Tammy G.
Tired. Worn Out. About Done. Where's Hope?
Dec 09, 2013
As I write this, at 6am on a morning where I haven't slept at all, I feel lost, hopeless, drowning. My life's motto when I'm in a funk is "It could always be worse." And it could be worse, but right now it is bad enough. People tell me that I am STRONG. That I CAN DO IT. My resolve is weakening. I feel my body deteriorate a little more each day. Last May, June, July--I had hope. Heck, I even thought things were changing in September. Yeah, right.
Backstory--I had a distal bypass WLS in June of 2011. It was uneventful. Everything went well. I lost weight. Slowly, but the weight did come off. I started off as supersized at 5'2 and 456 lbs. I could barely breathe, couldn't walk 5 feet without needing to sit down. I had to have help to do everything and anything. I didn't leave my house for months at a time. WLS saved me. When the weight started coming off I felt like a butterfly coming out of my cocoon. I was walking every day. No wheelchair anymore. I still needed a cane because of my RA, and to use a ramp, but I could walk for a pretty good distance. I could breathe again. I was finally able to take a tub bath and get out with minimal and sometimes no help. I was happy. It wasn't easy, especially being a carb addict, but I was handling it.
Last year, 2 days before Christmas, on a Sunday morning, I was in excruciating pain in my back and abdomen. It was that feeling when you eat a protein that is too dense without chewing it fully, and it gets stuck in your stoma and you have to chew papaya or drink a bit of pineapple to get to break up. Only it had started in the middle of the night, and I hadn't eaten anything to get stuck. I kept thinking it would pass, but it didn't. My belly blew up like a balloon. I was in so much pain I couldn't even think. Long story short (and in the previous entry) I had a small bowel strangulation, my remnant stomach and large intestines were stretched to capacity and my organs were beginning to shut down. The surgeon said there was a slim chance that I would make it, but I did, and the day after I came off the ventilator, December 26, he told me that I had a long road ahead of me. He was right.
I felt pretty decent once I got out of the bed at the hospital and walked around the ward. The more I moved, the less the pain remained from the surgery. The day I was to go home my incision--from the bottom of my ribs to my belly button--had broken open at the bottom and sprung a leak--probably from the weight of my huge pannus. I ended up having to have the whole thing re-opened. I could literally see, and touch, with gloved hands, my abdominal muscles. When the culture came back I had 3 serious hospital acquired infections--MRSA, Klebisella and Entercoccal. I was put on heavy duty IV antibiotics. After a few days all of my veins were shot and they couldn't give me IV antibiotics, so I was sent home.
With the help of family and home health care nurses, I worked on getting rid of the infection and getting healed. I had another surgery February 6. The infections were horrible. Nasty. Gross. My wound, which was huge, oozed the nastiest of slimes.
I finally started doing better, gaining some strength back. I dismissed home health care in July, and with the help of an infection specialist, I am, to this day, infection free. My wound, however, hasn't changed in all of that time. I saw a general surgeon to see if the wound could be closed surgically, somehow. After losing 150 pounds, it is in a part of my belly that just hangs and the weight from my belly apron, which is now past my knees, pulls and tears on it, even with binders. He said nope, let it heal on its own. It can take 2 years or more, but it will eventually close. I was disheartened.
Then I was contacted by a abdominal reconstruction surgeon who was given my name and situation by my previous home health care agency. She is primarily a surgical oncologist, but she has an interest in complex cases like mine. So I met with her on 2 occasions and also met with the plastic surgeon who works with her. They told me that they could help me, would help me. Told me to prepare for surgery around the third week in November. I've called on several occasions, but I am always put off, told they are working on logistics, insurance approval, etc. The plastics guy told me he would do my panniculectomy pro bono. He said he had never seen one like mine, just a massive amount of skin, like a flab skirt. So I wait.
But as I wait, I am losing hope. I feel my body getting weaker, not stronger. I can't walk like I used to. I have NO stamina. I am so tired all of the time. I think I have given up. I will be 50 in a few days. I don't even care. At this point, I am just a burden. I feel like I've been through so much, but to what end? To live like this? I know it could be worse. How do I find the strength to go on? And no weight loss in months. And I have tried. I know I'm still malabsorbing fats and my labs are dismal. There are not enough supplements in the world to get them to normal at this point. I'm just so tired of trying. I wanted a good life. I know I am loved. My life isn't bad. I am just so depressed, and not just because of the wound. I can't take my RA meds with an open wound, so I get 2 pain pills a day and prednisone. I don't take the predisone unless I have a flare up. I am in pain 99% of the time. Nobody cares. I'm just tired. I can't take much more.
