Hello World!
I’m going through so many changes, I needed a way to keep up with everything. I want to capture my thoughts and feelings during this roller coaster. Perhaps blogging everything as I go will help me and others, detailing everything, the good, the excitement, the bad, the disappointments and the ugly, of course along with the pretty.
I want to start by saying the thought that life is easy, is not the exact truth. Their are easy moments but their are very difficult moments, and in those moments thats when you have to hold your head up high and push through, even if you feel like you can’t go anymore. Those are the times when you get everything you really need to succeed in life.
When I was about 12 years old I was diagnosed with Degenerative disc disease (DDD), then about age 14 I was told I would inherit arthritis early in life. The doctor told me and my mom that staying as strong as possible would help a great deal with me not developing the arthritis pain so young. From there I was determined to stay strong and keep my muscles strong in my back and joint areas.
How it all started with my down fall…the simple answer is “sepsis”, sometimes called blood poisoning. I survived without any of the apparent physical effects (amputations; damage to lungs, kidneys, liver or other organs). I know right, how could sepsis change your life so much? How did it change me in other ways?
I will explain. I was always a plus size girl, or what some would call stocky growing up, but I used my weight to my advantage, I used it as strength to make me a stronger person. I got into the certified nurses assistant program and became a certified nurses assistant young, in Tennessee you can go into the nurses assistant program at age sixteen. To be a certified nurses assistant, lets just be honest, strength is a must have, and having a family history of arthritis is probably not the best idea, seeing how arthritis is something that can be inherited through the family tree. So from 1998 to 2021 I was a certified nurses assistant, which means a whole lot of wear and tear on my bone, joints, and definitely my back. I had a lot of what I referred to as normal aches and pains that was due to the career choice I had made, none that really meant anything besides I was getting older.
That was where the trouble started because, in the summer of 2021 I went to visit a friend up North to help her during a hard time she was going through when I started feeling slightly under the weather. It wasn’t anything major at first it was actually the norm I had experienced whenever I had moved to a different section of America in the past, so I brushed it off as, “I’m just getting used to the new pollen that wasn’t in my previous area”, this time however I did have back pain, that didn’t seem worse that the normal back pain I had experienced in my life though out the entire process of getting older.
A week went by and the pain seemed to be shifting to the lower right front side of my abdomen. However, due to me having Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)I just assumed it was pain from that, so while me, my friend, and her husband was out one day the pain had gotten so bad that I could hardly set up straight in the car, imagine the worst cramp you have ever had in your life and that would come close to what I was feeling. I told my friend and her husband that I needed to go lay down on a heating pad for a while because I just couldn’t get out of the car and walk around stores with the amount of pain I was in. Later that night I started running a fever, and became slightly disoriented, what am I saying any level of disoriented is not a good sign especially when there is a fever involved, I started freezing, and with PCOS, your hormones are way off in some cases which feeling cold was nothing I was used to at all.
Things get a little fuzzy from there, the next clear thought I have was me in the emergency room with the doctor telling me, “You have sepsis due to a kidney stone and I am not sure I can save you.” Imagine my surprise since I had taken care of patient after patient that had had a kidney stone and I remember them screaming in pain that couldn’t seemed to be controlled, and I wasn’t feeling any kind of pain that bad. Pretty much the entire time I was in the hospital things are fuzzy to remember, but I do remember that every time the nurse would change the IV bag, they would say, “well that antibiotic isn’t helping so we have another one to try.” I wanted to go home so bad because my husband was at my home and not up North where I was.
I did survive, and returned down South to my husband. But after sepsis, everything about me seemed to change. More about that next time.
~Tiker Belle