12 of 12 – august ’13!

August 18, 2013August 18, 2013 • by kerri

On the 12th of the month, some people snap 12 pictures throughout the day and blog them. Here are my pictures from August 12th, 2013!

10:44 am – bathroom. Yeah, glamour. Didn’t take enough pictures so this one had to be included, which I took to send to a friend. So, I take two of these a day to basically prevent me from dying, instead of their intended purpose of preventing babies. So, I was not paying attention at all and ended up snapping my first pill of the pack out of the wrong day–since I take two a day, i usually start on the corresponding day of the week [sans stickers usually] and pop AM out of row 1 and PM out of row 2 for the first week, then do the bottom row all screwy like. So I tried to reverse what I did this round, and now everything is confused.

10:55 am – kitchen. Candy and Concerta. Which, you know, reminded me of the Green Day lyric from Jesus of Suburbia “the bible of, none of the above, on a steady diet of / soda pop and ritalin . . .”

12:34 am – kitchen. “Let me write it on your hand / so you won’t forget.” (Write It On Your Hand, Marvelous 3). NEED bus tickets.

1:05 PM – bus stop. Trying to get across the street but there are too many freaking cars. Don’t jaywalk, kids.

1:42 pm – bookstore. Why are the chem books like this, and the physics books not? THIS IS ALL PHYSICS. Also oh my goodness fancy.

2:03 pm – annex. About to meet Bryan for lunch. He and I are known to discuss the people who clean the floor in this building 80 times a day, so I tweeted this picture to him. [80 times is probably not an exaggeration].

2:42 pm – boon burger. Super simple vegan burger from Boon. To see Bryan’s mountain of meatlessness, click here.

3:15 pm – boon burger. This is how they remember where the order goes to :D.

3:19 pm – bannatyne ave. Bryan and I taking pictures. Except, you know, he wasn’t ready for this one but I HAVE TO INCLUDE IT BECAUSE I DIDN’T TAKE ENOUGH PICTURES. At least he looks like he is laughing, right? :]

3:20 pm – bannatyne ave. There we go! :]

5:05 pm – grandparents. Bryan dropped me off at my grandparents’ place, where they were outside and thus not answering their door. I figured it out and then sat here for awhile.

7:16 pm – grandparents kitchen. Late supper, which was all good due to getting boon’ed so hard. [Thanks for the variety of uses for Boon, Bryan!]. Grilled cheese, yay!

ADHD + learning disabilities / life

starting concerta

August 11, 2013August 11, 2013 • by kerri

Resistance was a major thing I felt in regard to the last point in the Recommendations section of the report of my psychoeducational evaluation.

It is important to recognize that though an ADHD diagnosis cannot be made based on the results obtained, the possibility of an ADHD diagnosis has not been ruled out. Considering that [Kerri] does exhibit some ADHD traits, she may consider discussing with her physician the possibility of a pharmaceutical intervention to alleviate her ADHD symptoms.

(Wang, p. 8, 2013)

It wasn’t a decision I had to rush into. However, given the realities of the Canadian medical system, I gave myself time to think on it, but talked to my primary care doctor pretty quickly on the subject of medication. I know of a handful of primary care doctors who are comfortable prescribing ADHD meds–mine wasn’t, which I was more than okay with. Instead she told me she could refer me to a psychiatrist–which for me was a much better solution. Because of the inconclusiveness of my “diagnosis”, I wanted to be sure that somebody with actual expertise in these things was working alongside me in the decision process surrounding medication.

That appointment came on Thursday. Wednesday, I didn’t want to go–the resistance returned when I screwed up dosing times for all but one of my asthma meds which resulted in waking up at 4 AM when the Zenhale and Atrovent simultaneously wore off, and forgot my pill at dinner until the next day at lunch. At this point, I had growing resistance to going on yet another medication. I psyched myself up by reading the treatment chapter from Delivered from Distraction the night before–which helped because it made me realize, unlike my other meds, if I try meds and either a) they don’t help or b) I simply don’t want to be on them . . . I can stop this one. So, I went into the appoitnment a bit more open minded.

Fortunately, the vibe of the appointment was really good, too. I was definitely nervous, which is typical of whenever I see any new doctor, but I had zero idea what to expect from this appointment. I filled out three more pages of assessment questionnaires then waited a long time. Things got better when I walked in to the doctor’s office to neutral colours with the lights off, natural light coming in from the open window, and the doctor’s bike propped up underneath the window. By the time three minutes had passed, she had told me about picking blueberries in her front yard and having “eight thousand mosquito bites”–between that and the bike, I figured things would be good.

After she glossed over my report with a highlighter, we did an hour of story of my life–all the typical intake stuff like I did with assessment. Through that and the new questionnaires she confirmed the ADHD stuff they had uncovered in my original assessment–that I experience significant inattention and impulsivity (but not so much hyperactivity aside from fidgetiness). The impulsivity thing always throws me for a loop–I don’t see myself as particularly impulsive (but maybe that’s part of the problem?). Her final “diagnosis” was that things were still inconclusive, but she was strongly leaning towards ADHD-PI (primarily inattentive). Story of my life not fitting into boxes (not sure I’d want that any other way :]).

Despite the inability to confirm a diagnosis, she concluded that I do have significant symptoms and medication could be a constructive way of dealing with them. Some discussion, explanation and demonstration with a wicked cool model of a tablet later, I walked out feeling a lot more confident about a lot of things . . . and a super intense looking prescription for Concerta tucked amongst some brochures in my backpack.

So, I then exchanged super intense prescription for innocent-seeming bottle of controlled substance [which at the time was totally freaking me out haha]. In reality, the extended release meds [like Concerta] are manufactured in a way that they’re basically impossible to snort/inject.

(Slide 40 – Credit to Medscape)

So, this thing allegedly lasts for 12 hours (which really means from like, 8-14 hours depending on what your body does with it). The outer layer starts working within an hour, then as it hangs out in your stomach, water gets absorbed into the capsule and pushes out the rest of the medication in a controlled-y manner or something. Fancypants. The #1 most well known ADHD med is Ritalin–all Concerta is, is extended release Ritalin (methylphenidate). “Did it on Ritalin, I got me some good grades . . .” / “On a steady diet of / soda pop and Ritalin . . .” / “Cause I’m worth more than this / so stop writing prescriptions for my Ritalin…” [Matthew Good, Green Day and Katy Perry all off the top of my head… there we go!]. Methylphenidate is a stimulant medication–as my doctor explained it, people who have ADHD have brains that don’t know how to “put on the brakes”–stimulate meds “wake up” the part of the brain that helps put those brakes on–focus attention, control impulsivity, and decrease hyperactivity.

It’s all a game of playing with dosing. Day one was like magic–I wasn’t fidgety, I had one thought in my head at a time. Day two wasn’t quite as good, but I also didn’t drink as much water throughout the day, so I’m trying to work at that. I’m at the kick-in point on day three now, and mostly I’m trying to keep really close notes on my symptoms and how the meds are working–after three weeks, I can either increase to a 36 mg dose in the morning, or split it in two [the bonus of splitting is that I get longer coverage from the meds–11.5h doesn’t really cover a productive school/work day if I’m studying until like 10 PM or something.

But it’s good. It’s another step that is hopefully in the right direction. It’s another tool that hopefully helps make things better. Every step, each modification means a bit more work . . . but also hopefully more success, too.

If you’re interested in the day-to-day bits, I’m tweeting on #startingconcerta.

ADHD + learning disabilities

diagnosis: it’s not a label, it’s a bridge

August 7, 2013August 7, 2013 • by kerri

Seven-plus months ago, I started what was an arduous journey. I’d known in myself that something was off for a long time with how I performed educationally. Until university, I didn’t have any exceptional struggles [unless we count that I could never master the multiplication tables, or that even being tutored through grade 9 math I still came out of there with a C]. Then university came. I’m sure I’ve probably dropped nearly as many classes as I’ve taken–I couldn’t get through the readings for the most part [and, let’s be honest, that C in intro psych could have probably been at least a B had I read any of the textbook!]. When anatomy came, I shrugged off the first F–especially after I found out how many people in med school fail anatomy. The second one? I’d put so many hours in. I’d spent countless hours with a tutor, I’d made a stack of flash cards, I’d coloured the colouring book, I wasn’t leaving labs early. I’d failed or near-failed tons of tests, yet by balancing them with papers, I was mostly rolling out C’s and B’s, with a few A’s thrown in in the classes that really gelled with my learning style, my interests, my quirks, and my academic gifts.

When I went through the educational assessment process last Winter, of course there’s all that associated doubt: I’ve gotten this far in school, why am I bothering with this now? They probably won’t even find anything helpful. But, the what-if’s kept me there. While they were unable to diagnose or exclude ADHD in me, they did nail down a bunch of things: a bunch of things that had lead me to question my abilities at just about everything.

For me, a lot of it lies in my processing speed and working memory. I can’t say I believe in “normal” too much, but in psychology, everything is about deviations from the norm. My processing speed is definitely one of those–it’s only higher than 2% of females in my age group. It also means I’m probably more inattentive and distractible. My working memory deficits makes it more difficult for me to manipulate information in my head. And you know what? That’s nothing that I didn’t already know. It just gave me more knowledge about myself and how to work with what I have.

In the last several years though, I’ve worked with a lot of kids. I’ve worked with a lot of kids whose parents knew something was different and acted on it to help their kids be the best they can be. And I’ve known some kids whose parents chose the other route. Are their children struggling more than they need to? Are they being denied access to proper supports, both socially and educationally? Is the fear of a diagnosis hindering the child when having more knowledge could be helping?

Diagnosis: it’s not a label, it’s a bridge. Learning about how I learn, about how I have what might be called a learning disability? It’s made all of my struggles make so much more sense. It didn’t start anything new, it just underscored what we know I’ve always excelled in or struggled with. It’s help me maximize on the things I’m good at. It let me know that I’ve struggled for legitimate reasons with a lot of things . . . and I’m not dumb and it’s not my fault.

I have new plans. I have support at school. I have resources that can help me with my outside-of-school life–because that requires a lot of organization that I don’t rock with, too. I have new determination that I can do this.

But I can only imagine how much more settled I would be, how much more successful I’d have been at certain things, if I’d had this knowledge earlier.

My perspective, and this goes especially to parents: if you suspect you or your child may be experiencing specific struggles involving learning, attention, development or socialization. . . do something. Diagnosis of a learning disability, ADHD or a developmental problem is NOT a bad thing. It doesn’t change who you are, it doesn’t change who your child is. It just helps in acquiring the right resources to maximize success, not only academically, but in creating friendships, cultivating creativity, and reducing stress or anxiety.

It doesn’t define me–it helps explain me.

advocacy / health + fitness / health advocacy / life

disclosure update + new my identity doctor post

August 1, 2013August 1, 2013 • by kerri

A little over a month ago, I entered into a blogging agreement with Jon, the owner at My Identity Doctor. While I updated the official disclosure page at that time, I held off on the official announcement until I got going blogging.

The deal: Jon offered me a position blogging 6-8 times per month. He’s paying me and has offered product discounts.

What this means: For this site? It means from time to time I’ll probably let Kerri on the Prairies readers know of new posts I’ve written for My Identity Doctor if i feel they’re relevant to what the core themes of my blog are. Otherwise, it means very little for what I do here, which is chronicling my life. For the My Identity Doctor blog? It also still means that my views on my own–however, science is science–which is what my primary focus will be–and I believe strongly in the necessity of medical ID jewelry, which I’ve communicated before on this blog.

If you have any questions about the agreement, shoot me an e-mail and we can chat–transparency is a big deal to me, and I want to be sure that anybody reading my blog or having any concerns still feels that transparency.

Otherwise, if you’d like a fresh primer on who I am, head on over and check it out!

life

“and i’m stuck in this f**king rut . . .”: another hospital story.

July 22, 2013November 27, 2013 • by kerri

Though music often offers me an unfailing sense of hope, while I ended the last post writing that way, I couldn’t feel it.

That post was my pacification for the time being–days in the making, but in not wanting to write about, yet again, spending another ten hours in the emergency room.

Wednesday night, I grabbed two of many permanent markers out of a new pack on my bedroom floor–not knowing how much I’d need the three words I wrote on my arm the next day. After talking with my primary care doctor’s assistant, based on a totally resting heart rate in the high 90s, we were told to go to “the nearest ER” (we chose the second closest). The meaning of these words on my arm just intensified a thousand times as I focused on them on yet another ride to the hospital.

By the time I got to the ER at St. Boniface Hospital (a deviation from the last three ER visits, while not the closest hospital we got the okay given they have a significant cardiac problem, just in case), at triage my heart rate was above 150 [which is an improvement over 160 and 168 the last two times]. The triage people were also extremely thorough getting my history down. I was charted as having “hemodynamic compromise” (which is the big fancy medical term for the fact that I’d lost a lot of blood and my heart was having to work really hard to actually use what was left inside my body). I got sent back to the waiting chairs for a total of five minutes, and then carted off to EKG in a transport chair (once again trying to convince them I could walk, and them refusing to let me). In reality, the only person who got into the ER ahead of me this time was a person who had been flagged for stroke protocol. So, really, that is never reassuring.

Following the EKG, they transported me to a treatment room, where the nurse tried exactly one time to get an IV started, failed, and called a nurse named Matt in to deal with me. Matt was awesome and managed to simultaneously hold my hand while jabbing me with needles. He got the IV in and did a blood draw. The doctor (aka Dr. Cool Shoes) came in at some point when Matt went off to find something, and when I asked if I could go home, he said no ;). While I was talking to Dr. Cool Shoes, Matt finished stabbing needles into me [at least I was distracted], and they sent a sample off to the lab to check my hemoglobin, then got me hooked up to a bag of fluids in the interim.

Eventually Dr. Cool Shoes returned after what felt like forever [the other hospital is smaller and their lab is way quicker]. He reported that my hemoglobin was down to 64, informed me that I must have been bleeding a lot [thanks for informing me–this is exactly why I did not trust the gynaecologist’s assistant telling me that I was having a “normal” withdrawal bleed from the hormone pills–my hemoglobin on Monday had been 83–fortunately, upping the pills calmed the bleeding down a lot] and that they were moving me to the back for another blood transfusion. Also at this point, Dr. Cool Shoes allowed me to put my t-shirt back on, so I was much happier than I was in the gown (I’ve noticed that once one person frees you from the gown, nobody else asks any questions about your lack of gown).

During these ten hours in the ER, I artfully mastered escaping to the bathroom while the IV was unhooked (which combined with that I was no longer wearing the gown that was three sizes too big for me, made this so much more efficient–the fact that the IV pump was attached to the bed and not to a pole also probably helped with this. [I’m also really low maintenance, considering I got unhooked after the first unit of blood, and the nurse told me “Just stop by the nurses station on your way to the bathroom and I’ll flush your IV”. Except after that they proceeded to make me wait a freaking hour for my next unit of blood. I get it, they were low on staff and had to put a PICC into a guy with a spinal cord injury who came in with a UTI, but I mean . . . an hour?)

At this point, I watched the Dear Jack documentary, because that’s all I do in the ER of course (well that and post pictures on Facebook).

They actually dumped the two units of blood into me each over an hour, so the transfusion part didn’t take as long as it has previously (they did my last transfusion really quickly, too). Had I not waited for an hour between and over an hour for my labs at the end, I would have been out of there in way less than the ten hours I spent there.

My earphones barely ever leave my ears–spent a lot of time listening to I Swear This Place is Haunted by A Skylit Drive this time.

This is after unit 1, on my long wait. Just with one unit of blood on board and the fluids, you can see that my lips are pinker than in picture 1.

Fun fact: KVO on an IV means that the bulk of the stuff is in, but it sends you teeny doses of whatever is still in there, like saline, just to keep the vein open–stands for Keep Vein Open.

When the second unit was done, my heart rate was down to 120. Unlike the other hospital, apparently these people didn’t seem too concerned about this because they let me go home anyways–they gave me the results of the blood work (hemoglobin back to 86) and told me the doctor said I could leave without checking again (I didn’t realize this until I was in the car on the way home, but whatever, I wanted to be out of there.

The last two transfusions have been flawless. Third time’s the charm–I woke up the next morning feeling nauseous and with a headache, took an Advil, and went back to sleep. Then I woke up again feeling more nauseous, and puked. The nausea lasted a few hours, but I didn’t end up throwing up again which was good. Concerned that my heart rate went up again and I might be having some sort of transfusion reaction, my mom and I called the nurses at HealthLinks. Gail was awesome, and basically they triaged me over the phone. With a couple holds for Gail to talk to her supervisors about what to advise me to do, she said I could stay home but if anything changed I needed to call them back and they’d re-assess me over the phone. My heart rate was only a little high, so I likely would have had a long wait if I had to return to the ER anyways according to Gail. By early afternoon, I’d managed to eat some pizza [totally curative!] and by the evening I was feeling a lot better.

Saturday was a really hard day for other reasons. We went out to the cabin, which I thought would distract me and be a good thing. Instead, I think I finally ended up feeling all of the things I’ve just been surfing past in the last five months. I spent five hours having some sort of breakdown and crying for reasons I couldn’t even figure out. I can’t even say I felt any better afterwards, but I totally could not calm myself down. (My buddy Steve, who seriously just knows exactly how to help me, was telekinetically sending me Ativan and hugs. Which made me laugh, but I think nonexistent Ativan worked ;)).

It was a really shitty afternoon. In the midst of it, I tweeted “I’ve been trying to be okay for five months, and all the effing not okay caught up with me.”

And all of this, especially the words from my friend C, meant so much:

I’m emotional and sure as hell irrational . . .

emotional breakdown, brian strean

Yesterday was a good day. I shared my doctors appointment game plan for today with Steve, and had a pretty chill–but normal–day. My heart rate is still fluctuating, which is driving me bonkers [who the hell wants to go from 80 beats a minute–which is a bit higher than my Scientific Principles of Fitness and Conditioning lab normal–to like, 140, and then back to 100, and then surely back down to like 85 just to make me crazy].

Today was d-day. I had every intention to rip my doctor to pieces. And then didn’t. My doctor was SUPER apologetic and I didn’t even have to give her shit like I intended [#1 on my list read: Why the fuck was I not contacted about my ultrasound results? How is this acceptable?]. I left “fuck” out. She just apologized multiple times and said “You’re right, it’s not acceptable, I’m sorry.” And she sounded like she felt really bad, considering the answer to “How are you?” was “I’d be a lot better if I hadn’t ended up in the ER again on Thursday.” Because after three really good weeks and another half of a decent week, it’s really hard to accept not okay again.

Turns out, as we predicted MONTHS ago, I have a small fibroid or a polyp having a party in my uterus. Hello, not okay, the only thing that is allowed to grow in there is maybe a baby like YEARS down the road. So, because things are controlled on the hormone pills, we’re sticking with this dose for the time being, and I have to get in touch with my gyn doctor about scheduling surgery to get that thing out of me [the growing thing, not the whole organ, of course]. And then hopefully that stops this whole bit where my uterus tries to kill me three months in a row.

Otherwise, we briefly discussed the lasting post-transfusion weirdness going on in my body, i.e. how my heart rate keeps fluctuating for no reason. I’m really not too far out from this transfusion, and considering I’ve had three of those in as many months, it’s not surprising that eventually it would be a harder recovery. For example, Steve told me on Friday when I wasn’t feeling well that GI issues aren’t uncommon post transfusion–ANTIBODIES! Also he pointed out that I’ve at this point had my body’s whole blood volume replaced by donor blood. Can you say holy shit? Also THANKFUL.

So, there’s a road ahead of me. But hopefully it leads to resolution and better health. Much better.

Once again, so many thank yous. To my blood donors–to all blood donors. To the staff at St. Boniface Hospital, including Dr. Cool Shoes (whose name I unfortunately did not note); to Matt, Student Nurse Danielle, and the other nurses who took care of me. To my parents for dealing with me wrecking their holidays, and the rest of my family for dealing with all my shit. To Steve who dealt with my 20 e-mails from a country away [including “should I steal this stethoscope?” “It’s cheap, not worth it.”] and totally just knowing the right things to say; to everybody who put up with my ridiculous texts. To my coworkers for once again having to deal with me screwing up the schedule. To every single person who has taken the time to send some love via Facebook in one way or another. And . . . to everybody who has been a part of this journey. My brain doesn’t work to note every single person who has made an impact, but if you’ve been around . . . you have.

Kerri on the Prairies

Seeing life differently.

Year: 2013

12 of 12 – august ’13!

starting concerta

diagnosis: it’s not a label, it’s a bridge

disclosure update + new my identity doctor post

“and i’m stuck in this f**king rut . . .”: another hospital story.

Share.

Share.

Share.

Share.

Share.