The Face of Heart Failure

     Having chronic illnesses has been really life-altering for me. I was not prepared to find out that I have chronic kidney disease on top of everything else that's going on. I spent four days in the I.C.U and had to receive six units of blood because of severe blood loss due to my heavy menstrual bleeding.      I know I should have taken care of this back in 2012 when the OBGYN at the other hospital told me to see a gynecologist after they had to give me five units then. In the past five years, I have had three blood transfusions. My OBGYN Dr. Julia said that I was losing blood faster than I could replace it. Dr. Bowes who was the staff internal medicine was trying to comfort me, but all I could think about was not feeling like a woman, with children were not possible.      I know that the hysterectomy has to be done, but I wanted to wait until after Christmas before having to think about such a heavy subject. Something else that's scary is that because I waited so long to

     I fell last Friday. More like collapsed onto the floor. I was in the bathroom pulling up my pants when I got extremely dizzy and fell to the floor wedging myself in between the toilet and my electric chair. Now mind you, I have seen those ads on t.v. saying "I've fallen, and I can't get up." Not knowing that would be me.      I was in and out of it. My neighbor came, but she is a tiny woman and could not help me up off the floor. I wouldn't let her call 911 because I did not want yet another medical bill, that was careless on my part. I lay on the floor for eight hours until my soon to be ex-husband came to sign the divorce papers, but took me to Lakewood Ranch Medical Center.      Once there, the staff took really good care of me. I was on DEFCON-10, to put it mildly. Being at the hospital was an issue for me. It brought me right back to 2009 when I spent ten days in the cardiac ICU. I was essentially bleeding to death with my menstrual cycle. I had lost b

Yet another night where I cannot get to sleep. I know it's nothing but the devil trying to distract me. There are so many things on the horizon, that to say I feel overwhelmed and lost is an understatement. I have had three procedures on my spine to relieve the low back pain, but it's back. I can walk around my apartment, but standing still makes me dizzy. I attribute it to my being lower to the ground in the electric chair. From where I sat my center of gravity wasn't so bad, but as I stated before, standing still makes me dizzy and I feel as if I will fall again. When I had the radio frequency done on Tuesday, I expected to be completely pain-free, sore from the procedure for a few days, but when I attempted to make dinner, it was less than five minutes in when the pain in  my hips and low back came back and I had to sit down for the throbbing to stop. I have been in constant pain the majority of my life. All of the women in my mother's family have some form of

Since being on all of the medications, I don't feel the desire of any kind to be intimate with a man. For me, that is a good thing I guess. I have been married to my second husband for all of a year and thirteen months and out of those thirteen months, we have lived separately. I have not made the best choices when it has come to be in a relationship. I tend to dive in head first and then pull back when I see a man behaving the way another one did. If I truly stop to look at all of it from an unbiased point of view that the common thread in each of the relationships was me. I dated the same person over and over trying to see if they would become the person I truly wanted to be with. It's like finally getting to meet your favorite actor or actress only to discover that they aren't so great in real life. I seem to attract the type of men who always wanted to "lock" me down early on and that seems to lead to disaster later on. I have the tendency to have the fe

I really struggled with November 9th. Not only is it my father's birthday, but also the birthday of my late boyfriend. How I wish things had turned out differently between Timothy and me, but the universe did not foresee us having a lasting life together. It was young and impetuous with no clear goals; what teenager is expected to have their lives figured out at fourteen and fifteen respectively? No, the better thought should be at least for me is to stop trying to plan  my life and actually live my life. I spend so much of my time trying to go back and fix my mistakes, that I forget why things happened in the first place. I think maybe, it's because in my mind if I can somehow make it better it would change the outcome. I know that everyone comes to that fork in the road where they can choose to take one path or the other, however, you choose there is a consequence of each action or inaction that you choose some decisions you make right or wrong the only thing for sure is t