Just thought I would start my blog with some good words for my new friends here at BL

Well first I figured I would start out with a few words about myself.

Im a 37 year old male, who is a recovering alcoholic. 2 years ago, my disease beat me to the ground when I was unknowingly sick with a severe kidney infection, and being chronically drunk I had no clue how sick I was until my kidneys shut down on my from lack of any medical treatment for the infection. This lead me to continue nievely still drinking to the point where my liver shut down and I was in full renal shut down. A good friend of mine noticed somethings were not right with me and drove 1 hour to my house scooped me up and took me to my local ER. I was completely jaundice, very lethargic and had sever hepatic encephalopathy. I was immediately admitted into the hospital and spent the next 2 months or so recovering in ICU. For those that know anything about a persons condition who is a few minutes short of being in a hepatic coma then you will understand that having an ammonia level of 187 is about 1 step short of death.

I have spent the last 2 years still recovering from what alcoholism has done to me mentally and physically. I now suffer physically from End Stage Liver disease, cirrhosis, and hepaticocellular disease (extremely enlarged liver and spleen) but I do not have viral hepatitis which is what usually causes the enlargement. I am still undergoing multiple tests to understand what is causing this swelling which does not usually coincide with cirrhosis, which cirrhosis by itself is not a painful disease, but I assure you I am in severe visceral pain from my liver, the pain is being caused by the hepaticocellular disease and my GI doctor is having me go for a full work up for the possibility of a liver transplant.

Due to the severe pain I am being treated by a pain management doctor, this due to all the pain medications I have been on and currently on have lead me to very many questions to which from doing many google searches have continually landed me here at bluelight.ru.

This site has been a godsend to me and a wealth of knowledge for practically every question I have ever had. For the ones I could not answer from searching, I decided to join the membership here and what a welcome surprise this has been. This is one of the best, most organized and well maintained forums sites I have ever had the pleasure of being a member of. This site has a lot of rules which can be alot for a new member, but these rules are in place for a good reason. Without these rules, this place could not be the site and wealth of knowledge it is today.

I would like it to be known how much I enjoy it here, and how much I respect these rules, the forums, and the excellent job all the mods do here to make this my favorite sites to come to, not to mention how much I learn by coming here.

All that having been said and for those that want to say that I'm trying to suck up to the mods or trying to gain brownie points for saying what I have about everything here, I say go to hell and find someone else to save that rhetoric for because you will be wasting it on the wrong person as I do not really care what you think of me for it. This site has been a great relief for me to have found somewhere that I can speak my mind and discuss topics with people with like problems and issues. A place where I can discuss pain medications with people with out being labeled a dope head, pill popper, or addict because of the meds that I am on. A place where your not judged because your taking pain meds, the list goes on and on.

So thanks Bluelight and keep it up, thanks for being there to listen, even if you don't always reply. Much respect (even though occasionally I have inadvertently broken some of the forums rules).

Peace out!

Respectfully,

Painenduser

 

Hey, no worries about sucking up; the site is pretty awesome. And don't worry about the early rule breaking. It takes most people a couple of closed threads or what not before they figure out how things work. S'all good.

Welcome to Blogs!

 

Hey, no worries about sucking up; the site is pretty awesome. And don't worry about the early rule breaking. It takes most people a couple of closed threads or what not before they figure out how things work. S'all good.

Welcome to Blogs!

Hey thanks Dave! Appreciate the understanding and the welcome! I truly enjoy my time in here, and have made a few friends along the way..

Hey I don't think this is possible, but you know what would be cool is a more involved leveling system, it seems right now the only leveling is 50 posts then the lounge is open and your title changes to bluelighter... I have some cool ideas if your interested in hearing them sometime, Also, you know how there is an actual "green light" next to your name when online? Once you hit the current post lvl of 50 then your considered a "bluelighter"? It would be cool if that light should indicate someone as not only online but as well the color could indicate your "lighter' status.. What do you think?

Pain

 

A lot of forums do that. Quite frankly, I think that it's counter-productive here. Someone could have 7 posts but be incredibly knowledgeable, or have 'over 9000' and be a tool. Join date and postcount don't mean much, really. It's just too easy to grind one's postcount. Up/downvoting would be somewhat more useful, but that's more of a popularity contest than anything else. Nah, I think that the system we have in place is probably fine. One is a noob until 50 posts, then everyone is the same.

The main goal is harm reduction. All the other social stuff, Blogs and The Lounge especially, are frosting. Tasty frosting, but frosting nonetheless.

There has been talk in the past about giving custom titles to people who donate to the site. Personally, I think that's a great idea, but there would have to be a minimum donation, and it should not be mandatory. Oh, and they would need to find a payment processor that will touch us; most won't, unfortunately.

 

A lot of forums do that. Quite frankly, I think that it's counter-productive here. Someone could have 7 posts but be incredibly knowledgeable, or have 'over 9000' and be a tool. Join date and postcount don't mean much, really. It's just too easy to grind one's postcount. Up/downvoting would be somewhat more useful, but that's more of a popularity contest than anything else. Nah, I think that the system we have in place is probably fine. One is a noob until 50 posts, then everyone is the same.

The main goal is harm reduction. All the other social stuff, Blogs and The Lounge especially, are frosting. Tasty frosting, but frosting nonetheless.

There has been talk in the past about giving custom titles to people who donate to the site. Personally, I think that's a great idea, but there would have to be a minimum donation, and it should not be mandatory. Oh, and they would need to find a payment processor that will touch us; most won't, unfortunately.

I do really agree with you 100%, I haven't really been here long enough to be making such recommendations, but I have a habit, just spewing thought in my head. So paypal won't touch you? What about segpay? I actually have a contact over at Segpay, I have sent him a note to see what he says and what he could do to help ya here.

 

i think donations would be a good idea too, I would most definitely find it a worthy cause as well, considering how much I use this site for dosages and trip reports. welcome to bluelight painenduser! i'm fairly new here too.

 

wow, inspiring !

thank you for sharing all that, fighting through such things seems impossible to many, so the more stories there are like this shared the better - they do help shape a future for other fighters and survivors...