone.  (Which is actually okay with me.)  

I told you about my fabulous fall in Nashville in front of J. Alexanders.  That was just the beginning.  I spent about a week taking meds for the back and arm pain, and at one point I actually thought my arm was fractured.  I guess it wasnt, because it eventually stopped throbbing after about 4 days. 

In the midst of dealing with the  back/arm pain from that, I started having random pains in my lower abdomen, but just on the right side.  I figured it had to do with my ovaries, so I scheduled an appointment with the fabulous Dr. Karen Cole (who all ladies should see if you live in the Jackson area), and they worked me in a couple of days later. 

At first they thought that the pain might be stemming from an ectopic pregnancy, which THANKFULLY wasnt the case.  They did an ultrasound and found a nice big fat ovarian cyst making itself right at home.  Perfect.  The strange part here was that the cyst was so big.... usually people catch them before they get to be that size because of  the pain.  But it had only been hurting for about a week.  So that means that it either didnt cause me any pain during the majority of its growth, or that it grew that size REALLY fast.  Either one is weird.   So Dr. Cole decides she just wants to watch it for a few weeks to see what it will do, and she schedules me another appointment and gives me a prescription for the pain and a picture of my sonogram.

Anyone who sees the sonogram immediately thinks I'm pregnant, by the way. It's pretty funny.   Oh, and my friend Emily K. named him Lance.  I figured that if my body made it and its growing inside my tummy, I have the right to name it.  So she did.  Internet, meet Lance.

Fastforward a few more days. I start having pain on the other side...The exact same kind of pain. I'm also feeling royally snotty and congested with a sore throat and ears.  Plus my left shoulder is giving me some really weird pain.  Everything pretty much sucks.  So I call Dr. Cole again and talk to her nurse.  She goes and takes another look at  my ultrasound, and determines that there are some abnormal follicles on the left ovary that are most likely turning into cysts as well.  I'll most likely have a couple on that side, too.  FABULOUS.  We keep my appointment scheduled for the end of January, because they say that they wont be able to tell anything significantly different on another ultrasound for a few more weeks.  I just have to treat the pain and wait it out. Awesome.

In the meantime, I'm feeling even more super-snotty and congested and scratchy and hurty. I'd been taking some antibiotics for a few days and nothing was happening.  Still getting worse.  The famous Dr. Brad says that it is a virus, so the antibiotics arent touching it.  Like all viruses, you have to let it run its course.  But he gave me some great cough/congestion syrup that works pretty well, and I figure I'll just add this to the list of all the crap I have to wait on. Surely I'll get better eventually.

Fastforward to yesterday (saturday) morning at 3:30am. I wake up because my left arm hurts. BAD. I can't go back to sleep because it hurts so bad to lie down.  So I sit up in bed and rub my arm, but my hand keeps going kind of numb.  It keeps getting worse. And it starts to hurt really bad when I breathe. 

Around 4:30am, I'm practically screaming because it has gotten so bad, and Nate wakes up.  Immediately he hears me say my left arm and trouble breathing, so he's thinking I'm having a heart attack.  So he says we're going to the ER. I'm pretty sure I'm not having a heart attack, (mainly because I'm 23 and I figure that's pretty abnormal) but I'm hurting so bad and the breathing thing scares me enough that I think the ER is probably a good idea. But of course I tell Nate to call Dr. Brad first, who says "go ahead and take her in." So Nate puts on the hazard lights and drives me to the ER at 4:45am.  Brad says he's coming too, and Lacey calls Mom and Dad.

When we get there, I tell them whats wrong (shooting pain down left arm, hand going numb, hurts to breath, chest pain) they say that have to rule out the big things first- heart problems, lung problems, blood clots, etc.  I just keep telling them "but my arm hurts so bad..." and they kept saying "but we have to do the important things first.  your heart and lungs are more important than your arms."  Which I totally understand, by the way, but my arm feels like its about to FREAKIN FALL OFF MY BODY and nobodys doing anything about it.  I go in for some X-Rays, and they make me do things that hurt even worse, like move my arms all around, and take really huge deep breaths.  Sucks. The good thing was that Dr. Brad was there to explain everything to me as we were doing it.

So then we go back to my little room, and the nurse wants to take blood.  I tell her I want to do it sitting up because it hurts my arm worse when I lie down.  She says its fine, and starts the process.  Apparently its harder when you're sitting up, because blood went EVERYWHERE.  Floor, my pants, the sheets, my arms...everywhere.  She ended up taking possibly the biggest vile of blood I've ever seen, because "we might have to run lots of tests and I want to make sure we have plenty." I'm thinking if thats not enough, they could scrape another liter off my pants if they wanted.  By this time Mom and Dad have been here for a little while, so Mom cleans all the blood off of everything and lets me prop my arm up on her, becuase it hurts so bad to be lying flat.

I cant remember the order of everything else- they do a CT scan on my chest, run a bunch of blood tests, and it turns out that my heart and lungs are healthy.  The problem is that the virus I've had for the past week had made its way into my chest wall/diaphragm and is causing lots of inflammation, which is in turn putting pressure on the phrenic nerve, which is causing the pain in my arm.  This explains the chest pain, the pain when I breathe, and the arm pain.

But there's nothing they can do except give me some meds and let me wait it out. And by the way it might last 4-5 more days. And I should probably lay really low and not do anything for awhile. So they give me a bunch of prescriptions and tell me I can leave. Do I need a wheelchair or can I walk? I can probably walk. I'm feeling a little better.

Nate says hes going to get the car, I decide I'm going to the bathroom. I'm standing there washing my hands when I feel it coming on: I'm going to pass out. Yep...definitely about to pass out.

 I try to sit down on the floor so I wont fall and hit my head, and I kind of yell for Mom. She opens the door and I'm on the floor, leaning against the wall. She moves me out into the hallway, and I pass out.  Everyone says "we should have known better, she always does this. This is what happened LAST TIME we were at the ER." They tell the nurses that my sisters and I pass out all the time, so theres nothing to worry about.  They put me back in the bed, hook me up to an EKG, blood pressure machine, oxygen, and an IV.

Then Nate walks in to see what's going on, and there I am with oxygen tubes in my nose, an IV in my arm, and an EKG machine on my chest. He's a little confused. They tell him I passed out, he realizes this is nothing new, and sits down to wait.

After awhile my color comes back and I start to feel a little normal.  But man, my arm still hurts so bad.  So they give me a sling so that I dont have to hold it up anymore, which actually helps alot. Mom and Dad and Brad head off to go drop off my prescriptions at Walgreens and grab some breakfast, and Nate and I stay to finish the IV drip. After I finally checked out (and they made me get a wheelchair to leave), we headed to Mom and Dads so I could sleep on their couch for the rest of the day. By this time we'dbeen there for SIX HOURS.

So now I'm at home because they wouldnt let me go to church this morning.  Because of my throat hurting so bad, I can't eat too much, so I havent had lots of strength anyway.  So I have to sit down every few minutes.  My arm is in a sling, so I can't do much anyway, but even if it wasnt in a sling, it hurts so bad that I dont like to use that arm.   I have to take such shallow breaths to keep my chest from hurting, which means that I wear out really fast if I talk.  So I'm pretty much useless. 

Nate's heading to Colorado today to chaperone a youth trip, and the rest of the family is headed to the beach.  I was going to stay here because I have some friends coming in town, but that got vetoed real fast.... Nate won't let me stay here alone while he's in CO with me being so sick.  So the family is packing me up and taking me to the beach with them.  I'll just lie on the couch there for a week, I guess. No different than lying on the couch here.

So that's my New Years plans...sit around while I let all of this crap just "run its course." All at the same time.  The good thing is that I have lots of good pain meds that are keeping me from feeling it too badly.  And I finally found a position I can sleep in that doesnt hurt my arm.  So now at least I can stay rested.

Now I'm just playing the waiting game until I can go back to Dr. Coles and see how many new cysts I've gotten and what she wants to do about them, and until this stupid virus goes away and clears up my head, and until this stupid nerve isnt being triggered and my arm will go back to normal and I can breathe regularly.

So that's what's up with me. How are you?

Turns out I'm right.  Nate ate some fish yesterday that has been in our freezer for an unknown length of time.  I don't eat fish, so I don't keep up with the fish that is or isnt in the freezer.  Well he had a nice big plateful for lunch yesterday, and we're thinking it was a bad idea.

A couple hours later, the fish made multiple reappearances, if you know what I mean. Yuck.  We called up our favorite doctor/brother-in-law EVER and got some medicine.

Let me just say that last night was a rough night for Nate... he didn't get any sleep, he ran fever all night, and he was having constant sharp stomach pains. This morning he wasnt feeling much better, and his skin was scorchingly hot to the touch. I called in the fabulous doctor Brad, and he told us to go ahead and come on in the clinic.  Soooo, they ran a few tests to see if they could figure out what the problem wasl, since it isn't exactly following the pattern of food poisoning. His infection count is way up, as well as a few other things that I can't remember the name of. 

They ended up giving Nate 3 shots- some kind of steroid, phenergen(sp?), and some kind of antibiotic.  who knows.  (we dont ask questions.... we trust Brad, plus we know where he lives).

So now Nate's asleep, finally, and hopefully he'll be feeling better when he wakes up in a few hours.

Long story short: We're not really sure what it is.  We just hope the shots take care of it.  But just because it's not following the pattern doesnt mean I'm letting the seafood off the hook. I'm still keeping my distance.

I've had an interesting past few days, to say the least. 

Friday night Nate decided that he felt like going to Memphis a day early, so we packed the car and drove up that night.  We got there just as everyone we were meeting had arrived downtown, so Nate dropped me off at Swig (a great little martini bar) to meet the girls, then he went to meet the boys at the bowling alley.  We stayed out for a while hanging out, drinking martinis, and enjoying the Buttery Nipples that the table of Ole Miss guys bought for us.  Too bad they didn't know how bad their odds were before they bought us the drinks; almost all of us who were there are either married or engaged.  No fun for them!

Saturday morning Nate and I got up around 10:30am to get ready to meet Sean and Nikki Sawyers for lunch at McAlisters. They actually brought their kids this time, so now I can finally say that I believe they exist!  After lunch we headed back to Mollys to hang out with the girls  and got ready for the wedding. We headed to the church around 4:30pm or so, and took lots of pictures and spent time with the bride before the ceremony began. 

After the wedding, we drove over to the Junior League house for the reception, where they had lots of great food and an awesome band, although i dont know the name.  We stayed for about 4 hours or so, and had a great time.  Then we headed back to Jen's to go to sleep.

Sunday morning I woke up feeling a little weird. My stomach was bothering me and I felt really nauseated.  We drove back to Jackson, but I slept the whole way in the car because I was feeling so bad.  We made it in time for the Fathers Day lunch with the whole family, but I still wasnt feeling that well.  We ended up leaving a little early so I could go home.

Nate and I decided to take a nap to see if it would help me to feel better, but around 6:30pm, I woke up throwing up everywhere.... absolutely disgusting.  The bad thing was that it pretty much didnt stop for most of the night.  Brad said I probably had the stomach bug that was going around and called me in some medicine, but I couldnt keep it down.  I tried to sleep, but couldnt, and it just kept getting worse.

Around 5am I was having terrible nausea and cramps, then I started losing feeling in my arms and legs, so Nate decided to take me to the ER.  It wasnt crowded and we made it right in, so they hooked me up to an IV and started me on medicine and fluids because I was so dehydrated.  They took my blood pressure and it was 50/37... definitely not normal! I was doing better after a while, so they stood me up to see if I would get nausated again and to take my blood pressure again, but I passed out.  So they put me on more medicine and fluids, but then I started twitching really bad.... but they said it was a side effect from having a 2nd dose of the medication.  It was so annoying- I felt like I had terrets or something.

Finally, around 9:30am or so, they let me go home.  I went over to mom's house and stayed there while Nate was at work.  I went straight to sleep and didnt wake up until he picked me up at 6pm.  Now I'm doing much better, and am finally able to hold down a little food...even though its only toast, chicken noodle soup, and jello.  Hopefully its pretty much over now. 

Tomorrow should be better. I'll probably head over to moms while Nate is at work again so I don't have to stay at home by myself. Hopefully I'll be back up to par by wednesday and ready to keep Luke and go back to the office.

We'll see.

I had my appointment this morning at the Center for Blindess at UMC... of course the fact that they were sending me there didnt make me feel too hopeful about the whole thing, but I figured I would wait until the doctor visit was over to start worrying too much.  Well, I tried, at least, but I'll be honest and say I was having visions of spending the rest of my life blind and never being able to see my children and all sorts of horror stories.  Thankfully, I don't have to worry about that.

I saw a specialist there this morning and he has diagnosed me with Giant Papillary Conjunctivitis (GPC).  Basically it's kind of like an allergic reaction that my eyes are having to my contacts, and have been having for years.  That's why my vision keeps getting worse - my eyes are trying to fight off my contacts and it has caused the back of my eyelids to have some weird reactions.  Go type in GPC (but spell it out) into Google and hit "images..."  you'll be thoroughly grossed out. 

Anyways, he's putting me on some steroids to stop the problem, and I have to stay out of my contacts for about a month.  Then, if it all cleared up and the steroids fixed the problem, I'll have to start wearing disposables that I throw away every day.  He said that if I don't ever wear the same lenses twice, it should help keep it from coming back.  If not, I'll just have to stop wearing contacts completely and go to glasses for good.

That's not so bad, though... at least he's found out what's causing the pain and making my vision go bad so quickly.  I'm just relieved that it's going to stop once we solve this problem - I'd rather wear glasses forever than wear contacts that will eventually take away my vision.

It's nice to have a diagnosis and know that it's a fixable one.  Just the peace of mind of understanding the problem makes me feel alot better.  Hopefully, the meds will work and I'll be good to go in a month. 

Thanks to everyone who was praying about this... It means alot to me!

ps- I also made a post today about my birthday.... 2 posts in one day! can you believe it? Scroll down for the next one....