Tag Archives for illness

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

Power of Attorney and Final Wishes

This all feels so morbid. I just finished assigning my Power of Attorney and writing a letter that details my final wishes. I haven’t done these things because I don’t expect to survive my upcoming surgery – to be clear, I expect nothing less. I’ve done them because I can no longer escape the reality of my mortality. Even though I knew the time would arrive when I would need to do them, I didn’t think it would be so soon. Not having children has granted me the freedom to not look too closely at the “what ifs” and “what coulds” of the future near or far, until now.

My friend J will be one of two people who can make decisions about what can or cannot happen if things don’t go well on Tuesday. It’s a lot of responsibility, I know, but I trust her with my life and I trust that she will follow my wishes without hesitation. We talked about everything in detail yesterday. Until yesterday, she had a general understanding of how I want things handled, but now there are no questions. I will have to have the same conversation with the other person tomorrow or Monday.

I can’t fully articulate all of what I’m feeling right now. However, putting things in writing released a bit of the pressure and stress I’ve been feeling the past few weeks. Maybe this will help me sleep better tonight.

 

Queen – Under Pressure

I Don’t Have Enough Blood

At my surgery pre-admission appointment a couple of weeks back I received an overwhelming amount of information. One of the most significant things I learned is that my hemoglobin level is low, which is why the doctor who saw me at the end of the marathon appointment advised me to eat as much red meat as possible every day leading up to surgery. Because of my low blood level I had to meet with the Blood Conservation Team on Tuesday afternoon. At the hospital where I’m receiving treatment, this group is also called Patient Blood Management, but the nurse assigned to manage my case didn’t just manage me. She was incredibly supportive and educated me extensively about what she would do to help me increase blood levels to prevent the chance I might have to have a blood transfusion during surgery; and the associated risks attached to that help.

My nurse’s name is Anna. Her support started last week when she called me after my pre-admission appointment to assess my overall health and schedule my blood management appointment. She explained that the primary concern about my hemoglobin level is that since I had bloodwork completed in February my blood level has dropped by more than ten points from 126 g/L down to 111 g/L. The normal hemoglobin level for adult women is from 120 g/L to 160 g/L. According to Anna, the one positive is that because I have been taking iron supplements since becoming ill I have iron stores to build on – just not fast enough before I have surgery. We also discussed my high blood pressure that I now have because of my pain, and which she sees as another point of concern. Anna became very sympathetic when I explained the full circumstances of my illness and how it has decreased my quality of life over the past two years. After discussing the rest of my medical history, she explained what she felt was the best solution for me.

So how do they increase your hemoglobin level within weeks, or in my case a week, of having surgery? First, they change your iron supplement to one that is more easily absorbed. In my case, the iron supplement I started taking just over a week ago is FeraMAX. It is specially coated so it “allows the iron to pass through the stomach relatively intact where it is absorbed through the small intestine and is then delivered to the bloodstream.” Simply put, I’m getting bigger doses of iron now, and I hope this higher dose will make a difference. The second part of the treatment is to get an injection of a drug called EPREX, which I received during my appointment with Anna on Tuesday. The active ingredient in Eprex is “epoetin alfa, a protein that stimulates bone marrow to produce more red blood cells.” The dose I received came in a prefilled syringe that Anna injected into my upper left arm. I have a bit of a needle phobia, which means I squeezed my eyes shut as she uncapped the syringe and found the right spot for injection on my arm. Anna warned me that the Eprex solution is very thick, which translated means it hurts like hell when it’s plunged into your arm.

As beneficial as that single, $500, dose of Eprex should be Anna did educate me about the potential side effects. The least complicated side effect is feeling like you might have the flu within a day or two of receiving the injection. I’m happy to report that I did not experience a fever or feeling achy all over my body from a painful shot in my arm. Moving down the list – or would that be up because of severity? – would have been a severe allergic reaction to any or all the ingredients in Eprex. I’m also happy to report that I have not had a rash and/or itching at the injection site, nor did I go into any phase of anaphylactic shock immediately after. Last but not least: blood clots. This side effect is one that might take a little longer to detect. It will depend on how much my hemoglobin level increases, which may affect the thickening of my blood. The one thing that might offset this is that during surgery next week I will receive blood thinners, which I assume is the primary reason having a low hemoglobin level beforehand is so problematic.

So, will I have more blood in me by next Tuesday? According to Anna, they usually see the best result seven days after a single dose of Eprex. Fingers crossed that this will be true for me. Otherwise, when I’m done with all of this surgery business, they will have to get to work on figuring out why I don’t have enough blood.

 

Foreigner – Hot Blooded