Saturday, August 15, 2009

ER visits minus George Clooney suck!

Adam and I have a small DJ business. Not sure if you knew that. We are DJ'ing the wedding of one of Adam's bandmates next month. On Thursday I took Blake to school then came home and decided to work a bit on our music list. We had downloaded some new music and I wanted to add it to our list of songs we have. Also I had noticed the last time I looked at the list that it was a bit out of alphabetical order.

I ended up working on the list for a few hours and right around 2:00 it hit me very hard and very suddenly. I had to go to the bathroom. LIKE. NOW!!! I went to the bathroom and suddenly I had some sharp stomach pains. Weird I thought but maybe it was just because of the sudden bathroom-ness??? I thought if I laid down for a bit it would go away. So I did. I laid on the bed for a couple minutes when I sent a text to my neighbor.

"Suddenly I feel shitty. Bad stomach pains."
"Maybe you're pregnant and don't know it. Abby watched those shows on TV all day Monday."
"Shut up. I hate you."

At this point I thought I was feeling better but when I got up I wasn't. In fact a few seconds later it hurt worse.

"Still feel like crap" I text to my neighbor.
"How far apart are your contractions?"
"I hate you."
"When you go into labor, which hospital do you want to have your baby?"
"OMG. I'm going to take a hot bath. Text me at 3:15 because I have to get Blake from the bus stop."

I take a hot bath and it's not helping. I didn't even stay in there until 3:15. I lay naked in bed for a while. My neighbor texts me:

"Is the pain on your right side?"
"Yes."
"Push on your stomach just above your hip bone. Does it hurt to do that or shake your hips?"

I'm laying on my left side and pushing, not exactly sure where above my hips I should be pushing, but it hurts, but not any worse than when I'm not pushing. I shake my hips. Yep. That hurts.

"It hurts when I shake my hips."

Then I decide to lay on my back and push above my hip. OH. DEAR. GOD. IN. HEAVEN. IT. HURTS. TO. LAY. ON. MY. BACK.

I swing my arm over and grab the side of the bed to try to get myself back onto my side. I start crying from the pain. I realize there's no way I'm going to be able to get Blake from the bus. I'm going to have to call Adam at work.

I call him crying. Tell him I'm in pain and he has to go get Blake and then come home and take me to the hospital. Blake's bus is supposed to be at the stop at 3:42. It was now 3:16.

"Can you make it there in a half hour?"
"I can try. Are you going to be ok? Are you going to call an ambulance?"
"No. You're going to take me after you get Blake."
"OK but if it starts to hurt more you call an ambulance, do you understand?"
"Yes." but I had no intention of calling an ambulance, lol.

So I'm laying in bed, in pain and I'm trying to figure out in my head how long I have to suffer before Adam gets there. My neighbor texts me and says she'll get Emily from the bus stop and have her come to her house. She'll take Blake when he gets home. She rocks despite the pregnancy comments.

Adam calls around 3:30 and says he's almost at Blake's stop. I figure I only have about 20 minutes before he gets there and I can be on my way. I figure I better get dressed. I decide a t-shirt and pants is all I'm going to wear. No bra. No underwear. I'm not really sure why I decided no underwear. I guess I just didn't want to mess with it.

Adam calls at 3:50. Still no bus. Great. It's happening again. The fucktards are late just like yesterday. The day before, Blake's bus didn't show up until 4:15, a half-hour late. Four o'clock comes. Still no bus.

Ugh.

At 4:15 Adam calls again. No bus but one of the parents had called the bus barn and found out they had forgotten a kid at the school (fucktards) and they had to go back. They said they would be there in 10-15 minutes.

I think I'm going to die!

Adam finally gets home a little after 4:30 and we head to the ER. I give a urine sample and I get a gown and an IV. I give my story a couple times to a nurse then finally a doctor and a CT scan is ordered. It's been a couple hours and I send Adam home to eat something and take a shower. I drink some contrast dye mixed with fruit punch, which was lovely, and watch Family Guy.

Adam got back just before I went to my CT scan. The scan took all of five minutes. A half hour later a new doctor comes in and says they didn't find anything with the scan but my white blood cell count is up and oh, did you know you're diabetic? No, but isn't that wonderful?

New doctor seems really stumped and says appendicitis or a gall bladder attack doesn't come on as quickly as this did so maybe it's a cyst on an ovary or maybe an ovary is twisted. They order an ultrasound.

Ultrasounds are done and they determine I have two hernias, YAY! New doctor says he's not sure it's something that surgery will want to operate on but we should probably admit me to get my sugar down. Totally not what I wanted to hear.

Adam decides he's going home because it's almost midnight and he has to work the next day. I FINALLY leave the ER and go to a room around 1:30. After vitals, a history and a long lecture about diabetes and exercise and losing weight, my nurse gave me some pain pills and left me alone at 2:50am. She said she would peek in at me at 3:30 and if they weren't doing anything she would give me morphine. But if I was sleeping she was going to leave me alone.

"Ooooh! Morphine!!!" I thought. I'm totally staying awake to get morphine.

She also said she was sending in the patient care tech at 3am to check my blood sugar and then again at 4am. Also at 4am the lab was coming for an obscene amount of blood.

Well, unfortunately I was only able to stay awake for about 2.3 minutes and the next thing I knew it was 4am and a crazy looking woman from the lab was coming in to draw that obscene amount of blood. Thirty minutes and two fresh bruises later she was finished and I dozed off again. Right after that they were back to do more vitals and I just decided to try to stay awake. It was pretty obvious I wasn't going to get much sleep.

The surgeon came in around 9:30 and decided he was going to operate. He said the hernias wouldn't get better without fixing them surgically. I was given a surgery time of 3:00. I called everyone to let them know.

The surgery turned out well. They were able to do it laproscopically so I have five small incisions. I also have a belly button again. I haven't had one in several years. See, when I had my c-section done with Blake, they found two hernias then and repaired them. I had a belly button after that but not for very long before it poked back out again. I always figured maybe I had another hernia but it never hurt so I didn't think much about it.

I was back in my room around 6:15 and not long after that I got to EAT! I hadn't eaten since around 11:30am on Thursday and here it was almost 31 hours later. They served me a small cup of cream of chicken soup and red jell-o. I didn't care that cream of chicken soup should only be used for cooking, not really for eating by itself. It tasted soooo good.

They told me the sooner I could get up and walk around the quicker I would heal and I figured it would get me out of there quicker too so Adam and I went for a little jaunt around the unit. We came back to my room and were both nodding off so I decided to get some sleep and Adam made a home on the couch in my room for the night.

I slept fairly decently and for the most part everyone left me alone. I got up for good around 5am and watched a hella-marathon of The Golden Girls. I was told breakfast would come between 7:30 and 8:00 and I counted the minutes until it got there! After eating I took a shower and of course two of my doctors came while I was in there. One was my diabetic doctor and the other a general practice physician.

The GP physician came back in a while later and she said she would start discharge papers. Whoohoo! Just before lunch one of the surgeons came in to talk to me about my surgery, check my incisions and sign off on my discharge. He gave me instructions and was on his way.

I ate my lunch and my nurses came in to make sure I knew how to check my sugar and give myself insulin. After they were satisfied with all of that I was outta there.

Adam and I stopped at the pharmacy and $222 later we were back at home. The majority of our costs were from my insulin. My diabetes doctor said he doesn't think I'll be on it for long and then I'll go to an oral medication so hopefully we don't have that expense for very long.

Adam and the kids are gone for the night and wont be home until tomorrow morning so I have instructions to veg out on the couch and watch movies. I'm feeling a bit restless so I've been playing around on facebook and here on the old blog. I feel bruised, beaten and sore but I'm sooo glad to be home.

I've got a prescription of vicodin with two refills and it looks like I probably wont be able to work this Wednesday night either. (I was supposed to work last night and tonight). We'll see how the next few days treat me. It seems like with each passing hour my stomach gets a bit harder and a bit more purple, but they tell me it's normal. I definitely feel better than I did Thursday afternoon but I'm still getting around pretty slowly.

1 comment:

Heather said...

Wow!! That's crazy!! Glad to hear they were able to get it fixed and you are now on the road to recovery.

Feel better soon!! :-)

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In no particular order I'm a wife, mother, sister, daughter and general observer of humans.