I’m writing from home today. Yay! So, I think we left off with the diagnosis on Monday morning. Shortly after diagnosis, I was admitted to a room on the second floor. They must have been busy because they put me up in the pediatrics unit. Holy moly those rooms are nice. Big, colorful, large tv’s (not that I would have watched anything), and the best thing? The therapy dog stops there first on his rounds. So I got to enjoy a few pets and kisses from Brisket, a very lovable Tibetan Spaniel.
John got there almost right away after I got settled in (didn’t I tell you I thought my ER trip would take just about the same amount of time as it would take for John to get up with the kids and then come get me?!) That morning, although I wanted nothing other than to sleep, I had constant visitors from various aspects of the hospital and testing facilities. First up was an ultrasound of my legs to check for DVT.
I went down to ultrasound, which went fine, although it took a little longer because I had the student ultrasound tech. By the time we were done the pain meds were wearing off, so I was anxious to get back up to my room. They gave me Dilaudid right away when I got back, which took the pain away very quickly. When I got back I learned that 5 more people had stopped by looking for me. Yay. It was going to be a long day.
The next couple of hours consisted of the following:
- Ultrasound of my heart
- EKG of my heart and hooking up to a heart monitor
- The blood draw of DOOM
- Visits from the PA, the Pharmacist, the Doctor, Nurses, Charge Nurses, etc.
- Breakfast (sort of)
- A lot of pain
You might be curious about the blood draw of DOOM. The nurse came in and decided she was going to draw blood from my arm that had gotten all the contrast injected into it. It was swollen. I don’t even know how she did it, but she did. It wasn’t too bad for me, but I remember looking down and she had about 8 tubes of my blood already. How she even found a vein over there, I’ll never know. All of the other nurses steered clear of that arm and took blood from my hand instead.
Finally, near lunch time, I was able to sneak in a wink or two of sleep. It was maybe an hour at most, but it felt really good. I spent most of the afternoon going in and out of sleep, mostly due to the Dilaudid. It was weird because it would make me fall asleep and then I would wake up 5 minutes later thinking I had slept for a far longer period of time. There was talk about transferring me upstairs to the medical/surgical ward (where they are better equipped for heart monitors), then they said they were keeping me there.
Then things changed again, and suddenly I was being transferred upstairs because a room had opened up. I didn’t really care. I was pretty doped up at this time. Still in a lot of pain, though, which would be the case for at least another 12 hours.
I got settled in my new room (which was NOT as swanky as the peds room) and spent most of the afternoon falling asleep every moment I could. The Dilaudid made me so tired I would fall asleep mid-thought/sentence/whatever, and I never knew if I was going to sleep for long, or if it would be 5 minutes later when I woke up.
I wasn’t up for visitors, but I really wanted to see the kids. John brought the kids over after daycare and also brought Noodles & Company for dinner. The kids ate all of their food, but mine tasted like horrible mush and I couldn’t eat it. I hadn’t eaten much at all except for a bit here or there. We kept trying different things, but nothing tasted or sounded good. I guess I know how my Dad felt when he was sick last year. They ate their food and I spent my time falling asleep quite often, which I felt bad about. I was ready for them to go much sooner than I would have liked them to be. We bid each other goodnight and they went home. Then I ordered a cup of broth from room service before they closed down and that was the first thing to taste good all day and would become all I ate for a while.
After they left, the nurses came in and I asked them about making sure we were on a schedule for the oxycontin (or codone?) and Dilaudid. If we fell behind at all, the pain was quite unbearable. It could go from a 3 to a 9 in a 5-minute span of time, and so I wanted to just keep taking the meds as often as I could. So, we wrote out the schedule on the board and always updated when a new dose was given. This kept things mostly under control for the evening and gave me a little more control over it. Mostly. Many times, getting up to go to the bathroom would bring on an episode that was really painful. And if I wasn’t ready for a dose yet, I had to wait it out. The pain would come on with breathing. It felt like with every breath that someone was stabbing a knife into my right lung all the way from my side to my shoulder. It was pretty damn awful.
At the next shift change, I had a little bit of an upset with my new nurses. I went from getting my meds close together to being told that I had to wait at least an hour between the two (I was told later that this was likely due to the fact that the RN was training someone in and being more conservative). I was in pain when I was told this, which ended up causing a pretty bad spike in pain that evening, one of the worst since the ER. Then I was able to have my Dilaudid again and things mostly calmed down. By 2 am, the nurses suggested that we switch to a PCA rather than doing the scheduled doses to see if that helped control it better.
Sometime between my bad spike and getting the PCA something had changed. I woke up and the pain was…different. It was still there, but it was….less sharp. It was odd, I didn’t want to minimize the pain because I was still in a lot of it. But things felt better and like they were going in the right direction. They hooked me up to the PCA early Tuesday morning, and I remember that it took a few doses, but all of a sudden, I slept. Then, because I had slept and not continued with the pain meds, I was in a world of hurt each time I woke up. I kept pressing that damn button. I’d wake up 5 minutes later and press the button (and of course, nothing would come out).
Sidenote: I didn’t really explain what a PCA was. PCA stands for Patient Controlled Analgesia. It only allows a specific dose over a specific period of time. So, I could get a dose every 15 minutes, but no sooner.
Those 15 minute periods around 6 am or so were the longest ever. I had started having more spasms at this time. Any time I burped, or moved too quickly, or accidentally breathed in too far, I would have a spasm of pain that spiked and then quickly dissipated. I was using it constantly, and as I began to wake up, I thought, maybe I should wait until I really need it and not just keep pressing the button. I think the last time I pressed the button was 8 am. Then, the pain started feeling better. It was more dull and achy than sharp. It was manageable. Around 9 or 10 am, my head started to clear and I could think again. It was wonderful. I was still really tired, though.
The doctor came in about 8:30 or so and we had a good chat. He was concerned about my history and asked me a lot of questions. At one point, I mentioned that my Mom had DVT, and he asked if I knew what the cause was. I said no and he was insistent I find out. Like, could I call her now, insistent. So, he left and said he’d come back in about 15 minutes and I called my Mom. She mentioned that they assume she has it because of the medication she takes, as it’s not a known genetic issue (at this time). She also reminded me of a few other family history things that I ought to mention to the doc.
As per usual, it took the doc a while to return, but I gave him what I had, and he explained that he was trying to decide which drug to put me on. There’s Coumadin, which is the oldest, safest, drug on the block. Or, there are newer ones with less history. The risks with them are greater, but I’m also a perfect candidate for them. He wanted to think on it some more and said he’d come back later that day to discuss. I really liked this Doctor and felt that he did a very good job.
Based on the questions everyone was asking, I get the feeling that none of them would have expected me to be susceptible to clotting unless there was an underlying issue. My surgeon had said that I was not considered in a high-risk group, and this doctor said the same. Some of the nurses and the first PA I saw thought it could have been my Mirena, but the doctors and my surgeon refuted that. Blood clots are at higher risk with estrogen based birth control. Mirena has no estrogen and doesn’t carry the same risk. So, although that was initially thought to be a probable cause, it was not. Thank goodness, because it’s been amazing to me and I’d hate to get rid of it.
I never heard back the results of my genetic testing (maybe it’s not done yet), but there will probably be more in the future. It definitely could be that I was too lazy during my week of recovery and that my activity level wasn’t high enough to offset the risk from surgery alone. But even then, the surgery I had wasn’t deep (like abdominal surgery or something), and the doctor felt insignificant enough to question why I was having these clots. Long story short, I’m opting into any further testing they want to do. With my family history of nearly everything, it would probably be a good idea regardless.
I’m going to stop this here as it’s become a rather long blog. I’ll put together part three later today. That should get me through release and then we can start talking about boobies again!
No Comments