Well, I didn’t keep my promise again. Things have gotten so much worse with my stomach problems. The meds they put me on didn’t help at all. The pain has steadily gotten worse and is constant now. About a week before Christmas, I started hurting so bad I couldn’t breath. It was hurting in my stomach, but also traveled around to my back. I kind of thought that maybe I had some how pulled a muscle in my back. I came down and lay on the couch with the heating pad and it eased up and went away after a couple of hours. I didn’t think it has anything to do with my stomach problems at that point. A few days later, it started hurting like that again, only this time it didn’t go away. I called the GI doctor and was told that it sounded like I was having a gallbladder attack. They told me to get straight to the hospital and to expect emergency surgery. I had to wait for Charles to get home from work before I could go though. Charles got home and we headed back to the Memorial Hospital in the Woodlands. So many people had warned us to never go to the hospital in Tomball, so we went to the Woodlands. Jan and Will met us at the hospital expecting me to go into surgery. They had came to keep Charles company while I was in surgery. When we got there, the admitting nurse took one look at me and also thought it was the gallbladder. They hooked me up to an I.V. right away and gave me a massive dose of liquid Protonix. That is a new acid reflux drug. They also gave me something light for the pain. Then they took me in for an ultrasound of the gallbladder and brought me back to the stall in the emergency room. We waited about 20 minutes for the doc to look at the ultrasound. The pain meds they gave me were helping a little bit, but I still was in so much pain that I couldn’t hardly breath. The doc came in and asked me what was wrong with me. I told him that my GI thought I was probably having a gallbladder attack. He said that wasn’t the case as the ultrasound had came back negative. I told him about all the other tests that they had ran on me and the results. When they did the Endoscopy, they found four problems. A gastric ulcer, a sliding hernia, gastritis, and duodenitis. The GI told me that none of those would causes me to have the kind of pain I was describing to him. The emergency room doc told me that the gastric ulcer could cause the kind of pain that I was experiencing that night. I told him that I had never heard of an ulcer causing pain in the back. He informed me that the stomach is in the back, which I never knew. Anyway, they gave two more kinds of pain shots and assured me that it would knock me out for the night, then gave me a prescription for Vicodin and sent me home. I was a little upset about that, since I still didn’t know what was causing the pain. The GI doctor then told me that they wanted me to have a hydroscan done on the gall bladder. They still thought the gallbladder was the problem and explained that the ultrasound only showed that I didn’t have gall stones. The hydroscan would show them if the gallbladder was functioning like it is supposed to. It was so close to the holidays and the new year, we decided to wait until after the new year to have the hydroscan done. That way the new insurance would be in effect and it wouldn’t cost us so much. Since all the other tests I had done before this has pretty much wiped us out. Our savings are completely gone. We are once again living paycheck to paycheck, which is something neither of us is used to anymore. We went to Christmas dinner at Charles sister’s (Karen) new home, and I was scared to death that I would have another attack while there. I didn’t want to be at someone else’s house and be like that. Thank the Goddess, I didn’t have another attack and the afternoon went really well. The next day I wasn’t so lucky. I had another bad attack. I didn’t go to the hospital though, as I didn’t think there was anything else they could do for me. I just laid on the heating pad all day and took some of the Vicodin. On New Years Eve, oour neighbors had invited us over for a party. I really wanted to go since we really haven’t been able to meet very many people since we moved out here. We thought it would be a good chance to meet some new people. I felt the pain coming on strong again around 7:00. The party was supposed to start around 8:00. I thought I could handle the pain though and since we are only across the street from them, we decided to go anyway. It was a bad mistake. We were only there long enough for Charles to have a plate of food, then the pain really kicked in and I almost couldn’t make it back our house. I was so embarrassed. It seemed like we only went for the free food, and then left. I haven’t been off the couch since that night except to move the heating pad to the bedroom when we go to bed. The Vicodin help, but they don’t completely take the pain away. We set the hydroscan up for the 12th and just waited for that to be over with. I was so happy to get the hydroscan done. I was sure that would give them the proof that they needed to finally do the surgery and then I would be all better again. I haven’t even been upstairs to the office in so long, I hope I can even remember how to get to the site. Bless Suzanne and all the other volunteers that have pitched in to help her out during all of this. I was so worried about the site. Suzanne told me not to worry about the site and to just concentrate on getting myself well. After the hydroscan was done last Friday, I was disappointed to find out that it would take a couple of days to get the test results back. I ran out of the Vicodin Monday night and was so afraid of what kind of pain that would bring back on Tuesday. I was right. The pain was unbearable again. The GI didn’t want to give me any more Vicodin until he saw the test results. Fay called and asked them to rush the test results to her. She finally got them back around 4:30 yesterday afternoon and called to tell me that the hydroscan had also came back negative. At that point, I was in so much pain I couldn’t breath. I just broke down and started crying. Fay couldn’t understand why I was so upset. She thought I should be happy that everything had all turned out negative because it meant there was nothing wrong with me. I told her that was not true. There is something very obviously wrong with me if I am still in this much pain. I was so sure that this was going to be the end of it. She said that the doctor wants to see me in person. All the other times we went to his office, I only saw Andrew the PA. Dr. Fein wants to see me himself now to see if he can figure out what is wrong with me. Charles doesn’t have another day off until a week from this Friday, so I have to wait till then to go in. (He was home with me yesterday, today and maybe tomorrow because of the ice storm that we are having now, but everything is closed because of the ice storm, including Dr. Fein’s office.) They did give me enough Vicodin to carry me over till the office visit. I hate taking the damn pills though, I don’t want to end up like Dr. House and be addicted to the damn things, so I wait to take them until I just can’t stand it anymore. I just live on the heating pad. I am really trying to keep a positive outlook, but it gets hard sometimes. Charles held me most of the day yesterday. I think I must have just bawled for a whole hour yesterday after I got off the phone with Fay. I just felt so hopeless. I have been dealing with this for 6 months now. It seems endless. Taking all these stupid tests, waiting for the test results, being told that test is negative and we have to do another test. It seems like I am caught in a horrible circle. Charles has his laptop home with him today, so he set me up down here on this stupid couch so I could type up this blog entry and maybe send it to myself in mail so I can post it. I can’t sit at the computer for more than five minutes. I owe a great deal of gratitude to Charles for trying so hard to take care of me. He works all day, then comes home and fixes supper and takes care of everything around the house. He holds me when I cry and has been so supportive. I also owe Jan a bucket full of thanks for always being there for me. I know it must get old to listen to me ball bag all the time about hurting so bad. She keeps me grounded and has kept me from giving into the depression. She calms me down and reminds me that even though I am in so much pain, all the tests that have came back negative really is a good thing. I also want to thank Suzanne and all the volunteers on the site for pitching in and covering for me. You all have no idea how proud I am of all of you. It really does mean a lot to me to know that so many people out there care about me.

Enough ball bagging. Lets move on to other things. On Christmas day when we were on our way to Karen’s for dinner, we were driving on this old two lane highway. It had been raining a lot around that time and the ground was really soft and muddy all over the place. Coming towards us in a big Chevy truck, this man let his two right tires go off the road. He swerved back onto the highway and it looked like he had straightened up pretty well. Then the weight of the truck touched back on the two right tires and the mud that he had picked up caused him to lose it again. He fishtailed back and forth across the highway a couple of times, then went off the road and slammed into the embankment. That sent the tail up over the hood. He rolled once that way, then started flipping over side to side about three times before coming to a stop on the side. We stopped and called 911, then ran to the truck to see if we could help. The guy was alone and was trying to get out of the truck. I tried to reach up and open the door, but it wouldn’t open. The windshield was shattered, so he tried kicking out the windshield, but it wouldn’t budge. Then he realized that he could climb out of the sliding window in the back of his truck. He seemed to be okay, but said his head hurt a bit where he hit it on the steering wheel. Another car stopped with two women in it and they wanted to see if they could also help. The man was trying to call his wife on his phone, but wasn’t getting a signal. One of the other women called his wife for him on her phone. We waited till the police and the ambulance got there, told them what we had seen, and were once again on our way to Karen’s house. It really did scare the bejeezes out of both of us though. We had no place to go to get away from this rolling truck. I had never seen a bad wreck like that before. I have driven by after a wreck has happened, but never seen one in the process. I’m just glad the man was okay.

I got a Christmas card from Jeff and Maggie. It had a picture of them and the four boys. Things seem to be going a lot better for them. I am so happy that they are starting to get their lives together. I can’t wait to see them again.

Shawn and Teresa have decided not to move back down here. Things are going good for them in Tennessee, so they are going to stay there.

I got my ring from Charles that I wanted for Christmas. It is a beautiful dark blue sapphire. I can’t wait to get more rings. I don’t really like diamonds that much, but I love the gemstones and stuff.

Really not much to talk about, since I have been a prisoner to the couch for so long. Charles has started to lay out the fence line for around the house. He has done quite a bit of clearing where the fence will be. He isn’t going to fence the whole property yet. Just a portion of it so that Ruby can have a place to run. Poor girl gets so depressed when she can’t just run and play. The pen really isn’t big enough for her to get the exercise that she needs. The winter garden was doing really well. We have lettuce, brussell sprouts, spinach, and onions growing. As I mentioned earlier, we are in the middle of a bad ice storm. I don’t know how the garden will survive. We will just have to see. I brought all my plants in that I could. We covered the garden and my aloevera plants that Jan gave me. We took pictures this morning of all the ice. My poor eucalyptus tree is so weighted down with ice, it is almost doubled over. There are a couple of other trees in the same predicament. Charles went out and tried to shake some of the ice off of them, but it didn’t help much. I kept telling Charles that he needed to go out and check our propane out. He didn’t listen until today. When he did check it, we only have about 15 gallons left, so we have turned the heater off and lit a fire to try to stay warm. We ordered more today, but they won’t be able to get it to us until tomorrow, so we are doing what we can to keep from running out.

I got email from my sister Rene about three weeks ago saying that she had sent me a package for Christmas. I need to try to get a hold of her and see if she can have them track it or something because I never got it. I hope she sees it here. We didn’t really do Christmas this year because money was so tight. We hope to be able to make up for it in April when Charles gets his bonus. We will have to see how that works out.

Well, I think this brings all back up to date for now. Hopefully, they will finally find out what is causing me so much pain and I will once again be able to do something. I am bored out of my mind being on the couch so much. Love out to all of you.