My Situation

I am pretty stubborn and independent. Not functioning and having everyone do everything for me is beyond frustrating. I'm not really sure what to do with myself. I've had my mom in twice from Charlotte and Brian's mom came in for a week to help but other than that I'm on my own. Brian has been AMAZING and done SOO much for me but that causes a lot of stress on a relationship when one person is doing everything for the other and the giver isn't getting anything back. The tension it causes is hard on me and I know him too but then I keep doing things I know I shouldn't do because I'm trying to take some stress off him but then I crash and round and round it goes. I know there are millions of people that have it worse than me and I wonder how they handle it when I can't even handle this much. Then there is the fact that I'm wearing a heart monitor and it feels like I'm getting stuff thrown at me one thing after the other...what am I going to do with the next thing? My mom says I should just be thankful I'm alive. The Dr told me if I'd waited even a few hours longer to go to the ER I wouldn't have made it. I am thankful to be alive...so thankful I'd like to do my own laundry thank you very much. Really what I want to do is go outside and run off my frustration, uh, oh yeah, I can't. So instead my frustration manifests in tension headaches, upset stomachs, stress eating and arguments with Brian. But then it all feels like my fault and how the heck did I choose a pulmonary embolism, internal bleeding and essentially bedrest? It makes me increasingly angry how this is affecting my relationship. I know this sounds selfish but I've got enough to deal with. I want to give up on everything really but then at the same time I know that as soon as I give up I'll regret it. It just takes a lot of energy to keep up with at the moment. A lot more than I have actually.

I'm on a medication called Coumadin. I was on Heparin and Coumadin but the Heparin caused internal bleeding. So every three or four days I have to get my INR done. INR is a blood test that checks the level of Coumadin in my blood. I need to make sure that my blood is thin enough that it can't clot in my veins. A normal INR is around 1.0, someone who has had a clot would want their INR higher than that. My goal INR is 2.5 but for the last few weeks it has ranged from 1.6 (WAY too low) and 4.8 (WAAAAY too high). So I have to get my INR checked today and I'm a teeny bit concerned about how much it's jumping around. Too high and I get a clot, too low and I bleed internally, not immediately but if it keeps waffling like this. Generally your Vitamin K intake can control your INR but apparently with me that is not the case. In the meantime I'm going to have to take a medical leave from school because I can't function properly. FRUSTRATING but I'm also very thankful I'm not worse-off. Oh well, I digress.

So these issues Brian and I are having, I'm not sure how to handle them. I think we might have decided to take a break for the next month. He's going to be out of town on business for two weeks and then a friend of his is coming in town and then he's going to see a friend out of town so I wasn't really going to see him a lot anyway. We live about 45 minutes apart, I was going to go out of my way to go see him, taking the commuter train, the metro etc, so I guess it saves some energy for me anyway. I still don't like it just for the record but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.

Well I'm off to wait for the Dr to call with my INR, let's see what I have to play with this time.