Maggie B.

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Nyeesha just emailed me to tell me she has all my papers and will send them on to Aetna. She will let me know when she hears from them. 
Wow, it's all getting real now. Wish I hadn't had that little ice cream from McDonalds!

Keep a good thought for me everyone. 

Dropped off my 2 years of PCP notes and my psychiatrist letter and my letter from the Weight Loss by Design. My PCP notes looked perfect. I hope Aetna finds everything in order.

Guess it is all over except for the waiting. 

Thanks to everyone who emailed me about the Aetna process. It really helped. In the end I just went with my surgeon's dietician. If they require more then I will just do it.  I just have the sense that it's complete and I will wait to see.

Kids screaming. Must run.

Jen and Shari thanks for all your support this week.

Well I guess I am ok.  I am learning to live with my pain. It's there all the time. I never am free from it. I am either bedridden with it or the Darvocet has kicked in.   I did take some of my dad's Lortab when I was in KC and it helped me when the Darvocet didn't.  Now I have a Motrin/Codeine combo pill that my husband gets in Ireland when he is there and that really helped me get up and walking yesterday when my legs and hips were SCREAMING in pain. I could not walk.  Then Clare slammed my elbow in the freezer and I was in tears. 

It's really bad though b/c it's affecting how many things I do a day. I can only go one trip a day.  That means with the kids and in pain.  So it sucks to be me most every day now.  I am quite depressed and not sure how to tackle it. 

We did just come home over 2 weeks ago from a trip to KC and Chicago.
Saw my best friend Laura and her kids and wonderful hubby. We had so much fun.  It was so good for me to be around her. She so knows me and I think it really hit her how bad off I was. Not too mention how fat I have gotten over the years. Geez. But as a good friend she said nothing and let me sleep when I needed to. I love her to pieces.  

We got a new puppy and named her Lucy. James keeps telling her she has big doggy paws to fill.  Casey had been around for a long time. 
I will post pics of her as soon as I can.  I just have to have a dog in my house. 

Finished all my stuff for the surgery this week.  
Let's just say I had a good appt with the psych and a questionable appt with the dietician .I will leave it at that.  At least it's all done or so I hope. 

I still have this worry that Aetna will see that I don't have a 3 month regimen of exercise, nutrition visits and whatever. And they won't approve me. 

Anyone with recent Aetna PPO experience please let me know what your experience was like!

Aiming for November for surgery.  Please Lord! I need this....

Boy do I hurt. 
Went for a walk around the block with my kids last night.  Beautiful night, Sean rode his bike and Clare either walked or rode in the stroller. I was my normally short of breath self but felt fine otherwise. 

This morning I could barely move. 
I couldn't figure it out. What was different. I took my Elavil and slept only fair. 
Woke up just paralyzed in pain. 

It took hours for the Darvocet and Motrin to kick in and then not until after I had a shower did I feel better.  Lord this sucks. 
Now my kids are stuck with me inside the house today. Waiting for my husband to call so we can pick him up from the airport. 

I could not even move well enough to take them to get their hair cut today. 

I'm tired now too. 

I have to find a way to exercise that doesn't just put me down the whole next day.  I have children to care for! Yikes. 

Well, it's official.

I have Fibromyalgia. 

I am going to stop asking why me and just tackle it head on.  I am going to be healthy. I am going to fix this. I am going to feel better. 

I just need to have this surgery and get on with it. 

MD was very nice, so gentle.  He agreed he did not want to put me on too many meds but wants to help me manage the pain so I will take a teeny dose of Elavil at night to help me sleep deeper and continue Darvocet with Motrin for the pain.   He says whatever I get you on you'll become hooked on to some degree but the weight loss surgery is the best thing you can do for yourself.  

All the physicians I meet are pro WLS.  Isn't that amazing.  The research is out there and it speaks for itself. 

So the next step is to have my dietician visit and psych visit on August 16th. Then everything gets sent to --AETNA....this is the part I am dreading the most. Will they or won't they approve me.  Have to put it in God's hands. I'll do the footwork, he will handle the rest.

Gotta run. Long weekend ahead. 

Took advil pm last night  and woke this am and took the steps normally, one two three instead of both feet on one step at a time.  Got to the bottom of the stairs and realized it and thought wow. 

Everything I have read about FM is that it's exacerbated by a lack of deep sleep.  And if you take a sleep aid it should help and by golly I think it did. 

But now at work  (am a triage nurse so I sit at a desk and computer for 12 hours a day) and now my left leg is screaming and my legs are swollen. 
Took my diuretic and hope it's helping. 

I love smileys. 

Hubby is having change of heart, working on addressing his travel concerns with his boss this week in Ireland. Hopefully he will have good news and feel better about his job in a few days.  I hope it goes well.

Have my meeting tomorrow at Temple. Can't wait to get the final parts of my testing done. I so need to get a surgery date. 

Happy for my friend Jen  who is SUCH a little doll, I think I will adopt her as a little sister.  She is doing so great and I want to see her soon.

And thanks to my new friend Becky in CA   thanks for talking with me this week. It really helped me vent all my aches and pains that people who don't have FM don't really understand. 

More later, back to work.....

If there is a prayer for pain, I need it. 

Please Lord, just ease it a little. 
I need a break. 
I need the rest to care for me and my family
My brain needs the rest 
No more pain please. 

Please rid dad of his too while you're at it

Have been struggling with head to toe pain for the last 6 weeks. MD's think I have fibromyalgia or rheum arthritis. 
Am so distraught by this and the inability to care for myself and my house and my kids and oh yeah, my marriage.  I am to the point where I now pray that WLS will fix it all.  Shoot, I'd take fixing half of it. 

Now wondering if all the meds I am on are making everything worse. Then my doc wants to put me on Cymbalta, another antidepressant- for my FM pain.  I just didn't want to - I mean REALLY DID NOT WANT TO- but the pain was so bad and he would not write for any Darvocet for me. 

Got my other MD to write it for me b/c she was so upset that I was in so much pain and other MD would not help me.   

Pain is crippling in the am. Hard to move, stand up, just roll out of bed. 
My hands are swollen and puffy and stiff in the am. Then I just kind of limp out of bed. Its' awful.  Just the act of standing up out of a chair is so excruciatingly painful.  My legs ache all the time. Moving is just agony. It's hard to explain.  All I know is that it's very tiresome and wearing me out. 

On the plus side I have had all of my testing done for WLS.  I am waiting for my support group meeting next Monday night, then the other appts happen: psych and nutrition.  I still have yet to hear from Nyeesha if my cardiology consult arrived in the office and if she has tracked down my labs I have already had done.  Then I am still twitching as to figuring out if my PCP letter meets the nutrition requirement.  I think my PCP letter is really good but I may scan and email it to her to have her read it and see what she thinks. 

So hoping my surgery can be approved and happen in November. It has to happen then.  My hubby is only off that time of the year. Well, we'll see. 

More later.  Going to read about RA on the net. 

I am so sick of being sick. I mean REALLY.

We went to the shore a few weeks ago and the pain really started then.
I couldn't walk without pain. My left ankle then started to swell. 
I mean I was just miserable. Plain miserable the whole time. But I still have to chase after kids, get them fed, dressed, and entertained and I hurt like HELL. 

I so want someone to whine to. 

So then both my feet started to swell.
Go to MD, he puts me on a diuretic and says: Go get a doppler ultrasound to rule out a blood clot. 
Fine. But he really doesn't think its a clot. But he has to do it. 

Go get US with kids in tow. Husband out of town as usual- that's another story. 
Sitting on table with leg exposed, I am waiting for tech to start. She puts the little ultrasound wand on my leg and starts pressing on it and I just scream out loud.  OW, geez, that hurts. 

So she says- sorry, I have to press to collapse the vein. You'll just feel a little pressure. 
She works her way down to the inside of my knee and presses really hard and I scream LOUDER OW> and burst into tears. 

She says, I am so sorry, this never hurts anyone. It's not supposed to.
And I just am crying uncontrollably. The pain I have from just pressing on my leg is so bad it's like she tripped a trigger and the tears just flowed. 

So she calls my doc and he says sure, she can do it some other time. 
Later that night I think to myself, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME THAT I HAVE SO MUCH PAIN WITH A NON PAIN PRODUCING PROCEDURE. 

MD orders all this bloodwork on me. It's all negative. 
Except for my CRP and sed rate. Both elevated. Both mean I have major inflammation going on in my body. But we don't know why. 

So now I have to go to a rheumatologist to r/o fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue or Lupus too I guess. 

When is it gonna stop? 

Very rough week. Really rough. Migraine, swollen extremities, new meds. Pain- lots of it physically and now emotionally.

But the most difficult part happened today. I had my dog, Casey put to sleep today. It was the right thing to do but it was so hard. 

She was 14 years old, deaf, and lost the strength in her hind legs lately. She was peeing and pooping inside the house and was whining when she went up and down the stairs. 

I brought her home from the shelter in KC in 1993 when she was about 6 weeks old. She sat in the front seat of my Chevy Nova on a blanket. I had to bid on her at the shelter because another girl wanted to adopt her. I brought all the cash I had, about $42 as I recall, and I won her. 
She looked like Benji in the movies. It was just the two of us in the beginning when I was living by myself. Two years later James came along.  She would greet him at my front door by jumping about 4-5 feet in the air on hard wood floors and he could see her head in the window.  Her vertical leap was her trademark. No one had ever seen a dog jump so high.  

So she was with me, slept first in a kennel, but that wouldn't last. Next slept on my bed. Then next to James. Then we moved after we married. So she got a new backyard. Then a new friend in Sean to play with. She was always good with the kids.  Then we had to move to Philly and James drove her all the way across the country with him ahead of me and Sean.  
So she now had her third house to live in. No fence. Lots of squirrels to chase.  Then came Clare.  She couldn't really jump anymore but still had a spring in her step and wag in her tail. 

But the last few years were very hard. First she lost her hearing. Then the skin allergies took over. In the last few months her hind legs went and she was stumbling and falling down the stairs. Throughout all her pain though she wanted to be with me, she would follow me up and down the stairs, I would tell her not to but she wouldn't listen.  So when I was thinking would I stay or not with her at the time of the injection, I had to say yes. As hard as it would be I could not leave her in her last moments on earth. She was with me all the time- she never left me- never. 

I love you Casey for being my friend, never hurting me or the kids. She was a great independent, gentle, sweet dog who I hope to see again someday. 
God Bless you Casey. I will miss you so much. 
Maggie