Back home

So I went home. On Tuesday September 8, 2015 I went home. Still with diarrhea, many times a day. No longer dehydrated or with a high creatinine. Did I feel better? I can't specifically remember how I felt but I definitely wasn't better. There was no real plan to get me better either--I think I still thought the colitis flare would resolve soon and I wanted to be home, with my kids, out of the hospital where nothing was even happening anyway. My healthcare friends and family can not believe the hospital sent me home with unresolved diarrhea. They looked stunned by this news. I was probably a big part of getting myself sent home--telling them I would see my own GI (which I planned to do) and telling them, again, that my colitis flares usually got better with time and increased prednisone. Plus, I doubt they know what to do with me. I was dealing with a chronic condition in an acute state. They didn't have a GI doctor who worked there every day. It was time to go.

If you've been reading this blog for more than a month you will remember this post Deep in a Hole, "The bombing of Dresden" as my mom calls it. I'm embarrassed to admit I don't get that historical reference and I still haven't looked it up but I'm pretty sure it means that post I wrote from my couch about six weeks ago. . .made an impression?

Freaked people out.

Note the date.

When I got home from that hospital stay I went right back to bed. When I got up from the bed I went to the couch. Sometimes I would do something with my kids though right now I couldn't tell you what. Stephanie, the world's best nanny and my friend arranged her work schedule so she could be at my house five days a week again, instead of just Mondays and Fridays. Re-arranging her schedule meant asking the other family she works for, a family who also has twins, if they would mind if she watched my kids too. So Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of that week we had three sets of twins under the age of two-and-a-half in our house Ahhh, relaxing. Except having more kids in the house made no difference to me because I was hardly with any of them anyway. I was too tired. I had no energy. I felt. . I want to say horrible but that word seems to dramatic. I just felt used up. I had nothing.

People were freaking out, worried about me. But I didn't know that. I knew my mom and Stephanie were communicating secretly about trying to set up a food delivery service for me, to take a load off my back. Very few people were contacting me. I now see the writing of that essay as a breadcrumb.In this story breadcrumbs will be the little signs along the way that you're on the right path...keep going that way. Breadcrumbs will be signs on the trail that, when you look back after travelling a big, you'll see them and think "Oh! Yeah, that changed things."

Before that post, I don't think I had ever written or spoken so honestly about how I felt, to such a large, uniform audience. Uniform in the sense that I wasn't thinking about how the individuals I knew read my blog would react. I had no motive when I wrote that other than to let people know why I hadn't written in a while. I didn't see it as a cry for help. And even with how shitty I felt, I still didn't think I was that sick.

Usually I talk to people one at a time and, if I even choose to talk about my health, I don't spend much time talking about how I feel. I don't actually spend much time thinking about how I feel. Having colitis has been a part of my life for so long. . .it just is.

The stark difference between how people reacted to that post and how I felt writing it is important. Life-changing. Because I thought what I saw was the truth but really what everyone else saw was the truth. I didn't think I was really that sick. I didn't think it was really that big of a deal. I didn't think it mattered much that I was too tired to ask for more help. I was just used to it.

I got home Tuesday. Three days later, on Friday September 11, 2015 I called my doctor who is also my friend and got admitted to a different hospital. His hospital, I could say. My hospital, I could say.

Where I should have gone in the first place.