Sunday, December 26, 2010
This is not how I wanted to end Christmas.
When we got back home from our friend’s house, I was due for another dose of medication. I was hungry again, so I decided to eat a cup of mushroom soup.
With my mushroom soup, I drank a cup of egg nog, because it was Christmas night. I have been tolerating the Boost drinks, which contain cow’s milk, so I figured I’d be able to drink egg nog.
Shortly after ingesting the egg nog, I began to feel queasy and gassy. Not long thereafter, the massive gastrointestinal and pelvic pain started, along with a stinging fullness under the diaphragm. I sat up straight but that did not help. I walked around, but that did not help. Then I grew very weak and started shivering. My feet had been cold all day long, so I decided I would fetch the corn heating pad and put it on my feet. When I stood up off the couch, I nearly fell down. My husband had fallen asleep sitting up on the couch, so he was oblivious to my current situation. I shuffled hunched over, clutching my stomach, and made my way to the bedroom to get the heating pad. I could not find the heating pad where I thought it would be, and that’s when I broke down in choking sobs. This woke my husband, who sleepily came to my aid and asked if I needed anything. I was hysterically sobbing by this point because of the intestinal, stomach and pelvic pain. My husband was able to hear me say through my sobs that I needed the heating pad warmed up and that I wanted it placed on my feet. However, getting me to do anything other than stand hunched over, clutching the bed while I sobbed, was an issue for several minutes.
At 4am, I woke to use the bathroom. The bleeding had ramped up again and caused some pelvic pain. I got back into bed, but could not get comfortable. I tried to turn over on my right side, but it created instant abdominal swelling and pain, which scared the hell out of me.
I got back out of bed and went to the kitchen and made myself some ginger tea. I brought the tea with some Miralax into the bathroom with me. Turns out I did not need to spoon the Miralax into my tea – within moments of sipping just the ginger tea, I was able to have a bowel movement, which was soft.
However, the defecation caused further intestinal and stomach pain, as well as nausea.
I went to wash my hands after using the toilet, and realised that I might vomit at any second. I leaned over the sink, but that caused intense abdominal pain. I grabbed a large plastic bowl, which I keep in the bathroom and use to soak my pads in each month, and placed that into the sink. I took my temperature and it was 98.8°F.
It was around 4:23am, and I picked up the bowl and stood at my full height and let fly. I spent nearly 20 minutes vomiting. It was thick, and contained everything I had eaten in the past 18 hours. I noticed that the vegetables I’d consumed for dinner some 11 hours earlier had not fully digested. Neither had the chocolate mousse I ate roughly 8 hours earlier. I noticed too that the vegetables and the egg pieces from the Thai seafood casserole I’d consumed over 32 hours ago had also not digested.
At this point, I took note of the smell of the vomit, to make sure it did not smell like feces. I was on the verge of freaking out that my intestines had stopped working properly. However, the vomit smelled like vomit…which of course made me want to vomit some more. Alas.
I emptied the bowl carefully into the toilet and cleaned up everything as best I could. I washed out my mouth, cleaned out my nose, took another sip of tea and another sip of water. I took my temperature again. 99.5°F. Well, it’s likely elevated because of all the strain I’d just gone through. I then went to wake my husband.
He asked if I needed anything. I told him no, I just needed to inform him what was going on because I was scared. I told him I’d be spending the rest of the night on the couch because I could not get settled. I assured him I was not running a fever.
I chatted with friends on facebook, which helped a lot with managing my anxiety. Though it is unfortunate that people were awake in their own hells at that same ungodly hour.
Around 6:30am, the bleeding ramped up again. More clotting. Though I was experiencing pelvic pain, there was no way I was gonna try to take a Tylenol 3 or Advil on a stomach which was still so raw from all the puking.
At 6:45am, I was hungry enough to eat a few spoonfuls of cream of rice cereal with a bit of honey and ginger tea stirred in.
I went back to bed, and woke at 10:30am. I got up for the day because the pelvic pain and bleeding were too much to bear. My husband reheated some rice cereal I’d made at 6:30am, and I drank a cup of warm chicken broth with Miralax stirred in. I ate some jello, and then took my first Tylenol 3 in just over 12 hours.
That was around 12:30pm. At 1pm I took a second Tylenol 3, because the first one didn’t register.
Once the second Tylenol 3 kicked in, it enabled me to be dissociated enough from the pain to walk around. Around 2:30pm, I walked laps around the inside of the house. My pace was improving, but after about five minutes, I was totally wiped out.
At 4:30pm, I was still passing clots, and passed the biggest one yet. It was about half inch by half inch. Ugh.
I spent the day on the couch, though I did make myself get up and walk laps around the outside of the house in the afternoon.
Suddenly I was able to walk at a pace! I was amazed at myself.
However, I still fatigued very easily, and was out of breath quickly as well. Still, I did more laps around the inside of the house in the evening, again marveling at how fast my pace had become – in just 24 hours I went from a shuffle to roughly 2 or 3 MPH.
I experienced a migraine by 8pm that did not go away all night. I watched a lot of TV with my husband, and put a heating pad on my head. I refused to just close my eyes and sleep when I probably needed that more than anything.
Around 12:30am, my husband received some bad news, which set him into a really bad emotional funk. He went for a walk and didn’t come home for an hour. When he did come home, he got smashed drunk, even though I made him promise he wouldn’t. He came to bed at dawn, just as I was floundering in bed, trying to get up to use the bathroom. I told him my left arm had gone numb. It was my first night sleeping on my back, and I hadn’t given my head and neck proper pillow elevation. My husband was too drunk to get the hint that I needed his help. He gave me a half cocked smile and a thumbs up when I told him my arm was numb. I got super pissed off but just got myself out of bed and did my business. I stayed on the couch for the rest of the night, I was so mad.