More Medical Fun
Jun. 20th, 2011 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuIn our last exciting episode (June 3) I had a thoracentesis. The doctors drew fluid off my lung to help my breathing. And it did. For a day or so.
Alas, I got worse still. I spent a week taking antibiotics, and suffering from fevers and sweats, and terrible pain in my belly. I thought the pain was due to constipation and gas from the hydrocodone and codeine I was taking. It would seem to ease slightly over the course of a day, but it always came roaring back. And it was bad, really bad. I had never imagined that constipation and gas could be so agonizing.
Well, one thing led to another, and finally my doctor had me come into the hospital on June 10th. My wife left work to drive me to the hospital. I checked in, settled into a room, and eventually got a CT scan. My doctors consulted the results and then took me down to radiology again*, where they inserted a tube into my lung (through my back) to drain off as much of the fluid as possible. There was plenty of it, and infected to boot.
Over the next few days, I was in miserable shape, so sick and weak that I didn't really give a damn what they did to me despite my normal aversion to needles. Insert an IV? Numerous blood draws? Poke a tube into my torso? Sure, whatever. I spent another night in terrible pain until they gave me morphine, which helped...a little. Finally, they started giving me Dilaudid (a VERY potent narcotic), which gave me relief. I got an IV hit of it every two hours for a while.
They took me down to radiology for another, more complete CT scan, having discovered that I had an abscess in my abdomen. While I was there, they put ANOTHER tube in me, this time in my belly, to drain the abscess. All this time was on nearly constant IV antibiotics, as well as fluids. I was allowed nothing by mouth for about three days because they thought they might have to do surgery. It didn't happen, thankfully, but it was a near thing.
I spent six days in the hospital before being discharged this past Thursday. They removed the chest tube, but left the drain my abdomen, and put in a midline IV in my left upper arm. I came home, where I've been resting. A home care nurse came to see me the next day to change the dressings around my IV and drain, and to show me how to give myself IV antibiotics. I flush the drain twice a day with saline, and give myself a daily injection of another antibiotic, in addition to a number of oral medicines (include antibiotic pills) I'm taking for a week.
In a couple of days I'll see one of my doctors (a surgeon), when--I hope and pray--he'll remove the drain from my side. In four weeks I'll get another CT scan and see a pulmonary doctor to check up on my lung. I'm also going to have to get a colonoscopy (oh boy oh boy!) because they still aren't sure what happened. Apparently I had like ten doctors consulting on my case; I was the medical mystery of the week. They don't think the lung issue (caused by pneumonia) is related to the abdominal issue, but doctors--like cops--don't like coincidences either, so they really aren't sure what happened (as far as I know). Possibly it was a rupture of some kind in my colon (diverticulitis?) or maybe my appendix. A colonoscopy and/or CT scan may reveal the cause, and determine whether surgery is required down the line to fix it and/or make sure it doesn't recur. I hope it isn't necessary, but we'll do what we have to do.
So now I know that consistent or recurring severe belly pain is more serious than I thought at the time. This has been a miserable two months. My lovely wife was down with the nasty virus that causes pneumonia for much of May, and then I got it--and things went from bad to worse. She's still recovering her strength, while working full time AND taking care of me AND keeping food and supplies in the house AND trying to do some of the housework that's accumulated while we were both sick for a month. She's a rock, and I can't say how much I love and admire her.
The physical pain on this whole ordeal was bad enough, but I was completely unprepared for the emotional cost. The first couple of days of my hospital stay I was too weak and sick to feel much of anything, but as I started to improve (marginally at first), I was paradoxically feeling better enough to feel bad.
I felt like the situation was never going to end, that the rest of my life would be spent in this state, with tubes in one side of my body, an IV in the other, and simply getting up to walk to the bathroom was a major feat. I felt like I'd be feeble and dependent forever. I would never be as healthy and active as I'd been before I'd gotten sick so very long ago. I broke into tears a number of times, filled with despair and grief, and afraid that Snippy would leave me because I wasn't just not a help to her, but a burden. One she didn't need in addition to all her other burdens. She, of course, consoled me and reassured me that my fears were groundless.
I didn't sleep well in the hospital. All the jokes about being awakened frequently have a basis in fact. I had IVs started and changed, was awakened for blood draws, or to check my vital signs, to take pills (when I could take things by mouth again) and so forth. I slept when I was too exhausted NOT to sleep, or when a hit of dilaudid made me feel lightheaded and relaxed. But I spent a lot of time dozing, not really sleeping but too punchy to have any attention to pay to things. I had my Nook with me, but I never read anything the whole time I was in the hospital, I just didn't have the mental energy.
I often woke in the night covered in sweat (I had fevers for days, even after they started the IV antibiotics). I remember waking one night covered in sweat, and feeling like I was in a nightmare. I stripped off my sweat-soaked hospital gown and sat there with sweat soaking my hair and cooling on my skin all over, tethered by IV and drain tubes, ready to cry or scream or both, feeling trapped in a dark, empty hospital, afraid that if I called for a nurse nobody would come. I knew on one level that it wasn't true, but I felt that way. It was like being chained down, imprisoned by my own rebellious body, in a nightmarish scenario that would never end.
That was probably the nadir of my time in the hospital. The next day, I was frantic to get out. Not ready, physically, but I'd reached the end of my emotional rope. I wanted nothing as much as I wanted to escape my situation.
I'm home now. I've been home for five days. I still have occasional moments of despair and grief, and fear that I'm a useless burden on my wife, who deserves far better. But they're passing, and I'm getting stronger. I'll be a long while recuperating completely (my wife hasn't entirely recovered from her own bout of pneumonia and she wasn't as sick as I was), but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Most of the time, anyhow.
I'm sleeping on a separate bed from my wife, an inflatable bed we bought when I came home from the hospital. I fear to share our bed with her while I have the drain in my side. An irrational fear, probably, but I feel better for having a bed to myself. Plus, she needs her sleep given that she's working fulltime in addition to all the other chores that have fallen to her, so I hope it lets her sleep better too.
I'm really, really hoping to get this damn drain out of my side this week. And then the IV midline as well, once I'm done with the antibiotic injections. Those will be big days for me. In the mean time, I'm resting a lot, taking naps when I can, and generally doing my best to heal up. I'm also moving around the apartment at times, and even doing a few chores. They need doing and I need the exercise after spending so much time lying in bed, plus the exercise tires me out so I can sleep.
This has been quite an experience. It's not over yet, especially if I end up needing surgery later on. But if I won't be back to normal for a while, I can at least see it from here. Which I couldn't a few days ago (and still can't on increasingly infrequent occasions). I'm sure some of this will find its way into my writing eventually, too. "Write what you know," they say. And I know a hell of a lot more about some things now than I ever did before.
*Apparently, in addition to doing CT and MRI scans, they specialize in putting tubes in you down there.
Alas, I got worse still. I spent a week taking antibiotics, and suffering from fevers and sweats, and terrible pain in my belly. I thought the pain was due to constipation and gas from the hydrocodone and codeine I was taking. It would seem to ease slightly over the course of a day, but it always came roaring back. And it was bad, really bad. I had never imagined that constipation and gas could be so agonizing.
Well, one thing led to another, and finally my doctor had me come into the hospital on June 10th. My wife left work to drive me to the hospital. I checked in, settled into a room, and eventually got a CT scan. My doctors consulted the results and then took me down to radiology again*, where they inserted a tube into my lung (through my back) to drain off as much of the fluid as possible. There was plenty of it, and infected to boot.
Over the next few days, I was in miserable shape, so sick and weak that I didn't really give a damn what they did to me despite my normal aversion to needles. Insert an IV? Numerous blood draws? Poke a tube into my torso? Sure, whatever. I spent another night in terrible pain until they gave me morphine, which helped...a little. Finally, they started giving me Dilaudid (a VERY potent narcotic), which gave me relief. I got an IV hit of it every two hours for a while.
They took me down to radiology for another, more complete CT scan, having discovered that I had an abscess in my abdomen. While I was there, they put ANOTHER tube in me, this time in my belly, to drain the abscess. All this time was on nearly constant IV antibiotics, as well as fluids. I was allowed nothing by mouth for about three days because they thought they might have to do surgery. It didn't happen, thankfully, but it was a near thing.
I spent six days in the hospital before being discharged this past Thursday. They removed the chest tube, but left the drain my abdomen, and put in a midline IV in my left upper arm. I came home, where I've been resting. A home care nurse came to see me the next day to change the dressings around my IV and drain, and to show me how to give myself IV antibiotics. I flush the drain twice a day with saline, and give myself a daily injection of another antibiotic, in addition to a number of oral medicines (include antibiotic pills) I'm taking for a week.
In a couple of days I'll see one of my doctors (a surgeon), when--I hope and pray--he'll remove the drain from my side. In four weeks I'll get another CT scan and see a pulmonary doctor to check up on my lung. I'm also going to have to get a colonoscopy (oh boy oh boy!) because they still aren't sure what happened. Apparently I had like ten doctors consulting on my case; I was the medical mystery of the week. They don't think the lung issue (caused by pneumonia) is related to the abdominal issue, but doctors--like cops--don't like coincidences either, so they really aren't sure what happened (as far as I know). Possibly it was a rupture of some kind in my colon (diverticulitis?) or maybe my appendix. A colonoscopy and/or CT scan may reveal the cause, and determine whether surgery is required down the line to fix it and/or make sure it doesn't recur. I hope it isn't necessary, but we'll do what we have to do.
So now I know that consistent or recurring severe belly pain is more serious than I thought at the time. This has been a miserable two months. My lovely wife was down with the nasty virus that causes pneumonia for much of May, and then I got it--and things went from bad to worse. She's still recovering her strength, while working full time AND taking care of me AND keeping food and supplies in the house AND trying to do some of the housework that's accumulated while we were both sick for a month. She's a rock, and I can't say how much I love and admire her.
The physical pain on this whole ordeal was bad enough, but I was completely unprepared for the emotional cost. The first couple of days of my hospital stay I was too weak and sick to feel much of anything, but as I started to improve (marginally at first), I was paradoxically feeling better enough to feel bad.
I felt like the situation was never going to end, that the rest of my life would be spent in this state, with tubes in one side of my body, an IV in the other, and simply getting up to walk to the bathroom was a major feat. I felt like I'd be feeble and dependent forever. I would never be as healthy and active as I'd been before I'd gotten sick so very long ago. I broke into tears a number of times, filled with despair and grief, and afraid that Snippy would leave me because I wasn't just not a help to her, but a burden. One she didn't need in addition to all her other burdens. She, of course, consoled me and reassured me that my fears were groundless.
I didn't sleep well in the hospital. All the jokes about being awakened frequently have a basis in fact. I had IVs started and changed, was awakened for blood draws, or to check my vital signs, to take pills (when I could take things by mouth again) and so forth. I slept when I was too exhausted NOT to sleep, or when a hit of dilaudid made me feel lightheaded and relaxed. But I spent a lot of time dozing, not really sleeping but too punchy to have any attention to pay to things. I had my Nook with me, but I never read anything the whole time I was in the hospital, I just didn't have the mental energy.
I often woke in the night covered in sweat (I had fevers for days, even after they started the IV antibiotics). I remember waking one night covered in sweat, and feeling like I was in a nightmare. I stripped off my sweat-soaked hospital gown and sat there with sweat soaking my hair and cooling on my skin all over, tethered by IV and drain tubes, ready to cry or scream or both, feeling trapped in a dark, empty hospital, afraid that if I called for a nurse nobody would come. I knew on one level that it wasn't true, but I felt that way. It was like being chained down, imprisoned by my own rebellious body, in a nightmarish scenario that would never end.
That was probably the nadir of my time in the hospital. The next day, I was frantic to get out. Not ready, physically, but I'd reached the end of my emotional rope. I wanted nothing as much as I wanted to escape my situation.
I'm home now. I've been home for five days. I still have occasional moments of despair and grief, and fear that I'm a useless burden on my wife, who deserves far better. But they're passing, and I'm getting stronger. I'll be a long while recuperating completely (my wife hasn't entirely recovered from her own bout of pneumonia and she wasn't as sick as I was), but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Most of the time, anyhow.
I'm sleeping on a separate bed from my wife, an inflatable bed we bought when I came home from the hospital. I fear to share our bed with her while I have the drain in my side. An irrational fear, probably, but I feel better for having a bed to myself. Plus, she needs her sleep given that she's working fulltime in addition to all the other chores that have fallen to her, so I hope it lets her sleep better too.
I'm really, really hoping to get this damn drain out of my side this week. And then the IV midline as well, once I'm done with the antibiotic injections. Those will be big days for me. In the mean time, I'm resting a lot, taking naps when I can, and generally doing my best to heal up. I'm also moving around the apartment at times, and even doing a few chores. They need doing and I need the exercise after spending so much time lying in bed, plus the exercise tires me out so I can sleep.
This has been quite an experience. It's not over yet, especially if I end up needing surgery later on. But if I won't be back to normal for a while, I can at least see it from here. Which I couldn't a few days ago (and still can't on increasingly infrequent occasions). I'm sure some of this will find its way into my writing eventually, too. "Write what you know," they say. And I know a hell of a lot more about some things now than I ever did before.
*Apparently, in addition to doing CT and MRI scans, they specialize in putting tubes in you down there.