What I’ve been up to in the last four months.

With my new diagnosis and starting the different medications for my actual illness- schizo-obsessive ADHD disorder- my brain is something I never thought possible. It’s stable. Sure, I have a few hiccups here and there. There’s the every- now-and-again auditory hallucination and the rare moments when I feel like I’m headed for a mental breakdown, but for the most part, my brain functions quite well. Which is great because I’ve been dealing with a whole host of physical health problems.

Let me start with the beginning of it all. On October 8 of last year, I took my sons into a restroom do all do what one does in a restroom and on our way out, I slipped on soapy water and tore the ACL in my left knee 100%. I didn’t know that in the minutes after the fall. All I knew was I was in a whole heck of a lot of pain and I couldn’t get up. I had to have an ambulance come get me. Luckily my husband was just getting off from work, so he was able to come get the boys as I was transported to the ER. There they did an x-ray and found nothing broken. I was then told by the ER doctor to see an orthopedic surgeon as soon as possible.

The town where I live has an orthopedic urgent care, so the Monday after the fall (the fall happened on a Friday), I went there. I had to hire a health care companion as I could barely walk and could definitely not drive. The doctor there determined that I did tear my ACL but ordered a MRI just to verify his diagnosis. That was done and he was correct. He told me to first try physical therapy as there was a 50/50 chance of physical therapy strengthening my knee so much that I could avoid surgery. Surgery would entail me getting my ACL replaced with a cadaver’s. I didn’t want dead people parts in me, so I happily went to all the therapy sessions.

Three weeks into my physical therapy, I had my yearly woman check up with my gynecologist. She was feeling around down there and told me that it felt like my uterus had grown and that could mean one of two things. Either my uterus was diseased or I had tumors that could possibly be cancer. Whichever one it was, a hysterectomy was in my future. She ordered an ultrasound to see what was going on. I became depressed at the idea of losing my uterus. My mom had a hysterectomy and so did her mom. They both died from cancers that came from the hormone replacement therapy they went through after being forced into menopause. I didn’t want to go down that path and I also didn’t want to lose half of what made me a woman. I didn’t want to lose the body part that brought my boys to life.

The night before my scheduled ultrasound, I started throwing up. Then I got sick out the other end. I spent the whole night going between the two. By morning I was weak. I called and rescheduled my ultrasound, which made me frustrated. I’d have to wait another week to know whether or not I had cancer but I couldn’t drive. I called the boys’ school to say they were going to miss the day. Then I threw up blood and the next run to the toilet had blood in it as well. I knew I needed to go see a doctor. I called my in-laws and asked if my mother-in-law could watch the boys while my father-in-law took me to the ER.

While I was in the ER waiting to see a doctor, I watched the TV on the wall. The channel that was on was a classic TV show channel and the show airing was ‘The Lucy Show.’ I’m not the biggest Lucille Ball fan but I find her hilarious and her show was much better than the news, which is normally what’s playing in the ER waiting room. I was only half paying attention when Lucy said magic words. Her character admitted to being a big fan of Danny Kaye. I was suddenly alert and watching the show. Danny Kaye is my all-time favorite actor. In fact when I discovered him in 1993, when I was 14, I sat there and calculated how old he would be in real life and how old he would be when I turned 18. Then I figured I could seek him out so we could get married. The internet wasn’t readily available then so I went to my local library to read articles about him. It was there that I found out he had died in 1987. 14-year-old Meaghan was devastated. I got over it and Danny Kaye became my favorite actor. That fact hasn’t changed in the past 30 years.

Back to the ER. As I sat there watching Lucille Ball ham it up with Danny Kaye, I felt like the universe was telling me everything would be okay. I was finally called in to see the doctor. It was the same doctor that figured out why I had a stroke. I knew I wouldn’t leave the ER without an answer to what was going on. A contrast CT scan was done and it was discovered that I had an infection in my colon. I was given strong antibiotics and told to see a GI doctor as soon as possible. I got a referral from my primary care physician and the GI doctor had an appointment the following week.

The ultrasound was completed and as I waited for the results, I saw the GI doctor. She looked at the images from the CT scan and said I needed to have a colonoscopy and an endoscopy. That was then scheduled for December 30. In the meantime I was still going to physical therapy but it didn’t work. My knee was unstable and it would give out and I’d fall. The orthopedic surgeon said surgery would fix all of this and by this time I just wanted a functional knee again. I didn’t care about having a donor ACL. The surgery was scheduled for January 6.

My gynecologist called and said good news, there were no tumors in my uterus. She didn’t have a reference for how big my uterus was so she wanted me to have another ultrasound with my next visit in a year. I told her that I had a complete abdomen ultrasound done in March at the same radiology group that did the ultrasound on my uterus. She said she’d get the results from that test so she could compare the size of my uterus from March to December. She would call me if something was wrong but if I didn’t hear back from here, everything was normal.

The end of December rolled around and I cleaned out my digestive tract in preparation for the colonoscopy. I showed up to the surgical center for the procedure and that’s when I was told that I had tested positive for COVID. They had known since the day before but didn’t bother telling me or the doctor. She found out five minutes before I did. She found out after she had arrived at the surgical center to perform my procedure. Both of us were mad but there was nothing we could do. I hadn’t been sick, so I felt I must have had a false positive. I went that morning to a rapid COVID test center and paid over a hundred dollars to find out within an hour that I was negative. So either I got a false positive, a false negative, or I got over COVID in one day. I’ll never know. Anyway, the colonoscopy was rescheduled for January 27.

I had my knee surgery as planned and when I woke up, I was in the most amount of pain I had ever been in. I’ve been through an emergency cesarean where my son was dying so my obstetrician didn’t worry too much if I was completely numb. I felt everything. I’m not joking when I say that I’d rather go through that again then to ever have surgery on my knee. The pain was phenomenal. It was so bad that when it came time to prepare for my colonoscopy, I had a panic attack about cleaning myself out while I was in so much pain. I rescheduled the procedure for the second time. It is now going to be on February 17. I’m going to now mention that food makes my stomach mad so I’m eating a lot of potatoes and chicken soup. I’ve lost a lot of weight. I need to have the colonoscopy.

Three weeks post surgery, my gynecologist called. It had been five weeks since I talked to her so I assumed everything was fine. Well, what happened was the radiology group took their sweet time in sending her the results from the ultrasound in March. My doctor told me that my uterus had indeed grown by quite a bit and that it needs to come out. The first words out of my mouth were, “can it wait?” She said it could but not a whole year. I have an ultrasound set up for June and I’m looking at having a hysterectomy the same month.

I’ve been having this terrible feeling that I’m not going to make it to 50. My body likes to try to kill me from time to time. The knee accident wasn’t my body’s fault, that was something that could happen to anyone. What concerns me is my colon and uterus. I’ll have the colonoscopy on Thursday, unless something else comes up. I really don’t want to lose my uterus but oh well. I’ve known this was a high possibility but it’s still not nice to be faced with the reality. I try to remember the moment Danny Kaye came on the screen and a calm came over me. Everything will be okay. Everything will be taken care of. My knee is fixed, I’ll have my colonoscopy, and I will be fine after my hysterectomy. I will defeat this episode of my body trying to kill me. I will survive.