I Wouldn't Do That

It's late fall/early winter in Littleton, Colorado. I am a live-in caretaker for a very demanding C-7 quadriplegic. I never got anywhere close to the rest I needed or anything else for that matter.

I had been feeling fine up until this episode and then all hell broke loose to put it mildly. I was laying down when the doorbell rang. I got up, answered the door and on my way back to my bedroom, I threw up... out of the blue... no warning. I had not feeling sick or anything.

Shortly thereafter another person was at the door. This time I had to run to the bathroom in the middle of the conversation. Same thing... no warning... no feeling of being sick.

This pattern continued throughout the day taking less and less time of being up before it happened. I don't know how many times it happened but once I had got to the living room and had to turn around. The next time I had got halfway down the hall and had to dash into the bathroom.

As you can imagine it didn't take long before I was getting sick as soon as I got up. But the kicker was when I got sick whenever I lifted my head from the pillow.  It was then I decided I needed to go to the hospital and would have to go by ambulance.

Once the paramedics decided I did need to go to the hospital, they put me on the gurney and rolled me into the ambulance. Once inside he [the paramedic] decided I'd feel better if he raised my head. I immediately got sick and my head was put back down. They wheeled me into the treatment room of the emergency room, and the paramedic waited with me until the nurse arrived. She immediately decided I'd feel better if she raised my head but before she could adjust the bed, he said, "I wouldn't do that".

I was in the hospital maybe 2 or 3 days and they never figured anything out. Knowing what I know now, I figure it was an attack of Meniere's Disease.  It isn't common and there is no easy test for it and it is probably not a common emergency room type ailment.  But lucky for me, I have Addison's Disease and whenever you are vomiting they have to increase the dosage of your medicine. And high dosages of steroids is the treatment of choice for Meniere's Disease.

Healed by way of the backdoor and left by way of the front door. Hospitals have always been a revolving door type of thing for me.  And I imagine they always will be as long as there's this thing called... you got it.

A JO thing!

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You are listening to Memories from the musical Cats, written by
Andrew Lloyd Webber and T.S. Eliot. I felt this song was a perfect selection
for this site because of the affiliation I feel with Grizabella. Although for her,
it was age and not health issues that changed her, neither of us are who we
were before, on the outside, and it can affect how we feel on the inside.

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The author of this page does not promote, support, or recommend any
particular treatment or medication for any medical condition. The opinions
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No treatment should be undertaken without the supervision of a physician.