Tired of These Kinds of Suprises
 | Current mood:  sick Category: Life There's some pretty personal stuff in here, nothing gross, but personal, so if you don't want to know medical stuff about me then you probably shouldn't read on. Last Wednesday night I got sick. It was bad. It started around 6:30. I was at my brother's office doing some year-end accounting stuff and I went in to use the loo - normal stuff - and all of a sudden I was throwing up. It was horrible. It was seriously violent...and out of the blue. I kind of slumped onto the floor and yelled for my niece or nephew to go get their mom. My sister-in-law came downstairs and sat with me for a minute. I took a couple of antacids and went back to work but I was miserable. I've had stomach problems since I was 19 or so, after going on one of those stupid liquid diets, but this was different. For about the past year it had been more than just getting sick every once in a while, there had been pain. This was the worst it had ever been. I went home and stopped by Walgreen's to get something to flush whatever this was out of my system. I thought maybe I had food poisoning. I got home, took the medicine and within a few minutes I was throwing up again. This time it was even worse because the medicine I had taken burned my throat on the way up. My head was hurting, my sides were hurting, and I felt like someone was stabbing me right below my sternum. I sat down in my recliner at around 10:30, determined to sleep it off, but at 2:30 Thursday morning I thought I was dying. I was so scared because it was literally a week earlier that James had died. I called my parents and told them I was heading to the hospital. My parents had been at my brother's house when I got sick the first time so they knew something wasn't right. My mom told me to stay put and my dad would come pick me up and take me to the emergency room. The ride to the hospital was painful. I wasn't able to sit down so I stretched out on the back seat of my dad's Suburban. Every bump made me feel like something was going to explode inside me. I've never felt that horrible. My dad dropped me off at the door and went to park. I walked in, bent over at the waist, and the receptionist asked me if the police were coming. I told her I didn't know. She asked me if I had seen them. I told her no and started to cry because I was in pain and confused. The receptionist then looked at me kind of funny and asked me if I had been in a car wreck. I said, "No, I think I have food poisoning, why?" She said, "Honey, you look like you've been beaten up." After she checked me in I went to the bathroom and sure enough I did look like I'd been beaten up. My face was bruised purple and red and swollen from the throwing up. I had to wait about 20 minutes before I was taken into a room. I changed into the robe they gave me, I got to keep my pajama pants on, that was cool, and laid down on the hospital bed. In a few minutes they were looking for a urine sample and after that they hooked me up to an IV. I've never had one of those before. It was a little intimidating, but the nurse was nice and pretty gentle. At this point no one knew yet what was happening. Apparently there was blood in my urine sample so another nurse came in and took some blood from me. He was pretty funny, he talked about South Park and The Crocodile Hunter, but he was a little rough and I ended up getting a little more nauseous when he stuck the needle in to draw blood. I thought of Casey... lol... you had darn well better do a nicer job when you start drawing blood. So, urine and blood labs come back and my liver numbers are up. Off to ultrasound. The lady who did the ultrasound was nice but she had to beat me up pretty good to get a good look at my organs. The deep tissue probe, the one for people who are a little more "fluffy" as she called it, wasn't around, so they used the regular one on me and just pushed harder. Neat. Gall bladder disease. That's my diagnosis. I've probably had it for about a year, since I started having pains in my side back in January 2006. I thought it was my kidneys, that I wasn't getting enough water. Nope. That wasn't it. I have gallstones. Prognosis? I'll live, but something will probably have to be removed: the stones, the gall bladder itself, or animal fats and dairy products from my diet. Mind you even if I remove the animal fats and dairy products from my diet, I could still have problems when the gallstones decide to try and leave my body. The reason I got sick was because one of them tried to leave, and it wasn't successful. I'm thankful it didn't get stuck... at least I don't think it got stuck. I'm bruised, I'm nauseous and I'm still in pain, but I don't know what's going to happen yet because the surgeon hasn't called me back. On a more positive note, I'm alive. I'm thankful for that. I really am. I've got a dependable family, loving friends, one understanding employer and one rude one. (That's a story in and of itself.) I've got a lot to be thankful for. I'm just tired of these kinds of surprises. God is good, even when the world is crap. Steph |
Comments
Post a Comment