Necator Americanus: Superfriend!

B & I took the dogs for a walk on Saturday.

I couldn’t sit here a moment longer, trapped in the house like an invalid, trying to keep busy doing nothing so I don’t drive myself crazy between trips to the bathroom.

We walked around Antrum lake and let the dogs swim and frolic while I hoped that I’d have the strength to make it the whole way around. I did, and it was the nearest thing to a hike as we’ve had in years. But today I feel as though a mule has kicked me in the abdomen, as my intestines work on digesting tan-tan sesame noodles

So I am depressed and angry today. As summer draws to a close and the sun and the rain chase each other across the sky, I don’t dare eat anything and still, I don’t feel that I can safely go any where. I want to go to the Kroger, there’s cake there. My prednesone wants cake. I need to go to the psychiatrists office, his nurse is holding some medication samples for me, but I’m too depressed to go get my anti depressants.

So I offer you, all my fellow travelers and comrades, this blog entry, a pure wallowing in misery and self pity; because today I can’t stand it, can’t stand myself for one more moment. I am acknowledging in print, the simple fact that I want only for it all to go away.

9/11/09

Finally, after eight hours in the ER and a long afternoon of sleeping in a sunless room, it was decided that I should have a growing abscess lanced by the surgeon. The anesthesiologist was perfectly amenable to an alternative to general anesthesia, no matter what the reason. The IV concoction used for colonoscopy was not used for surgery, she said, but a spinal would work; until she learned in the course of the cross examination, that I’d been having fevers for three weeks.

She brought up the specter of meningitis. worse than worm death, I’d wager. If someone was going to have to die on this trip it was going to be Superfriend, not me.

I don’t feel any differently today than I did yesterday, soreness where the stitches are is similar to the soreness where the abscess was, no fevers, but this room is so hot is might as well be a sauna. But my worms are dead. I have to assume, as the anesthetic tube left a raw spot in the back of my throat.

I am comforted by the fact that my fellow travelers tell me that the reaction to the worms is less with each reinfection. The doctors from Infectious Diseases were comforted by nothing. You never saw such a collection of astonished, aghast, incredulous expressions in your life. I may as well have said that I was going to have myself intentionally infected by some pernicious third world parasite that was the bane of the WHO’s existence. . . Oh, wait, I did. Never the less, I did my best to strongly suggest that they put their prejudices aside, look at the AIT web site and when in doubt, consider how the Small-Pox vaccene was discovered.

All of you who have been chastised by me for Irrational Exuberance, would have been astonished to see me, dander up, wagging my finger at medical professionals. Doctors who were trying to contain their revulsion as I explained that one does not swallow N. americanus, it crawls its way up ones trachea on its way to the stomach.   I might have been amused, myself, had I not been so angry.  Judge me, goddamnit? Like hell you will, as I sit here bleeding while you can go home and eat anything you want!

There’s a rumor by one of the surgery interns, clearly not in the loop, that I might be released tomorrow. I’m grabbing on to that and hanging like a pit bull. I’m going to shake it in the face of every comer. I’ll be leaving tomorrow if I can only just make them sick of hearing me ask. But you’ll know, what ever happens, because I’ll write chapter two of this saga, and tell you what’s happened to bearer of the dead worms.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that I somehow lost my GI doctor in an academic shuffle.

Just months after telling me she’d be my doctor until she died, a follow up appointment was canceled w/o my knowledge, and I was given several different vague stories by herself and others. She said something about how we’d hit a roadblock and just didn’t know what to do, so she wanted a different set of eyes on me.  One of the nurses said that she was going to be spending more time teaching and less time in the clinic. The doctor she passed me off to said he simply didn’t know.

I can not ignore the fact that in the meeting we had before the canceled appointment I told her of my decision to go forward with helminthic therapy.

The Doctor that Dr Pfeil left me to, of whom she spoke highly, summarily passed me off to one of the “fellows” in his practice, who doesn’t know me and is rather lacking in interpersonal communication skills. So here’s my question: Does anyone know a good Crohn’s specialist in the Columbus Ohio Area. I’d be willing to go to Riverside (Ohio Health) or The Mt Carmel Group (maybe less so, unless the doctor was really stellar)?  If no one has a clue, perhaps someone has an idea of how to start a search.

This evening I will be be reluctantly going to OSU Emergency Dept, because Dr no.3 said that having had multiple abscesses, I will need a CT scan. I was not really interested in having more radiation, I’ve had at least 10 CT scans thus far; but I don’t want to be admitted.  The GI & Hepetology wards were combined with the Infectious Diseases ward last year; ostensibly for reasons of space. Last week someone died on that ward of H1N1. The idea that I could die of a secondary infection, while in the Hospital, set off all my self preservation mechanisims. Will they let me have my scan, write me a ’script for some steroids and let me go until my next appointment? I doubt it, but it’s worth negotiating.  Right now, the discussion having not even started, we are stalled at no. I will not be admitted, they will surely not summarily write the Steroids. We need a way to get beyond no, we need room to maneuver.

If any one had any ideas about this tactical negotiation, please feel free to speak up. I need all the advice I can get. In the meantime, I do probably have abscesses. In the morning, before I pass stool, great quantities of blood drain from me. My temperature in on a rollercoaster, only partially mitigated by Asprin, Tylenol and Motrin, alternately. And I haven’t done anything for 3 days but sit in bed, sleep, surf the web, and force myself on occasion to eat (whose the fool here?)

If you’ve gotten through all that, thanks for your time and energy, now all I need is your advice.