Monday, October 26, 2015

Not Hospital Food

I'm feeling much better and less like a mental bitch. I've been researching how I can improve my diet so that it can better serve my body. Also, as was so delicately mentioned by the Liver People at the hospital, I'm getting fat. So while I wait for my surgery I'm going to try and up my diet game. I'm a good cook and try to eat well but sometimes its so easy to get lazy and also, stress eating,  and of course, sometimes you just want to eat cheese dip from a jar and watch the world burn.

So the other day, having been poking around the internets in search of what I can eat to benefit my liver, I discovered that Beets and Walnuts are good for liver health. Over the summer I became enamored of beets after a lifetime of hating them (due in no small part to a year of school dinners in the UK that seemed to come with a never ending supply of grotesque tinned beets. Every. Goddamned. Day) I learned to trust them again after a friends husband produced them in roasted form at a dinner party, then over the summer I began to experiment myself, and found that a beet salad is *divine*. This is what I came up with after reading a bunch of other recipes. I don't measure anything when I'm making food so all measurements are a guess. It's not baking, so adjust to suit your own tastes.

Ingredients:
1 large golden beet (or any kind of beet really - if they're small cook a few)
1 medium sized orange
1 small shallot
Handful of Arugula (about 1 1/2 cups)
Goat Cheese (I used about a 1/2 inch slice)
About 6 walnut halves (or if you have chopped ones maybe about 1 heaping tbs)
1 tbs extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp white vinegar
1/4 tsp sugar
pinch of kosher salt
fresh ground pepper
1/2 tsp of dijon mustard


I took the beets, peeled them, and chopped them into quarters (go for half cut if they're small)
put in a foil lined pie tin, drizzled with olive oil and salt and pepper, covered with foil (tightly) and put in a 400 degree oven for about an hour and 15 minutes (I cooked several large beets at once to have leftovers on hand, if you're only doing a small amount, or cooking smaller beets, I would start checking them at 30 minutes). Let cool

I supremed the orange (don't know how to supreme an orange? look here) and squeezed the remainders of remaining juice into a bowl for the vinaigrette.

To the orange juice add salt, pepper, sugar, extra virgin olive oil, vinegar and dijon mustard, give it a whisk.

Thinly slice the shallot, and the beets, put them in a bowl with the arugula, and toss with the vinaigrette

Plate it, and sprinkle over the walnuts and goat cheese. SO. DELICIOUS.

Saturday, October 24, 2015

*eyeroll*

Been home for a few days now. I had to take a minute, because you know? That was some BULLSHIT.

Disclaimer:  I AM grateful the decision was made to step back and do more research rather than steaming in there all "Damn the liver! Full speed ahead! As with last year I can't say enough about how awesome the nursing staff was.

That said.

What would have been really super would be if before the decision to cancel was made, I hadn't first gone through all the fun personal indignities detailed here, or the self injecting twice a day, or the month and a half of mentally steeling myself to undergo this entire fucking process, or if it hadn't followed with 8 days a prisoner of my INR tethered to a heparin drip, in a dreary hospital room.

If you're in the hospital with no pressing issues (i.e.: I still need the surgery but feel no worse than I did for the past year) (ie: not floating on a happy Dilaudid cloud with a massive chest wound to distract me) 8 days of restless boredom, punctuated with multiple daily blood draws, hateful bleating alarms on your overly sensitive heparin drip, in an uncomfortable bed made for someone 6 inches shorter than you, and people waking you up in the dead of night to check vitals who occasionally have the audacity to ask (seriously mind you) if you think you would mind getting out of bed to be weighed. Yes I would mind, yes I would fucking mind a lot. (I don't feel bad about being a dick about that because in my opinion that is a completely unreasonable request) - It does your head in a bit. It's similar to the treatment you get when being inducted to a cult - sleep deprivation, horrible food, unfamiliar environment. I'm not suggesting nefarious intent on the part of the hospital, I'm just saying after several days of this you find yourself feeling somewhat dazed, and emotionally fragile, with a splash of volatile. That thing where you're having an all out ugly cry for NO REAL REASON YOU CAN SEE (IN FRONT OF ANOTHER PERSON) and your inner voice is screaming at you to shut the fuck up and stop acting like such a fucking baby but you can't because YOU DON'T KNOW WHY LEAVE ME ALONE STOP FUCKING TOUCHING ME. Still moving past all that  At least today when I woke up I knew what day it was without having to check, so - progress!

So for now the surgery *is* happening but I can't currently say *when*, so that's not annoying at all. Currently I'm electing not to think about it because I have no reason to. Because I have zero control over it right now, and if I keep thinking about how much that pisses me off I will go to bed and not come out until next year.

Yep.


Monday, October 19, 2015

I think I live here now.

It's a whole week I've been here. To what end? I don't know. I spoke with liver doctor regarding the findings from the liver CT I had the other day and he seemed to feel that my liver is fine and would be fine through surgery. Supposedly these guys are some of the top liver people in the country and if they think my liver is fine, this is good. Maybe that means I can just go ahead with my surgery like they planned before rather than as before when they were thought there possibly might be a problem that there would have to be a new approach and perhaps instead of grafting in a dacron tube to replace the damaged aorta they would instead try and fix the aneurysm with stents, which honestly I am just not stoked about.  What little I read about stents I don't like the sound of. So anyway hopefully tomorrow my surgeon will come and talk to me and tell me what he thinks now that we have all this new liver information and also hopefully my INR will be back at the level that they will let me get the fuck out of here because holy God in heaven you know it's really boring is being in a hospital stone fucking sober I mean they give me Xanax but that really doesn't help much and I'm just bored... I'm really bored I can't concentrate on reading I can't really do anything I have watched more  Law & Order in the last week that I have all year and I'm ready to go home that said if tomorrow my surgeon came in and said hey were taking you back off the Coumadin were putting it back on the heparin driving it down we're doing the surgery this week I would be OK with that too I just want a timeline. I want to know when I can actually officially start planning my life again because right now I have no fucking idea what's happening and I am fucking tired of it. 
Taking my heparin drip for walkies. 

This is becoming tedious

Still a hostage of my INR. Not optimistic that I'll get sprung tomorrow either. Hoping that I'll at least learn more about my liver and its bullshit shenanigans. I just want to get on with it. 

Friday, October 16, 2015

Holding pattern


So I am still in the hospital. Yesterday I had a CT scan for my liver and met with the liver department people. They really didn't seem that concerned, I have elevated protein levels or something like that, but whatever it is, it's out of the ordinary and they want to make sure what they're dealing with before I am cleared for surgery. Surgeon plans to use a technique called Deep Hyperthermic Circulatory Arrest which basically means I'll be an actual zombie after, so that's pretty cool, but they need to make sure that this process will not kill my liver therefore trading one problem for another. So as it stands, I am back on Coumadin along with Heparin to draw up my INR numbers and I will be sent home on Sunday or Monday. Then, after they look at all the tests on my liver and possibly do a liver biopsy, then and only then will they either reschedule my surgery or make a new plan. Today my INR was at 1.0, needs to be 1.6 or higher before I can leave. Hoping that will be tomorrow. I miss my cats and not being tethered to this fucking contraption.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

I. Can't. Even.


So after a mostly sleepless night I was pulled out of bed at 4:30 in the morning to get ready for the operation. I took my Silkwood shower I scraped under my nails, I put the disgusting Vaseline crap up my nose, I gargled with what tasted like minty battery acid. I went down to pre-op I got to be inspected and looked at and poked at. I was given an IV catheter in my wrist, that shit HURTS.  Then and ONLY then did they cancel my surgery because my liver levels are fucked up. Why? No idea. So now I am still in the hospital I'm still on heparin I have no fucking idea when I'm getting my surgery.  I may get sent home I may not I may have my surgery tomorrow I may have my surgery a month from now. Imagine if you wIll how much fucking fun that all is. I would love to try and make this sort of funny ha ha somehow but frankly I'm tired I'm pissed off I do not have enough fucking drugs in my system and I just am OVER. IT. 

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Wherein I am the whiniest asshole in whinytown

All was going according to plan. i got my Xanax and my ambien and floated off into sleepy town. Then at midnight they woke me up to check vitals, then restless legs kicked in, then some future rocket scientist of America starts running a goddam floor buffer outside in the hall. It is at this point my heparin drip machine starts with its goddam beep beep beep for some phantom non existent issue, and I call the nurse to shut it up so I don't need to burn the hospital down. I tell them I need something to put me back to sleep. They ask whomever they ask. I am denied. It is at this point I burst into tears like a total asshole because I am tired but simultaneously upset, and hurty because my right hand has been stuck so many times I can barely move my pinky finger and the entire top of my hand is being encroached upon by a hideous green bruise and I am DONE and the last fucking thing I want to do is lay here awake and think all about what awaits me for the next 4 -5 hours until they wake me for the parade of indignity that is pre-op. Fortunately nurse takes pity on me, calls the dispenser of the drugs again, and gets me a Xanax which I doubt will put me back to sleep but at least I will relax as I lay here and stare at the ceiling until dawn. So for all you folks telling me I'm brave, nope, I'm just another big whiny baby like he rest of the assholes.