Month: May 2015

Emergency Car Repairs

Posted on by kmarrs

Borderline Personality DIsorder and Trouble with FinancesNow that I’m back on insurance, I’m back to reducing what stressors I can one-by-one.  And we’ve come upon a big one.  We’ve come upon me needing to beg for help.

Greetings,

My family car is in dire need of repairs.  We have just the one and the gas tank has a leak, the catalytic converter fell off, the muffler fell off, the front bumper is being held on by zip ties, and it could use standard maintenance like plugs, an oil change, tire replacement/alignment, etc.  We’ve discussed selling/junking it and getting a newer/better car, but we still owe $5,000 on it so we are sort of really stuck.  (Not to mention we wouldn’t get enough from the car to cover a newer/better on even without the loan.)

Now I’d like to introduce you to my household and our economic standing.  So that you can see why getting this car properly running will take a miracle.

My name is Karen and I’m disabled.  I have fibromyalgia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, clinical depression, and general anxiety.  The federal government doesn’t feel I’m overly disabled, however, so they are not paying my SSI.  That is their choice and yes I’ve fought it, but at the time I couldn’t prove I’d be unable to work for a t least a year.  Whatever.  I started taking the time away from work to focus on my education.  When all is said and done I’ll have a Psy.D. and a mountain of debt.  However, I’ll have a career that I will love and will allow that debt to be manageable.  Then a month ago I found out that my sister has about a month to live if she doesn’t get a needed liver transplant.  Now I can’t even focus on school.  Most days I can’t get out of bed.  I’m too depressed, stressed, and there just aren’t enough spoons.  So I don’t even have left over financial aid to put towards the house bills.

My husband of 12 years, Pat, is legally disabled and we do have his SSI.  His income from it is steady, but it’s fixed.  It isn’t like he can work extra hours or pick up a second job.  His SSI is enough to cover most of our rent.

Our immediate family includes our 3 kids aged 3-11.  Healthy, beautiful, needing in nothing, not wanting for too much.  We give them just enough that they don’t feel poor, but not so much that we’re irresponsible with the budget.

Our household is completed with my brother-in-law, David.  David it also legally disabled and his SSI is almost enough to pay the bills, though we usually have to juggle things or borrow from my mom.  When I do get loan money, I’m able to pay the difference.  David, who is the healthiest of the three and wanting to work, is on the hunt for a job.  This will help the rest of the way with bills, help with the car payment, and allow a budget allotment for things like toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and other little necessities.

As you can see we are broke/poor as it is and not all of our needs get met.  Even after Dave gets a job, things will improve but our car is a ticking time bomb to possible literally explode on us, what with it dripping gasoline.  Not to mention we’re wasting gas from every fill-up.

But as it’s our only car, and the bus system out where we are is rubbish, we have little choice but to drive it.  Even if we’re only going to the grocery store, doctor appointments, and to the hospital to visit my dying sister, we need this car and we need it running.

So I’m literally begging for help.

I invite you to read more about me here: https://www.walkingtheborderline.com/

And to shop my store here:  .  I only get about 10% of each sale though, so if you want to directly support, and don’t mind not having something to show for it, donating directly to “GoFundMe” is the best bet.  I won’t turn away a new customer, however, as my store rocks and every bit counts always.

Thank you.

Those are the direct words from my GoFundMe page. Please take a moment, if you are able, to hop over there and maybe consider donating to a worthy cause? I’m desperate.

Two Medical Updates

Posted on by kmarrs

Borderline Personality Disorder BlogMe:

So Geodon withdraw started Monday and it was the worst it’s ever been.  It didn’t help that I was under high stress and recovering from an appendectomy.  My blood pressure went through the roof, I had no appetite, I couldn’t control my body temperature, and was running a fever.

On Thursday I decided it was in my best interest to go back to the hospital and get checked over.  I filled them in on everything from the amount of stress, the withdraw and why, and of course the surgery.  I told them that chances were it was all just this withdraw in which case I could continue to ride it out, but with the surgery being in the mix, I needed to play is safe.  The doctor agreed with all that and did a complete work up of my blood, urine, and a chest x ray since I was having some trouble breathing.

The end result was that it was indeed just the withdraw but while I was there she gave me a dose of Ativan and holy hell did I almost immediately feel my blood pressure drop towards normal, and I regained control of my body temp.

Upon leaving the hospital I called my mom and filled her in on that and she agreed to pick me up in the morning to get my Ativan filled.  Of all my meds it was the one I was least concerned about, and yet it helps with the withdraw.  Go figure.  It was also only 40$.  The only medication that low.

Then later that day, Friday, health insurance cards showed up and I was out the door and on my way to the pharmacy within 10 minutes.

Backing up to Wednesday: Pat had been given a script for Cymbalta that later caused too many side effects.  He remembered he had this and got it filled, for me, since he still had his insurance.  So come Friday morning I was on both Cymbalta and Ativan.

Come Friday night, I was on everything.  Now, I KNOW it’s bad to start 4 meds at once, so hear me out.  I had been on the Cymbalta for a couple of days with no side effects.  I never start Cymbalta without side effects, which tells me my body was still adjusted to it.  I’d had a couple random doses of Ativan off an on since my first withdraw weeks back.  It has also been discussed I could pair it up with another med when I started them back up.  Geodon my body was still literally begging me for, and so I had no hesitation in giving my body that.  The only random element was Trileptal and I have really have side effects with it so I decided to try.  If my body said it was too much, I figured I could cut Trileptal out of the mix for a while.

 

Rachel:

She is currently back in the hospital.  She’s been in and out over the past few months, of course, but this stay is pretty serious.  She went in will mass swelling and pain.  It turned out to not be her liver but instead an infection that went to her blood.  They got that taken care of.  However, she was also having a lot of problem breathing.  So they put her on a breathing machine.  Turns out she aspirated something.  Possibly/probably her own medication.  So anyway, she’s been on the breathing machine for the past few days, though it looks like she can finally come off that.  The other huge problem is that she’s not currently peeing on her own, which means her kidneys are shutting down.  They have her on dialysis to allow her kidneys to heal some in a stress free environment.  The dialysis will also help get the toxins out.  That’s been the name of the game all along: keep the toxins out.

The major problem is, if her kidneys do in fact shut all the way down, she won’t be eligible for the liver transplant.  All her other body parts need to be working or else she’ll be too unhealthy and will reject the new liver.  So hopefully her kidneys will heal up some and the dialysis will kick-start them into working again.

The bottom line is all her body parts are having to fight to function normally and it’s exhausting.  But there are ways to give them breaks and then kick-start them back up.  Hopefully it all works because the transplant team has called a special meeting which means we might have a much-needed decision very soon.

Otherwise she goes hospice.

Wordless Wednesday

Posted on by kmarrs

penguin
Let me use this in a sentence: My husband’s outrage at me being able to play “penguin” was noisy.

Though technically he was noisy before the penguin ever entered the scene.

Also: I added an extra “E” to noisy twice and my spellcheck corrected me.

To clarify: He played noisy, not me.

Hanging In There

Posted on by kmarrs

I don’t even know that to say.

I’m sitting here it is 6:45PM on Monday May 4th, 2015 and I still have no health insurance because the pissant that will not be legally responsible when I lose my shit doesn’t give a shit that he was incorrect about me getting it back on the 1st as a probably yet worse case scenario.  I’m in withdraw from yes, taking nothing, and like 6 days post-op and I don’t know what part of me is going haywire because of what but every part of my down to the small molecule is going crazy from the volatile cocktail that is Fibromyalgia, unmedicated serious mental health, post operation, and a broken tooth I forgot to tell you all about that happened mid way through the month that will hence forth never be named it has been that horrible.

A month, year, life from now I will look back and see how strong I was to make it through this exact moment in time but for now I’m going to loving punch this kitten in the face.

hang-in-there-cat

Loving because it’s a kitten. In the face because it needs to stop telling me what the to fuck do already.  Be warned other people who might carelessly throw this line around.

So instead of punching kittens I’m going to hide off grid for a bit.  I promise you’ll hear from me soon and before it involves constructing an insanity plea.

Or you’ll hear from me tomorrow, I don’t know, but blogging can be therapeutic.  But my blogging schedule can’t tell me what to fucking do either.

Also, I’m really active on tumblr right now and a bit more pleasant there because I’m currently fangirling over AOU.

Wait can we.

I need to back up.

Guilt.

First of all I feel guilty as hell for feeling as sick as I do because I chose to have my appendix almost rupture while I was withdrawing from my meds, a few days after I ripped a dental filling out of a tooth while flossing.  That shit needs to stop but it’s part of the sickness.  Am a manipulating my husband into giving me more time to hide?

I swear to god my appendix was a physical manifestation of the stress.

Also and my original guilt sidetrack:

I feel this compulsion to justify having spent 10$ on me and my husband’s one no matter what movie a year (MARVEL) when I can’t afford over 2 grand in meds for me in the kid.  And what that movie date did for me in therapy… right down to the three young girls behind us whom as one said “ew” to a kissing scene.

I’m not proofreading this.  Suck it.  I’m literally shaking.

Isn’t It Ironic? And by ironic I mean a coincidence.

Posted on by kmarrs

Borderline Personality Disorder BlogApril, and by April I’m including the very end of March, as been a shit hole as far as health is concerned.  Let’s take a look.

  • End of March I’m in the hospital trying to get admitted for mental health and I’m told no.
  • Beginning of April we find out we have no health insurance as we try to get the 7 yo’s meds filled.
  • Said 7 yo has spent the entire month unmedicated and it’s bad.  OMG so bad.
  • Said 7 yo, 3 days after we learned we had no insurance for the month, got his first major migraine.  It was so bad we had to take him to the ER.
  • By the middle of the month, I started running out of my meds 1 by 1.
  • Sunday the 26th I start feeling the worst abdominal pain of ym life.  I think I’m just constipated as it’s happened once before.  That post went live yesterday.
  • Monday night at about 11PM the pain localizes to my lower right quadrant.  I look it up.  Sure enough…

Did you know that your appendix becoming inflamed can feel like extreme constipation?  It also includes bloating (yep) loss of appetite (yep) and major discomfort all over the abdomen and lower back (yep) until the pain finally starts to localize to the lower right quadrant.

Learning this I got myself to the hospital and settled in for a long night of testing.  Sure enough the CT scan showed a very angry appendix, that I managed to catch very early.  My appendix was removed late the Tuesday afternoon.  I went home Wednesday afternoon and will be spending the next 3 weeks under doctor’s orders to keep it easy, and not to feel bad about needing bed rest especially the first half.  I am, after all, in some serious pain. Which is to be expected.

I go back for a follow-up in 3-5 weeks and then I’m feel to resume my normal degree of refusing to leave my bed because I’m too sad.

And before anyone worries about the fact I don’t have insurance, they will cover the surgery.  They will even cover Luke’s migraine ER visit.  We just need to call in with the official numbers after the 1st.  Then all will be well.

Meanwhile, I still stand by that ice cream being medically necessary.