As most of you know I've been having problems with my guts for the last few years. More or less, it was a mystery illness. Sometimes it went unexplained. Sometimes it was pancreatitis. Sometimes it was gastroenteritis. But now I finally have a solid answer for what's wrong with me. And now that I do, I have serious doubts that I had pancreatitis or gastroenteritis or any of the other feeble diagnoses that I've been given over the years.
Also, everyone, up to and including ER doctors, was wrong. And I was right. In fact, many of you reading this now have told me what my problem really is, and you were all wrong, too. After my most recent stay in the hospital earlier this week, I feel vindicated.
I've mentioned before about ER doctors relying too heavily on Occam's Razor and not actually investigating an illness. You know, otherwise known as doing their jobs. They're not the only ones who lean on that one, though. Almost everyone does. Doing work is hard. If you tell an ER doctor that you drink heavily, then obviously that's the problem. Stop drinking and you'll be fine. Dummy.
But they are the dummies because they're too lazy to find out what is *really* wrong with you. They're impatient to get to the next patient. They only have a couple of minutes for you. Sadly, many real doctors rely on the ER doctor's diagnosis and go from there. This time? I met a doctor who actually wanted to find out what was wrong with me and treat me accordingly.
AND I FINALLY HAVE A REAL ANSWER! And sorry, everyone. Alcohol was NOT the problem. It was actually my oldest addiction that caused this: caffeine (more to the point, the Coca-Cola it comes in because I don't drink coffee). A real doctor came to me in my hospital room and told me that I had . . . I don't remember the name of it. I was gone on morphine at the time. He said that in some diabetics, if blood sugars get too high, it causes the stomach to freeze. You can still put stuff in it, but it's not going to go through it. Since the stomach freezes, all that stuff has no choice but to come back up the way it went down. Hence the constant puking. It also causes extraordinary pain (hence the painkillers).
So yeah. Alcohol had to go, more or less, one way or the other. But it did NOT cause my health issues. A lifetime of drinking ten Cokes a day (a conservative number, by the way; some of those Cokes were Super-Sized McDonald's Cokes) is what did it to me. Now I actually have a chance of winning this battle. They put me back on insulin, which is a hassle, but it's not that bad. After everything I've gone through, one gets used to needles even if they're going into one's stomach, self-administered.
I'm sure my future won't be hospital free going forward, but there will be a lot less ER visits. Because now I know, and knowing is half the battle.
Oh, and for the record, yes, the ER doctor put me on Ativan, which has one use for an alcoholic in the ER. It stops him from having seizures due to withdrawal. Despite me telling him that I don't drink every day anymore, and I don't need a drink to get out of bed anymore, he didn't believe me. Granted, alcoholics aren't exactly the most trustworthy people in the world, but still.
Here's a Craig Ferguson joke for you about alcoholics versus junkies. I've been an alcoholic, and while I've done heroin, I was never a junkie, but I've known a few. It sounds like a reasonable assessment.
No comments:
Post a Comment