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good wishes please for mrs. zork. she's having surgery this morning ...

having a large cyst on an ovary removed (and possibly the whole ovary) in day surgery.


the whole story [you can skip this part if you want]

Back in october, she had an asthma attack and I took her to emerg. In the past, she was treated with one of those breathing masks and/or oral prednisone. This time, some young respiratory tech just made her take eight doses of ventolin, one after the other, using an aero chamber to increase the absorbtion. This was on top of the couple of doses she took at home.

Ventolin is known to make your heart race and with so much in her system, it felt totally out of control. Together with not being able to breathe, she felt like she was going to die.

In the days and weeks following, she continued to feel short of breathe and a racing heart plus chest pain, and was very agitated by it. We went to a number of doctors and her oxygen levels and EKG were fine. At some point, she started taking Ativan for anxiety caused by all this.

Around Christmas, she started feeling nausea also and we went to emerg. again so they prescribed something for acid reflux and gave more ativan. All sports of heart and other tests were performed and the only things that showed up were gall bladder polyps (pre-existing but seemingly bigger than before) and a large ovarian cyst.

Asthma testing was also done and that scared the crap out of her because they make you breathe into a machine and then make out hard for you to breathe.

A month later, it turns out that the polyps weren't actually bigger but the cyst was still large and needed to be removed. By this time, she had weaned herself off the ativan and had been feeling somewhat better, but news of needing surgery triggered huge anxiety again and she started getting horrible images haunting her.

Another doctor put her on Paxil and that gave her suicidal thoughts.

The images (and suicidal thoughts) really terrified her and, although she knew they weren't true, she was afraid she was losing her mind. We called a crisis line and got voice mail but they never called back. Finally she really broke down and said she needed mental help. She called her mother and my step-father (an Anglican priest) to come over, not a short trip for either. We made more calls and figured that we had to take her to emerg and ask for a mental health assessment. The psychiatrist put her back on ativan and Seroquel to help with the sleep deprivation she'd had for a month.

Eventually, I realized that she has been suffering from PTSD this whole time from feeling like she was going to die durimg the asthma attack.

She called around and has now seen a psychologist once, and will again for it.

Hopefully a successful surgery (and any rebalancing of her hormones as a result) will help settle the anxiety and stop the images.

This all started around the time that her last contact was ending and so we've been on one paycheck for more than six months. So on top of caring for her, I'm going through sheer hell financially. Things are getting cut of f and I'm juggling multiple payday loans. She's just started working again but as a contractor she doesn't get paid until the client pays their bill.

There's more crap going on too but that's enough for now.

Good thoughts for Beata (bee-ah-tuh) please, and a little for me too please.



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