On the day I had cooking class, from my last post, I went down to NW to get a pedicure and wait for Randy and Trey to meet up with me. Trey had theater class, but before he went he stopped by to see me at the nail place. He chose this beautiful bright green polish and really wanted me to wear it. Anything to make my boy happy, and he was delighted!
Towards the end of April, I went home early from school one Tuesday with what I thought was the stomach flu. To make a long story short, I ended up suffering for two weeks with pretty bad cramps and intestinal issues. At first they thought it was a UTI (whatever) and put me on antibiotics. I think the antibiotics kept the real problem at bay, but two weeks after I first got sick I had a CT scan and ended up in the ER.
One moment that I remember rather clearly is being in a meeting with a team of people meeting about a student (this was on the Friday before I went to the ER so five days earlier) and looked at my principal, holding my stomach with tears in my eyes, and said to her, "Something is really wrong with me. I hope it's not cancer." (Spoiler alert: It's not.)
On the day of the CT scan, May 3rd, I found out that I had a huge abscess in my abdomen. They thought it was from a perforated bowel and diverticulitis, even though I'd never had diverticulitis before. I was on my way to my doctor's office when he called me to say he had spoken to the radiologist and, while he always enjoyed seeing me, he wanted me to go straight to the hospital. I was overwhelmed and confused and said, "You mean like tomorrow?" and he said, "No, I mean NOW." Randy veered left on 405 north instead of right and we made a loop around the city and headed home. I called Julie, made plans for Trey, and went home to pack a bag.
Another moment I remember rather clearly is standing up in the room in the ER at midnight (after waiting for seven hours to be seen) and the surgeon came in with her little team of chicks (at OHSU every doctor seems to be followed by a gaggle of geese - I know I'm mixing my birds here) and told me my options. One of them was to have part of my colon removed. WHAT???? Then she said I may need to take off the rest of the year from work. WHAT????? Again, overwhelmed and confused, I remember texting a few people saying "This may be a bigger deal than I think."
Wednesday morning they were able to drain the abscess (I won't go into details about how THAT happened, but it was NOT pleasant) and my WBC count was normal by later that day. It was amazing. I have not had any cramping since then. A miracle.
We tried to keep things as normal for Trey as we could. Randy stayed home with him both nights and took him to school. He came up to visit me on Wednesday (pictured above) and when he came to see me on Thursday, I was able to go home with him. He handled it really well, and Randy and I were really impressed.
Trey left his bunny to take care of me.
It actually came in useful because it could prop my arm in the correct way so the damn alarms wouldn't go off every 10 minutes.
I was able to go home on Thursday evening, and, of course, it was nice to be in my own bed and at home. I got some beautiful flowers and gifts from people, and was reminded how lucky I am to have so many wonderful people in my life. I think when I got back to my room on Wednesday morning after the procedure I had over 20 texts in just the short time I had been away from my phone.
Kris and John sent me a box of giant cookies.
They know me well.
On Friday night I had to go back to the ER because we thought my drain had been dislodged. Julie took Trey again (don't know how we would have made it through this without Julie!) and I spent another 7 hours in the ER at OHSU. Hands-down one of the most infuriating parts of this experience was the ER. On that Friday night I just lied on the stretcher in the hallway of the ER (since they had no rooms and I was so uncomfortable sitting) and had tears streaming down my face because I thought I was going to have to have the drain reattached (I'll spare you details, again, but this was a very upsetting prospect). Luckily, after another CT scan, they realized that everything was as it should be, and I was able to go home.
Trey and the boys making forts while Mama was at the hospital.
Facetiming with Trey and Julie before he went to bed that night.
I also learned through this process that I am allergic to penicillin. I found this out by my body becoming entirely covered in hives due to one of the antibiotics I had to take. Awesome.
Since the time I was in the hospital in May, I have had a colonoscopy and another CT scan. The doctors weren't convinced I have diverticulitis since that's not how it presented itself on the first scan and the ultrasound. What I just found out LAST WEEK was that this whole escapade was caused by a burst appendix. As my doctor says, hindsight is 20/20, but I am a little frustrated that I went through two weeks of pain and suffering. Sarah Long reminded me that back in April, on the second day I was sick, I sent this text saying I had the symptoms of appendicitis. My doctor was out of town, but his colleague told me to take pepto or tums (didn't work) and then diagnosed me with a UTI (and then told me I didn't have one because it was a contaminated sample). I'm a little upset but there's nothing I can change now. The good news is a) I didn't die of septic shock b) I no longer have to worry about getting appendicitis and c) I do not have a chronic bowel disease. As I read over my texts with Sarah and Sarah when I was looking for that April text above, I got a bit teary eyed because of how much pain I was in during that time. I'm grateful, of course, that everything worked out, but it is definitely a dark spot on my spring of 2016.
No comments:
Post a Comment