My Great Grandfather swore off hospitals saying they were merely places to go when you were ready to die. I think he might have had a point. I dislike Doctors and if you get nothing else from this reply, just keep that in mind. I am also frugal and will do almost anything to eliminate a co-pay.
Well during this logging accident they kept me there for 4 days, but in that time they found other things wrong with me. The biggest was that my pituitary gland is non-functioning. This made a lot of sense as over the last few years I have been really sluggish and not getting much done. In the old days, I could slog out 60 cord of
wood or more per week, but now I am lucky if I get 40 cord, and often less.
Now the reason my pituitary glad is destroyed is a story unto its own. As I said, I dislike Dr's and when I was working at the shipyard I was welding up a rudder and dropped slag into my sleeve that burned my elbow. Well time went on and it got infected...really infected. Not wanting to pay a co-pay or tell the shipyard I got burned, I figured I would self-medicate. It is a hallmark of approach to life and eliminating Dr co-pays. Well as a sheep farmer I have plenty of antibiotics for sheep kicking around and a sheep just so happens to be the same weight as humans...180 pounds, meaning 7 cc's for a sheep is 7 cc's for a human. So I sterilize the syringe as I do not want to do anything unsafe, then shoot myself up sub-courteously with Pen-G confident that it would kill the infection.
Contrary to what you might think, it did not, in fact after three visits to the emergency room later I contract a staph infection/mersa and have to go on the highest antibiotic there is, 2 hours of injection, twice a day for 2 weeks. But because of the staph/mersa it killed my pituitary gland function...
So a few years go by and then I get hit by a spring pole
cutting wood and while at the hospital they did every test imaginable and came to the conclusion that I need some pills for lack of pituitary function. I was bummed because these are take-for-the-rest-of-my-life kind of pills, but honestly I was so lethargic, so beat, so exhausted that I had to do something. I have a farm, 4 daughters and a wife that count on me...
So the Dr says I will probably have to increase my dose because 50 grams is not going to be enough, but that she likes to start low. I am thinking about the loads of wood I need to get out so I figure if 50 grams is good, (1 pill) then 100 grams is going to be even better. Recovery here I come...
It nearly killed me...
Wednesday I was so sick that I could not get anything done. I was extremely thirsty, extremely tired, could not catch my breath, would cut a tree and have to stop and just sit on a log waiting for my body to recover, aches, pains, headache...it kind of felt like a heart attack only I had just been tested at the hospital so I knew it wasn't.
So I go to my
local hospital that night, but they could care less. I sit in the emergency room for a few hours and am not even seen...so I tell them just what I thought...being in control mind you, but telling them precisely what northbound orifice the southbound facing hospital can place themselves in before I walk out, vowing to never return to that hospital again. Not to mention forever swearing off all Drs and Nurses.
Then on Thursday I am even worse. I got three more twitches and I can get my load out, and it is all I can do to even move. I survive the day, but it was a brutal night, so Katie takes matter into her own hands and calls the Dr's Office. They are really concerned because I am showing signs of going the opposite way and so I get some blood work done and they call me back immediately. I am a full percentage point higher than I should have been which was why I was having such dire symptoms, I was nearing the lethal range. So told me to stick with 50 grams of pills and hopefully that will be the right amount.
We'll see!