Damn Tumblr, it has been a minute. I've intended to make a post several times and actually began a few of them but have found myself too mentally drained to put forth the effort to finish them. It's your lucky day though, work is slow and I need something to do to maintain sanity whilst I sit in the floor waiting for my next run so you win Tumblr, YOU WIN. Life has been simultaneously wonderful and mega stressful, it's beginning to seem as though that's just its nature although I really wish it weren't. Since I was too foolish to see when I last made a post before this one, I can't exactly remember what has gone on since then but I'll do my best to hit a few of the high points. About a month ago both my girlfriend and I experienced a terrible weekend that began with her fainting on me three times due to dehydration that was caused by some mild food poisoning (pro tip: don't eat meat that's been left open in the fridge for two weeks) and ending with me in the hospital for dehydration myself. Drew had been feeling a little off prior to us starting to cook dinner that Friday evening but she figured it was just because she was hungry, during making spaghetti she felt like she needed to sit down so I took over cooking duties for her. She sat there for a few moments and then had to run to the bathroom, upon her return she didn't look well, she was pale, very clammy and cool to the touch. The first time she fainted it was your stereotypical fainting event, she felt like she was on the way out and then slowly collapsed in the floor, I rushed over to her and she quickly came to. I gave her some water and our roommate, after hearing all the commotion of me trying to wake her came out and gave her a granola bar to eat. She appeared to be feeling somewhat better so she sat while I finished dinner and then we ate. Shortly after eating dinner she began to throw up, we both attributed this to her having eaten some long out of date pepperoni left over from the pizza she had made me on Valentines Day (did I mention she's the best?) she had eaten for lunch that day. She clearly wasn't feeling well post vomiting but not really much worse than one would expect, so neither of us worried too much. That didn't last long though, a few minutes later she went to the bathroom again and less than a minute after she went in I heard a thud all the way from our room. I burst into the bathroom to find her on the toilet slumped over against the wall, completely unconscious with both her eyes and mouth wide open. This time it took me a solid 30 seconds to wake her back up, she was cold, clammy and completely out of it. She slowly regained function over the next few minutes but just barely. As I sat there with her telling her that I was going to take her to the hospital, her eyes rolled back, her head fell back, started gritting her teeth and something I've still decided if it was gasping for breath or snoring. It was around this time I went into full freak out mode, I desperately tried to wake her up but it took a full minute and when I finally got her to respond she was so woozy she could hardly sit up. I cleaned her up the best I could, sort of carried her to the car and rushed her to the hospital. It was around 1pm on Saturday at this point. I would be thankful that we currently live within minutes of the hospital if it weren't for the fact that we sat in the waiting room for nearly 4 hours before she was taken back to be seen by a doctor. 4 hours of sitting in an uncomfortable chair, in a cold room, watching my severely dehydrated and as I felt at the time, potentially dying girlfriend sitting in a wheelchair across from me. I've been thru so many tough times and traumatic experiences in my life but even by this point this was by far the scariest thing I've ever experienced. I was so scared to lose her and felt so helpless... here I am a month later and still find myself welling up with tears here at work just thinking about it. Every time I walk into the bathroom at home I can't help but to remember the sight as I came thru the door and found her against the wall. I truly hope this was the last time we have to go thru anything like this for a long time. Anyway, after a mere eternity in the waiting room we were taken back to a room in the ER, from here things improved a lot... for a while at least. Once back in the room, the doctors and nurses unlike the nurses in reception, were reasonably respectful of my girlfriends pronouns. I think we both cut them a little slack because as of that time she had yet to get her name change completed or her gender marker on her ID changed, it sure was a motivator to get working on that, which she has since done. I am thankful that they did take her medical issues seriously, Drew has had hypertension for a long time and has been on two different blood pressure medications for years, so they were sure to give her an EKG and keep a steady eye on her BP and pulse. As soon as they got her started on an IV she seemed to regain some skin color and feel a little better despite being exhausted. We were both exhausted at that point, I had been up for 23 hours straight, so I pulled two chairs together enough to at least stretch my legs out and managed catch two half hour long naps while Drew got a good two hours worth of sleep. Her health thankfully continued to improve and she was released around 1pm Saturday. When we left the hospital she was not yet at a 100% but I would say she was at 75% at least, I could tell this because during the last few hours before her discharge, as we sat and watched tv she was practically drooling at every commercial that featured food. That's the Drew I know! I was so glad to finally be headed home to sleep but more importantly I was stoked to be headed to Subway, it had been nearly 15 hours since I had eaten by then. When we got home we both ate our subs and promptly went to sleep. Things get sort of hazy for me after that though. I do remember we woke up at some point and ate dinner, some time shortly after that my stomach became very upset and I began to have diarrhea and started vomiting. Drew thankfully was doing a lot better but my gastric distress continued throughout that evening and into the night. Initially I wasn't too worried about the situation with my stomach. I have both gastroparesis and bile salts malabsorption, if I eat too much too frequently, I vomit because of slow digestion due to my stomach muscle being paralyzed. If I eat too little or too infrequent, I'll have to deal with diarrhea, low blood sugar and some vomiting due to a complication from my gallbladder removal in 2003. We had spent so long in the hospital and the only snack machine I could find was broken so I just wasn't able to eat, this in turn completely destroyed my stomach... as soon as food hit it, my body rejected it. By the next morning I still wasn't feeling fantastic but anything was an improvement over the night before, so we started the day with breakfast and hoped for a quiet day of recovery. Within an hour I found myself in the bathroom and was very ill. I vomited until it hurt, until the undigested spaghetti from Friday night came back up (it was lunchtime Sunday at this point). I tried to eat crackers, I tried to rest, I tried to drink water but I couldn't even keep that down. Finally I reached a point where I could barely stand, I couldn't maintain conversation... I was so exhausted I found I had to choose between physical movement or talking as I no longer had the capability to do both at the same time. So yet again, roughly 48 hours after I had taken Drew to the hospital, she was driving me there. When we arrived I was a mess but I had very low expectation for treatment as I felt Drew had been much worse off than I and it took nearly 4 hours for her to be seen, so we began our wait. I was so thirsty and physically uncomfortable, it was only about 30 minutes in before I became so uncomfortable I couldn't take sitting in the chair any longer and decided to lay on the floor of the emergency room. In hindsight this was a poor decision, I can't fathom how gross that floor actually was, but in my fevered mind it was all I could do to survive. It took about an hour and a half before I was taken back to a room, the nurses and doctors poured in as they had done before, asking a million questions, including the ever frustrating "when was your last period? Never? Why is that? <insert confusion>" I got stabbed in the arm by a lovely gentleman who confided in me that a good friend of his had recently transitioned from FTM, and while I still have a bruise on my arm from the whiff he took finding my vein the first time, I enjoyed his friendliness. It used to be I would find myself annoyed with that sort of interaction, the whole "Hey! Your're trans! There's the other trans person I know too!" but amid the current political climate, it makes me feel good to know that there are CIS people who know at least one trans person. I don't think that can ever be a bad thing and hopefully they'll speak well of and stuck up for us during the ever present transphobic workplace conversations that crop up. Anywho, my treatment was fairly routine. I was severely dehydrated so the started an IV and gave me ice chips, which I have to say, when you're that dehydrated... ice chips are fucking heaven sent. I got two bags of fluid, about half way during the second bag they decided to start checking my vitals. I was so uncomfortable and in such a bad mood it only took a few minutes before I freaked out and removed the blood pressure cuff and pulse/blood oxygen sensor thingy, much to the displeasure of the in room monitors alarm. Thankfully the doctor could tell I was feeling better and didn't press the issue which was a relief, without pain meds I would rather die than have those contraptions on my arm. I got discharged around 9am and we both went home and slept all day long. It was glorious. I missed that day of work and the next which was a total bummer, but since my work is so physical there was no way I could've managed, upon my return on Wednesday I could hardly function, earlier than that would've been an impossibility. It took about two weeks before either of us made a full recovery and life, as always has been up and down. We've had some great days though, this weekend was particularly wonderful even though Drew has been dealing with allergies along with playing a show Saturday night, so now her voice makes her sound like she's about to do some rad skateboard tricks or something. Minor car troubles have been a thing too and there's some interesting news on that front, but I'll save that for my next entry. Until next time Tumblr... until next time....
