(You may want to stop reading here if you do not want to be shaken to your core and be made very upset.  Okay, you have been warned.) 

People always say that I have got to be more positive, more optimistic.  Well friends, I tell them that I am not pessimistic, I am REALISTIC.  These past few weeks I have come the closest I have ever felt to dying.  Two weeks ago I was having a fever every day, freezing, sweating, nauseous.  I had wounds that were not healing, that would bleed profusely by me absent-mindedly scratching a mosquito bite.  The pain was off the charts, the medicine for it, a joke.  Two weeks ago, when my fever was running and I could not get out of bed or barely speak, I swear I felt God next to me.  “Do you really want to die?  Well here is what it feels like.  Be careful what you wish for.  Death is not the peaceful, calm you think, at least getting there sure isn’t”.

I was crying.  I thought of Grant and Tyler and my cat.  I thought about the things I enjoy, just for ME, writing this blog, my voiceover work, my book club, Twitter, Google+, and then I realized…life is fun.  Not just with Tyler.  There are fun things in MY life.  There are still books to read and places to go and candles to be lit and beautiful but cheap things to have. Money is coming.  I WILL travel.  I will take Tyler to Disney World one day.  And then I said to God, “Stop!  Stop!  I don’t need to see this any more.  I don’t want to die.  I thought I did but I DON’T.  I want to live, not just for Tyler but for ME, God please let me live, I still have living to do!”

And then, it was either God the steroids or both, I got better.  Not better like I am trying out for the Olympic team but…my fever went away.  My mouth sores were gone.  My wounds healed.  I bought that “Imagination” candle I had been thinking about from the Disney Store and the Alice in Wonderland Vinylmation and my surprise “Buy one get one free” Vinylmation “Pete” from the Mickey Mouse Club House show.  And all three things are with me right now, bringing me joy.

Last Tuesday, I went to the hospital again.  I had horrific abdominal pain, with all of the symptoms of an appendicitis.  Unfortunately whenever I go to the hospital I am such a complex patient that they often do not want to treat me.  They gave me an ultrasound on my stomach and then up my…well let’s just say I could have had a career in pornography, I took it like a champ.  There was a lot of waiting, a lot of blood-letting and peeing in cups.

Throughout this my feet were swelling, like they have never swelled before.  They were purple and red, as if I had not been walking on them, as if they were starting to clot.  They looked like….like the way my father’s looked as he lay dying.  Like the feet of death.  The only feet I had seen looked like that were my father’s.  All discolored, painful.  I kept asking if they would examine my feet, if they would treat my pain, but they didn’t want to do much until they figured out what was wrong with me.  Alone, in a private emergency room, I started to pray, I started to beg and cry.  “Dear God, Jesus and Daddy.  I have a little boy that I have to make it for.  You can take me, but please, not now, not until he is a teenager and he no longer needs his Mommy.  That’s all I want!”  People on Face Book were praying for me, people on Twitter and Google+ were praying and I thank them very much.

And suddenly, I was getting better.  My feet cleared up.  My diagnosis was spastic colon or a possible flare-up of my Ulcerative Colitis.  That was a lot better than, “You need surgery on your BLANK or your BLANK.”  They had been almost positive I was going to be needing surgery of some kind!

And then I was discharged.  And Grant and Tyler came to the hospital to take me home.

So, where was I going with this, what the Hell does this have to do with BlogHer’12?  Well, the truth is I am being REALISTIC when I say I may not be there…or here.  How lucky can I get?  When God wants me, he wants me, I can only continue to pray that I live to finish out being Tyler’s “Mommy”.

Really, where will ANY of us be in 2012 anyway?  Any one of us could get into a car accident tomorrow.  Our plane might crash, we could get breast cancer.

Yes, any one of us.  But for people like me, with Lupus and other serious, worsening chronic conditions, we REALLY have to ask ourselves, where will I BE?  Will I even be here to make it to an event that for three years now has been so unobtainable?  When I have the money for next year’s BlogHer…will I really…be here?

The post BlogHer Conference 2012: Looking Ahead and Wondering first appeared on Mama Sick.

During this time, Grant was begging me to go to the E.R., but I hate going there.  Mostly I find it to be a huge waste of my time, no help, no results, etc.  You can read more about my last E.R. visit here.  I literally have to be near death to go there I hate it so much!

My PCP had diagnosed me with inflammation of the sacral iliac joint, but you can’t really get a diagnosis by someone just poking at your body!  I wanted to consult with my Rheumatologist due to my feeling that it was a joint issue and he was a good second “go to” guy.  At my March appointment he wrote a prescription for X-rays. This past Monday was my April visit and he said the X-rays showed nothing, but we both agreed the X-rays don’t tell the whole story, or in my case, tell nothing.  He wrote a prescription for an MRI but that is something that requires pre-authorization from the insurance company so his office manager set about procuring the authorization.

On Thursday my back pain hit a different level.  The only time my back didn’t hurt was when I would wake up in the morning, but on Thursday, there it was.  I was at my limit.  Insane back pain with no break!  Grant and I discussed the E.R. and I was weakening.  On Friday morning I told him I was going to go.  I took a shower, got dressed, got some entertainment together; the book that I am currently reading for my book club, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, Parents magazine, my newspaper and my iPhone.  Then I called 9-1-1.  For the uninitiated, it is always best to go by ambulance, otherwise you are stuck in the waiting room for God knows how long.

Unfortunately, it was an extremely busy day at my hospital’s E.R.  I was triaged to the lowest ranking E.R. I did not even rate a bed, I got to sit in the most uncomfortable semi-reclining torture device known to man which made my back feel even worse.  The nurse came over and took my vitals and wrote them on a napkin.  Now, one of my followers on Twitter told me that she was in the healthcare industry for years and this is very common, but it wasn’t to me!  I’m thinking, Should I just walk out of here?  Is this the biggest mistake of my life?

If you are wondering if Grant came with me, the answer is no for a few reasons.  He had an appointment with his therapist, we didn’t know how long I would be and he wanted to be closer to home for Tyler, who was in school, and he also has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.  In fact, his PTSD is from being in hospitals.  I was fine without him.  I had the above mentioned entertainment and my wonderful friends and family on Twitter and Face Book!  I want to thank everyone who was virtually there for me, you were wonderful support!

The Physician’s Assistant ordered a CAT scan and morphine for me, yay!  I am no drug seeker but as those who have chronic pain know, I needed a BREAK.  For the first time in months I didn’t want to feel that back pain.  I was also happy to be getting a CAT scan.  The nurse gave me the morphine shot in my left shoulder which hurt like hell, and, because I have Fibromyalgia, actually made my other shoulder hurt too.  I was waiting to feel loopy and…nothing.   No loopy.  No relief.  Nothing!

I got my CAT scan and told the nurse that the morphine did nothing for me and she told me they would give me something else.  Grant showed up,  the hospital was literally on the way home from his therapist’s.  We kissed and hugged, he held my hand but what else could he do for me?  By the way, the whole time I kept asking for something to drink, something to eat, anything, and I never got so much as a swig of  water!  This place was worse than prison.  Luckily I had brought coffee with me and had eaten a string cheese at 7:00 a.m.!

The nurse gave me a shot of Dilaudid and once again, I got no relief.  Grant said by now he would have been totally loopy but I could have operated heavy machinery for all it had done for me.  By this time, Grant was getting upset over my lack of care, I hadn’t even been seen by a doctor and I had already been there for THREE hours!  Plus, his PTSD was kicking in.  He told me he was sorry but he had to go and I understood.  He later told me that while walking back to his car he was crying so hard that someone stopped him to ask if he was okay.

I told the nurse that the shot of Dilaudid hadn’t helped.  At this point I found out that I was triaged so low that there was no doctor in my part of the E.R.  Can you believe it?  I never got to see a doctor, apparently I didn’t rate. How can there be no doctor in an E.R.??  I was glad that Grant had left because he would have gone ape shit if he knew that.  I got a second shot of the Dilaudid and still nothing. I walked over with my cane to tell the P.A. that I had gotten no relief and that I have given up the hope of getting relief.  She said, “Well, sometimes we can’t take all your pain away” and I said, “No, literally I have had no pain taken away.”

Finally I got the results of my CAT scan which I will put here in hopes of some advice from those who have “been there”.  I have not had the time to even research what some of it means.  “Mild posterior disk bulges from L3-4 to L4-5. There is a left conjoined nerve root vs. disk herniation at L5-S-1…MRI (recommended) for better characterization of degenerative disease.”  Like I said, I don’t know what it means but it sounds very scary.  I am scared.  The P.A. referred me to a spine specialist and told me that things might move faster with the insurance company now that I have a bit of a diagnosis, a CAT scan and a trip to the E.R.  So, as inhumane as my experience was, it was good for a few things.

She gave me a prescription for the Dilaudid and a prescription for Valium which I have yet to fill and after five hours I was released.  Grant thinks the Dilaudid may work when I am in the thousand times more comfortable environment of my home.

I am happy to have a diagnosis but I am also frightened as I realize that this is only the beginning with a new condition for me that I know very little about.

The post Trip to The E.R: The True Story! first appeared on Mama Sick.