Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Musings from my hospital bed - part 6 of 5

You're probably thinking, "Part six? of five? You can't have one of those!"


Ah, but what would life be without all it's lovely little surprises? And besides, I recently learned that part five wasn't the end of the story after all. 


Remember my little sodium issue? Turns out it was like a white rabbit, leading Dr. Salt Pounder (bless his tenacious little heart) away from the actual target. Oh sure, I still had it, along with SIADH. And it has continued to baffle the doctors here too.


But long about three weeks after my Hospital Vacation, I started feeling about the same as right before . . . only worse. I managed to snag a Friday morning appointment with my GI who ordered blood work and a CAT scan for Monday. At the time I didn't know that both he and his nurse would be out on vacation that week! There was a prescription for GERD that never got filled (it needed communication between the Dr. and my health insurance). To top it off, I had insomnia for the first time in my life. 


Three to four fitful hours a night is all I got. Couldn't breathe for the angry stomach now digging its widening shoulder blades into my chest. Couldn't eat much of anything either. Needless to say, not my best week!


And my brain! It would not shut the heck up! Going over worst case scenarios while I waited to hear back. You know how everything is larger than life when you wake in the middle of the night to mull it over detail by minute detail? Without sleep, the entire week had become the middle of the night.

A bevy of bouncing emotions replaced all of that when my G.I. doctor called Thursday around noon. 


"Gall stones," he said. "One plugging the duct to your liver. Liver enzymes elevated and infection in your gall bladder." 


"Cool!" I thought. Something to go on. 


Back to emergency I headed where the lovely Nurse Jennifer gave me the first of a few doses of morphine. I'd never had the stuff before but decided that I LOVE Jennifer!


More stuff happened . . . tests, more tests. And more. One of them was done at 10:30 that night. Something called a MRCP sort of like an MRI of all the innards at once. I was 45 minutes in the tube and by this time, so tired I kept having lucid hallucinations, wondering why other people were in the tube with me or why, at one point, I was on the outside looking in at myself! So weird. I couldn't fall asleep because the nice voice kept telling me when to breathe and when not to. So I kept fading in and out, making stuff up in my mind. 


That done, I went back to my room for another night of no sleep. The next day I had my infected gall bladder removed followed by a scope to rid my liver duct of it's little blockage. 

However - and she says this with a frown - remember my little sodium issue? Well, it reared it's ugly head again. I was put on what they call NPO (nothing by mouth) because, apparently, one cure for low sodium is dehydration . . . see, it shrivels everything up (and I DO mean everything) to raisin size, leaving only the salt behind. And, because my GI didn't want me eating either, I had 72 hours of forced NOTHING! 

Now, here I have to take a brief diversion into what my sister and I have had going on since March. She and I decided to lose some weight and we'd help each other out, albeit remotely, by keeping in touch via e-mail. We'd weigh in every week and bounce our progress off one another. Her comment to me? 


"Gee Linda, I knew you were competitive, but this is ridiculous." 


Sunday they finally fed me and my GI was happy with the things he'd found both inside and out. Sunday I also got news that - are you kidding me? this is happening again! - they would not release me until my sodium count was up.  



So the saga continued. I stayed and stayed and gave up more pounds of flesh while they moved me off and on the NPO status. In the meanwhile a new concern cropped up . . . my white count was not coming down in spite of the fact that they had removed the nasty old gall bladder.  Oh, and did I mention my belly button? Probably not... it looked like they blew a hole through it with a cannon. 


More craziness. Followed by more. I learned that there are many, many ways to work through the process of having just lost one's gall bladder. I will NOT be sharing the fine details with you about all that! Suffice to say, I'm pretty happy to have that behind me. 


The best part about being in the hospital this time was GETTING OUT! It was on a Friday . . . a Friday that my wonderful husband had bought us tickets to see KOOZA performed via the Cirque du Soleil. 

Front row seats he had bought months earlier. And me stuck in the hospital! The original plan was to gather up with my son, his girlfriend and a dear couple whom we do this kind of stuff with whenever we do this kind of stuff. Friday morning it looked like I was not going to be released in time though. 


"Start giving away our tickets," I told Ron.


Then Low AND Behold . . . my PCP came in at 10:30am saying that I would be able to get out if one of the other doctors signed off on me (which basically meant any other nasty stuff they had planned could be done as out-patient).


"Stop giving away the tickets!" I texted Ron as soon as the PCP had left. He'd already learned that our dear friends would not be able to join us after all. So it was down to just our two tickets to keep or to give away. 


And then I waited. And waited. And waited for the final doctor to come give me the thumbs up. Meanwhile Ron, Ronnie and his girlfriend Bethany came to see me. There was talk of stealing me away for a while . . . sort of like the ending to THE BIG FISH (sans the river and all the ending drama.) It sounded more like just checking me out for a couple hours then sneaking me back in again!  


But the kids eventually left to get ready for the show and Ron and I stayed. And stayed. And stayed! 


Around 5:00 (show started at 7:00), just when we'd both decided to start giving away the tickets again, in walks the final doctor! With her thumb held high! YAY! 


Next was getting the PCP to send in the discharge papers and the head nurse to unplug my final two drip lines, fill out my prescriptions and finalize my discharge. And she did it! Just in time! I drug my bag of bones body straight from the hospital to the front row seat! In the clothes that I had checked myself in with eight days earlier. 


Life again . . . . beyond the sexy hospital gown. Was it worth the total exhaustion I felt both during and after the show? 


Oh hell yes! 


Is there a possibility of part seven of five? Well, if you're open to life's little surprises then . . . maybe there is. Maybe there is. We'll just have to wait and see. 


Meanwhile, I leave you with this tiny bit of awesomeness!