The surgery was a week ago today and I found out that there’s nothing like a life threatening emergency to pass the time.
Recovery had been going well, despite some general discomfort on Saturday after discontinuing my pain meds. Then, on Saturday night, my heartburn hit. I believe I mentioned that already though. The heartburn kept coming and going into Sunday, which was really rough. I spent most of the day pacing the house. Then, Sunday afternoon I got up off the couch with a terrible feeling on one side of my back. It felt really tight, like I had pulled something or needed a serious adjustment from the chiropractor. I remember wondering to myself whether or not I could actually get an adjustment after surgery.
That night, I tried to go to bed and couldn’t lie down without extreme pain. My entire back radiated with pain when I breathed in, or laid back too far. So, I went downstairs, planted myself in a chair and tried to go to sleep. Around 11pm, the heartburn started coming back, which made it hard to sleep or even sit down. I paced the house and complained on Facebook. Then the back pain started getting worse. At this point, I started thinking about how I was going to sleep at all and whether or not I should be going to urgent care. I posted that to Facebook too. Then my friend Tara told me to call her. She asked me questions about the pain and told me that she would come get me if I needed to go in, rather than drive myself. We both agreed that I should call the surgeon, and I hung up to do so. My surgeon happened to be on call that night and I told him about the pain. He thought it was likely a musculoskeletor problem, and this far out, unlikely anything surgery related. He did, however, think it was a good idea to go to urgent care, just to cover my bases and get checked out.
I called Tara back just before 1am, and she headed my way. I woke John up (he had been sleeping in the boys room after Magnus fell off the bed), and he helped me get ready to go. He was concerned, but I told him to get some sleep.
We got to urgent care and got in almost right away. At this point, I was thinking that we might get some answers on my heartburn, and that I had probably just pulled a muscle in my back and would get some relaxers. Once I got into the room, however, the nurse started asking a lot of questions about my gallbladder. I’ve never known of any gall bladder issues in my family, nor was I familiar. They took urine and blood. The doctor also recommended checking for blood clots and pancreatitis. My labs came back mostly normal. One came back concerning low sodium, and another hadn’t come back yet. That was the test for blood clots. In the meantime they sent me to have a chest X-ray to see if they could see anything.
The chest X-ray was inconclusive. At this point, the pain was getting worse and all I could do was pace my room. The doctor came back and said that the last test had shown that there was a possibility of a clot and that I would have to go to the er. Lucky for me, Tara was still there waiting for me and she transported me to the closest ER. By this time, it was 4am,so I told her to go home and rest. The ER would likely take a few hours so I could have John pick me up after dropping the kids off. I felt bad making her stay up all night.
Walking into the ER, I knew everything was getting worse. I could barely breathe in without major pain. The triage nurse got an IV in me right away and they took me back. The time in the ER is a little blurry, mostly, I remember waiting. Then crying because the pain had gotten so excruciating that I didn’t want to breathe anymore. Every breath was a challenge. I was breathing shallow, and if I took a sudden breath of made any sudden movements, the pain would make me want to pass out. Finally, the ER doc gave me some painkillers. At this point I was sobbing with the pain and so grateful for some sort of relief. It started kicking in within about 10-15 minutes. Then it was time for a CT scan.
I was still in pain when they wheeled me back, but it was starting to subside. They laid me down, flushed my line, and started the process. Then I felt something burning my arm. Then it got painful and felt like my arm was blowing up. Lucky for me I said something out loud and the lady running the scan came over. Turns out my vein collapsed and the contrast went into my muscle around the IV site. They stopped the fluid, put an IV in my other arm and restarted the CT. What an odd feeling the contrast gives you. When she said that I’d feel like I was peeing myself and to be assured that I was not, I had no clue what to expect. Then the feeling started and I couldn’t help but think that the warning was spot on.
Back in the ER with a now very swollen arm (thanks vein!), I was in less pain and the doctor came in to tell me that I did, indeed, have a clot in my lung. I either didn’t hear correctly, or was too doped to understand, but I had two clots, one on each lung, as well as pulmonary infarction suspected on the right side. What does that mean? Well, it means some of the tissue in my right lung died because it was deprived of the oxygen that my clot was blocking. Fun.
This blog is now ridiculously long, so I’ll write more tomorrow and leave you hanging on how Monday and Tuesday went. Holy crap…it’s Tuesday!? Damn narcotics messing with my sense of time!
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