Marcia's Live Journal - tickets

11:12 am - tickets

well its two weeks away!!  i can't believe its actually that close already!!  agh!! LOL  ok i want to know if you all will gather together and ask your friends, coworkers and family to donate to the cause... i read rebeccas last blog and cried. she had to go back to the emergancy room.  i can't stress how serious this is. if we all ask everybody we know for $15 for ticket sales and buy them ourselves.. we can will call them..and then if we do happen to have a miracle and sell out we can resale the tickets and make more money for rebecca. so PLEASE ask everybody you know.  i know its embarrassing to ask coworkers and friends for money...but how about copying rebeccas last blog into a email and sending it out and asking for donations that way.  here is her latest blog from myspace.

What a week
What a week this has been. Bless Karen, she's been keeping an eye on things for me because I've just been unable.

Part of that feeding tube finally came out. That's good, but it was painful enough for me to lose consciousness. I'll have to have more testing and all of that good stuff. Fluids, antibiotics, pain meds, blood...you name it. To top it all off, I fell and sprained my right ankle! Ugh.

know that a lot of people haven't heard of gastroparesis.  We never heard of it until my diagnosis in October of '04.  I've made the offer that if anyone has a question, I'll do my best to answer it for them, or find someone who can.

I've been chatting and emailing an 80+ year old for some time.  She finally started asking me questions about it.  Basically, she wanted to know why I said it was so awful when it only affects my stomach(gastro).  That to me was a fair question, but one from someone who's obviously never had a lingering illness of any sort - and I'm thankful she hasn't.

Here's what I told her: I started out with the yes, you're right.  Gastro Paresis translates to Paralysis of the stomach.  Here's the problem with that, though.  With GP, you can't eat.  If you're lucky enough to take in some solid foods, it's never more than a couple of bites, and you usually get violently sick(vomit) within 30 minutes of eating.  A key symptom of GP is getting sick first thing in the morning.  I've neraly choked because of it.  That's a scary thought.

Our bodies depend on food for so many things.  When you get to where you can't take in food...well...here's just some of the things that I've found have happened:  Bleeding stomach ulcers - my stomach muscles don't move, so food and such would sit in there way longer than it should have, and caused more damage than in someone who's stomach does work.  These ulcers have resulted in me having blood transfusions, and the risks there are astronomical.

Chronic sickness or getting violently sick(multiple times per day every day) I've found these problems with those:  Dental problems...the acid eats through the enamel on your teeth.  Sore throats, pulled muscles, broken rib, tears in esophagus and stomach lining, weakness, fatigue.

Your vital signs change:  the lower my weight got...the bigger the changes.  The lowest my blood pressure was...60 something over 40 something.  One night, they even had to give me a shot into my heart.  Luckily, I don't remember, Steven told me.  My pulse stays around 120 - 130...even while sitting.  Is this good for my heart?  No.

Decreased food/liquid intake causes lower output of urine...leaving doctors to wonder about organ failure, and running the risk of urinary tract infections.

Then there's the whole emotional state.  You don't know what's going to set it off, you try to be prepared, but...You see people look at you're some kind of hideous monster or they look at you with such an air of pity...You lose interest in doing things you've loved(like with me, my beading and cross stitching have been put on hold)  You get irritable.

Also with GP, a complication can be pancreatitis.  Your stomach gets inflamed/aggravated, and your pancreas is right behind it, and they touch.  Pancreatitis is horrifically painful, and it makes you just as violently sick as GP.  Your pancreas creates insulin, so then you run the risk of that production getting screwed up and all of the complications with that.

Then there's your colon.  Food not going into the stomach, means no food and such going through the intestines.  The slower this process is, the worse of a risk of you becoming "impacted".  That is NOT a good thing, and is very dangerous on so many levels.

So, you see, even though it's my stomach that's paralyed...it directly affects all these things I've mentioned, and I'm sure that's not everything.  That is why it's so important that we try to get attention drawn to this disease.  Research desperately needs to be done.

And I know that some may be aggravated with us constantly reposting about the benefit concert.  Without this gastric pacemaker, I'll die.  I'm 32 years old, and still have a lot I want to get accomplished.  With all of your help, I'm making progress.  Please, help us with that too.  Even if you can't make the concert...if you can spare the price of a ticket, it still gets turned over to the benefit fund.  If you can make it to the concert...go and have fun.  It will RAWK!!  *hugs*  ~B~

so please come together and ask everybody you know to buy a ticket or to give you the money to do it!!!   i know we can make this a sucess..and we have two weeks to do it!

Current Mood: determined