Doll Mommy ®

My father passed away peacefully in his sleep on the wee early hours of Monday morning. I am sorry I have been away for so long. I have been having to take care of him and I somewhat forgot about this place for a bit. Please pray for the repose of his soul. I am doing Okay & my family is doing fine. Sadly we cant afford a funeral at a funeral home nor a burial, he is going to be cremated. A lot of this adulting stuff with paying bills and property taxes is new to me, I have been helping my mother understand it. I am still running D&D but currently in Karameikos on Mystara (an old school setting), its looking like I may have to become competent enough with some of the old school war gaming rules of BECMI. Lately I've been obsessed with it, and its given me somewhat of a schedule I can stick to & focus on aside from helping my father up to this point. I plan on going into Heating and Cooling by getting my HVAC certification, my existing CAD degree is useless and all the shops are going under so I need a career change (please pray for that as well). Hope to hear from so many of you wonderful people again.

A few days ago I was so tired I couldn't get out of bed to pick up the phone. Every time I stood up the room started to spin, so I just slept and slept. Every time I'd try to drink water, I'd get extremely ill. I tried to ignore the symptoms, but eventually I just couldn't once I passed the 48 hour mark without being able to keep water down, I just had to be seen. Well, it's a good thing I went. Soon after I got in, they admitted me for severe metabolic acidosis. There were a ton of ketones in my blood and my body has basically been living off itself. The doctor told me all my levels indicate starvation and malnutrition. My levels were so off it was insane. My doctor said if I hadn't come in things would've spiraled out of control and eventually killed me. I can't even remember how many medicines they gave me. Every few hours they had to give me something new to control this. I'm finally home and stable, but this definitely freaked me out for the long term. It's very easy to justify not drinking a lot because I'm simply used to it, but it never occurs to me how much this is destroying my body. I'm just exhausted from all the testing and blood work, I feel I could sleep for a week straight. When I think of what could have happened if I continued to just push through and ignore it... I'm just thankful something pushed me to go to the hospital even when I didn't feel like it, because that's largely why I'm still here.

To think I've been to ENT, Cardiology, allergy, dermatology, the ER, urgent care, I've been diagnosed and misdiagnosed, and FINALLY, two years later, gastroenterology gives me a potential "solid" answer to my symptoms. I love the gastroenterologist I see, she's so wonderful. Instantly she said, "No one told you it could be that?" She couldn't believe it. Like it was nothing, within an hour, she ran some of the tests, told me the potential diagnosis, and put a tentative care plan into place laying out all my options. It turns out it most likely isn't "just heartburn" like I was told, it's most likely a rare autoimmune disease that's physically causing my throat to close more than it should. So I wasn't crazy always feeling like I'm choking, there's an actual reason for it. I've been unable to eat food for over 3 months. Just drinking. It's getting to me mentally. Even when I have liquids, I often have to spit them out. I'm embarrassed to even go out with friends because I'm scared they'll offer me food or drinks or that I'll need to drink something and that always creates chaos and pain. A month ago I went to my friend's house and just to look normal I had a glass of Amita motion and I literally had asthma symptoms for the rest of the night and a swollen throat. My GI doctor was mortified and is booking me an endoscopy immediately so we know for sure what this is. She even told me that if needed, she can override their appointment system and give me a same day emergency one if it gets so bad I can't drink at all ever. I've never felt so excited for a procedure and to get final answers, I just want this hell to end.