Tag Archives for chronic illness

Returning to Writing

Today is the first day I am writing here since my surgery on August 11, 2015. It’s not the first day because I was incapable before now. It’s the first day because emotionally I feel ready, although I’m not ready to write about the details of what happened to me. However, I will tell you that regardless of how things have turned out – from a surgical perspective – I still feel blessed. From the moment I woke up from the anesthetics, I’ve had so many people caring for and about me (medical staff, friends, and family), and that care continues today and probably will for some time to come.

The reason I’m writing now is that my emotions overcame me during a conversation I was having with my friend M this afternoon when she told me to “let people care for you. It serves them too.” It’s the first time I cried since having surgery – not counting the moments I will tell you about at another time when I was in the recovery room. M’s words opened me up because, I assume, I needed the right stimulant to open me up. M felt that this emotional breakdown might be a combination of all the chemicals, the drugs, and effects from surgery building up in my body. That does make sense, but what makes more sense is that I haven’t had a moment to be alone with myself and feelings about all that has happened since I came out of surgery and her words landed on me in a way that made it impossible to keep the emotions and tears inside me any longer. So, the tears spilled out, my breath became shallow, my throat ached and my shoulders shook as I cried.

I recognize that I am being cared for, but I haven’t been caring for myself. I haven’t been tending to my emotional needs even though I know that I’m the only person who can do that. Things – unnamed feelings, fears, anxiety, hurt – have been building up and I have to start to release them before they bury me.

 

Peter Gabriel – Digging In The Dirt

Absent With Hope

I’ll be away from the interwebs for a while. I’m having surgery later today. My surgeon – THE surgeon – will use his skills to work to restore my quality of life. Once his work is done, the rest will be up to me and how my body responds to the surgical pain or any nerve damage the mysterious growth in my pelvis may have caused.

I’m strangely calm about everything. I think it’s because I know I’m in good hands all around. I have an experienced surgeon leading the operation. He has chosen the other doctors on the team because he has worked with them on many cases and he trusts them. My aftercare is well planned, with every aspect of what could go wrong thought out and contingencies defined. More than anything, my friends and family continue to support me and they will be with me as I go through this.

My hope is that when I come back to writing, it will be with positive news. I hope the mysterious growth will no longer be a mystery and I hope that my pain – if not eliminated – will be significantly reduced. I’ll see you all on the other side of the mist.

 

U2 – Mysterious Ways

 

Where It All Started Going Wrong

Exactly two years ago tomorrow, on a beautiful summer afternoon, I suddenly felt intense pain in my lower abdomen. It was such incredible pain; I could barely breathe. My body shook uncontrollably. I could not stand up straight and ended up on my bed in the fetal position.

I was fortunate not to be alone. I had plans with a friend who had arrived at my place about thirty minutes before the worst of the pain set in. I was fortunate because my friend didn’t panic. He called our local telemedicine service to speak to a nurse. After working through a checklist of questions, she transferred him to 911 because I was showing signs of going into shock. He elevated my legs as instructed while we waited for the ambulance to arrive, and kept talking to me to keep me alert.

Firefighters arrived ahead of the paramedics. They went through the same checklist the nurse had. Then they tried to talk me through getting my breathing under control; it was shallow because breathing deeply hurt. When the paramedics showed up, they had a minor struggle trying to get the stretcher through my front door. The firefighters pushed furniture out of the way but they still couldn’t get it into my bedroom, which was fine with me because it was already crowed enough with three firefighters, two paramedics and my friend all standing around.

The paramedics examined me while I lay on my bed. They took my vital signs. I had a mild fever, but after going through their checklist – which meant confirming I wasn’t pregnant for the third time in about twenty minutes – they partially carried me to the stretcher. Just having my feet touch the floor caused more pain to shoot through my abdomen. I wanted to pass out, but the paramedics kept talking to me to keep me conscious. I wish they hadn’t. Being rolled to the ambulance on the stretcher was agony and the bumpy drive to the hospital was even worse.

It didn’t take long for me to go through triage in the emergency room. Lower abdominal pain on the scale I was experiencing gets you seen by a doctor quickly. I struggled to get undressed and into the hospital gown. The nurse caring for me immediately suggested that I might need a strong painkiller to help me. I refused. The doctor came to see me and tried to convince me that a dose of Oxycodone would help reduce the pain so she could examine me. I still refused. I told the doctor that I wanted to have a clear head so I could clearly communicate with her. She relented but gave me an intravenous anti-inflammatory medication to take the edge off my pain so she could touch my abdomen. However, when she started the examination I almost wished I had accepted the Oxycodone because the pain was excruciating – picture cartoons where cats are so scared they jump up to the ceiling and hang on for dear life.

The doctor sent me for a series of ultrasounds (full abdominal and trans-vaginal) after her brief examination so she could rule out appendicitis, a burst ovarian cyst, or ovarian torsion – which just means a twisted ovary – as the causes for my pain. When the ultrasound results came back, she was surprised, which made me nervous. She said the imaging revealed something unexpected that she hadn’t even thought of. According to the ultrasound results, I had a tubo-ovarian abscess that measured 9cm x 3cm. If you’d ever met me, you wouldn’t believe there was enough space for anything but my vital organs in my lower abdomen; or that I wouldn’t have felt something that size before. I guess the upside was she didn’t tell me I was pregnant because that would have been truly unexpected.

Unfortunately, that doctor’s diagnosis was wrong and it would be the basis for me to receive the wrong medical treatments and incorrect level of pain management for almost a year.

 

Ray Charles – I Don’t Need No Doctor