Atty
November 1st, 2007, 09:08 PM
Well, we all do it sooner or later. We post that thread complaining about how bad our life is.
Us moderators are no different, so here it goes:
First off, because I know you'll be asking yourself this, my father left my mother when she got pregnant. I've never met him or talked to him and chances are I never will. So yeah, moving on.
Okay so a bunch of people have been curious as to what’s wrong with my mom, most of which have heard the story at one time or another (bits and pieces though) but now I'm just going to write it all out. If you care you can read on, if you don't, go to digg and amuse yourself.
So when I was 9 or 10 (it was 1999, I was both ages that year, I'm just that amazing) my mom was the head of the Communications Department at Florida Southern College. A professor walked into her office needing to use her stapler, he was quite angry, and slammed down on it which caused the shelf it was on to fall off the wall. My mom was working on her computer under the shelf (it was above her desk, sounds awkward but it makes sense if you see it in real life), it fell and she saw it coming and put up her arm to block it from hitting her head. A 145LB shelf fell directly onto her wrist smashing the nerves on it; this caused her to develop a disease called RSD.
Reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD) or complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is a chronic, painful, and progressive neurological condition that affects skin, muscles, joints, and bones. The syndrome usually develops in an injured limb, such as a broken leg, or following surgery. However, many cases of RSD involve only a minor injury, such as a sprain. And in some cases, no precipitating event can be identified.
Pain may begin in one area or limb and then spread to other limbs. RSD/CRPS is characterized by various degrees of burning pain, excessive sweating, swelling, and sensitivity to touch. Symptoms of RSD/CRPS may recede for years and then reappear with a new injury.
She's had that condition and managed to live with it for 7 years, with various surgeries and procedures, semi alright. She was incapable of working too much but still held a full time job and pulled in enough money for us to live, although things were tough. About March of 2006 my grandfather had a heart attack and about a week after that my mom supposedly developed pneumonia, but due to being too busy taking care of my grandmother and stuff related to my grandfather she didn't take time off to rest and recuperate, this caused the infection in her lungs to spread to her blood stream.
I remember the night quite clearly, I went to bed and my mom was fine, I woke up the next morning to leave to go to my grandparents to help take care of my grandfather for the day (he had been released home pending his open heart surgery) and my mom was complaining she didn't feel well, stomach ache, etc (normal for her, she has a very intolerant immune system due to all of her treatments from the RSD.) I thought nothing of it and went about my day, although during that day I became worried because she never answered the phone or called, so instead of spending the night with my grandparents I grabbed a ride home in the afternoon.
When I got home I found my mom laying in the living room screaming for help, she was delirious, had suffered a seizure (according to the ER doctors), and was very dehydrated. I quickly got her water (something she was screaming for) but she become erratic, she didn't want help then screamed for it, she forgot who I was, she did very abnormal things. I quickly called my Grandmother out of fear to ask her what I should do and she told me to have her taken to the hospital. She was quickly rushed to Lakeland Regional where they told us different things, at first they thought she had spinal meningitis, then something else, and another thing, finally she lapsed into a coma. She spent a month in a coma, some days the doctors didn't think she'd make it, but she slowly got better. It turns out she developed a septic blood infection that caused all of this. When she came out of the coma she was still very sick and very confused due to all the medication, at one point she had no idea who I was (the worst part of it all, when my mom looked me dead in the eyes and didn't know who I was).
After about a year of that she was still not 100%, still very sick and weak although getting better. Around that time the RSD I talked about earlier moved into her legs with terrible side effects. Her leg became bloated and enlarged, she had trouble walking, and was in constant pain because of it. Along with her arm pain, she now had a leg the same way. Right now she's got RSD in her right wrist all the way to her shoulder, her right leg up to the thigh, and her left leg in the foot/calf. And it will probably spread through all her limbs entirely. She hasn't been able to work since she got sick in 2006, she's been denied Disability and has lost her health insurance to a bull shit law (I turned 18 and they dropped her.)
Currently there is no cure or working treatments for her RSD, the only thing she can do is take pain medication and deal with it. Although a new treatment has turned up, involving a medical induced coma and massive amounts of ketamine, which essentially resets her brain which is said to cure the disease, although it’s very expensive, it’s not guaranteed to work, and could end up in her death. Currently we can't even afford the treatment but it’s her only chance, so we are looking into it. But I'm not sure what will go on with that.
C&P'd from my personal blog.
There is a lot more thats going on right now but that just pretains to my mother, so yeah.
Any questions feel free to ask them.
Note: No sympathy required.
Us moderators are no different, so here it goes:
First off, because I know you'll be asking yourself this, my father left my mother when she got pregnant. I've never met him or talked to him and chances are I never will. So yeah, moving on.
Okay so a bunch of people have been curious as to what’s wrong with my mom, most of which have heard the story at one time or another (bits and pieces though) but now I'm just going to write it all out. If you care you can read on, if you don't, go to digg and amuse yourself.
So when I was 9 or 10 (it was 1999, I was both ages that year, I'm just that amazing) my mom was the head of the Communications Department at Florida Southern College. A professor walked into her office needing to use her stapler, he was quite angry, and slammed down on it which caused the shelf it was on to fall off the wall. My mom was working on her computer under the shelf (it was above her desk, sounds awkward but it makes sense if you see it in real life), it fell and she saw it coming and put up her arm to block it from hitting her head. A 145LB shelf fell directly onto her wrist smashing the nerves on it; this caused her to develop a disease called RSD.
Reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD) or complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is a chronic, painful, and progressive neurological condition that affects skin, muscles, joints, and bones. The syndrome usually develops in an injured limb, such as a broken leg, or following surgery. However, many cases of RSD involve only a minor injury, such as a sprain. And in some cases, no precipitating event can be identified.
Pain may begin in one area or limb and then spread to other limbs. RSD/CRPS is characterized by various degrees of burning pain, excessive sweating, swelling, and sensitivity to touch. Symptoms of RSD/CRPS may recede for years and then reappear with a new injury.
She's had that condition and managed to live with it for 7 years, with various surgeries and procedures, semi alright. She was incapable of working too much but still held a full time job and pulled in enough money for us to live, although things were tough. About March of 2006 my grandfather had a heart attack and about a week after that my mom supposedly developed pneumonia, but due to being too busy taking care of my grandmother and stuff related to my grandfather she didn't take time off to rest and recuperate, this caused the infection in her lungs to spread to her blood stream.
I remember the night quite clearly, I went to bed and my mom was fine, I woke up the next morning to leave to go to my grandparents to help take care of my grandfather for the day (he had been released home pending his open heart surgery) and my mom was complaining she didn't feel well, stomach ache, etc (normal for her, she has a very intolerant immune system due to all of her treatments from the RSD.) I thought nothing of it and went about my day, although during that day I became worried because she never answered the phone or called, so instead of spending the night with my grandparents I grabbed a ride home in the afternoon.
When I got home I found my mom laying in the living room screaming for help, she was delirious, had suffered a seizure (according to the ER doctors), and was very dehydrated. I quickly got her water (something she was screaming for) but she become erratic, she didn't want help then screamed for it, she forgot who I was, she did very abnormal things. I quickly called my Grandmother out of fear to ask her what I should do and she told me to have her taken to the hospital. She was quickly rushed to Lakeland Regional where they told us different things, at first they thought she had spinal meningitis, then something else, and another thing, finally she lapsed into a coma. She spent a month in a coma, some days the doctors didn't think she'd make it, but she slowly got better. It turns out she developed a septic blood infection that caused all of this. When she came out of the coma she was still very sick and very confused due to all the medication, at one point she had no idea who I was (the worst part of it all, when my mom looked me dead in the eyes and didn't know who I was).
After about a year of that she was still not 100%, still very sick and weak although getting better. Around that time the RSD I talked about earlier moved into her legs with terrible side effects. Her leg became bloated and enlarged, she had trouble walking, and was in constant pain because of it. Along with her arm pain, she now had a leg the same way. Right now she's got RSD in her right wrist all the way to her shoulder, her right leg up to the thigh, and her left leg in the foot/calf. And it will probably spread through all her limbs entirely. She hasn't been able to work since she got sick in 2006, she's been denied Disability and has lost her health insurance to a bull shit law (I turned 18 and they dropped her.)
Currently there is no cure or working treatments for her RSD, the only thing she can do is take pain medication and deal with it. Although a new treatment has turned up, involving a medical induced coma and massive amounts of ketamine, which essentially resets her brain which is said to cure the disease, although it’s very expensive, it’s not guaranteed to work, and could end up in her death. Currently we can't even afford the treatment but it’s her only chance, so we are looking into it. But I'm not sure what will go on with that.
C&P'd from my personal blog.
There is a lot more thats going on right now but that just pretains to my mother, so yeah.
Any questions feel free to ask them.
Note: No sympathy required.