5am: I was peacefully sleeping on my back, but wanted to roll to my side to cuddle with brad. the second i start to roll over, my lower right abdomen just kinda explodes with some of the worst pain ever, barring childbirth without an epidural. i'm only semi-conscious, so i think it's a charlie-horse in my abs (since i get these in my calves all the time when i'm asleep), so i curl up and think that if i wait a few seconds it will subside. but it doesn't. it doesn't get better or worse, the pain just stays there. i wait 1 minutes, 2 minutes, 5 minutes... it's not going away. i'm crying from the pain now, brad is freaking out and asking me a bunch of questions. he thinks it could be an ulcer and wants me to go to the bathroom to see if that will help. but i KNOW that whatever is causing my pain has nothing to do with any part of my digestive system as i understand it. i've had digestion issues before and this isn't like that. i starting crying for a blessing, so he just places his hands on my head while i'm writhing with pain on the bed and crying and gives me a blessing in the name of Jesus Christ. it helps me calm down a bit, but the pain doesn't change. i go to the bathroom-- no change in the pain. brad looks up what it might be online. i'm thinking either my muscle wall just ripped apart and my guts are spilling out and the only thing stopping them is my skin, or my ovary just exploded, or i have appendicitis. at least that's what it feel like to me; i don't know how else to explain the sheer amount of pain i was in.
every single thing brad looks up on the internet says go to the ER asap. i don't have health insurance and I hate the ER, so i tell him to go back to sleep, and if it still hurts after he gets home from class tomorrow, then we can go to urgent care. i fitfully try to go back to sleep. it's hard to breath, my (for lack of a single word to describe my lower right abdomen, i'll just say "my side") side is still in pain feeling like i was stabbed with a knife and it just keeps twisting in my gut. but eventually i must have fallen asleep because i had some of the craziest dreams ever, and a bunch of them.
8:30am: Brad wakes me up for fmaily prayer before he goes to work. my side is still in excruciating pain, but i tell him to go to work anyway, and it'll go away.
10am: i wake up to naomi crying. i get up and take a shower. it's so painful to move, to stand, to do anything.
10:30am: i get naomi out of bed. it takes all of my strength to not cry. i feed her, adn remember that i'm supposed to babysit for a friend at 11 or something around there. eat breakfast and feed naomi.
11:15am: baby girl shows up for babysitting. I'm starting to cope with the pain. it hasn't increased or decreased, but i'm getting used to it, so i don't say anything to friend. i figure i've lasted so long already, i can last until 4 when my friend will come pick her up.
12noon: brad calls, he's about to go to class, but wants to know if i need help babysitting, how i'm feeling, etc. i tell him nothing has changed, but to go to class, i can make it for 75 more minutes.
1pm: after 1 hour of trying towatch, entertain, feed, change diapers, and chase two very moblie children... the pain in my side has escalated to "i think i might be dying" proportions. i call brad in class and ask him to come home ASAP.
1:15pm: Brad comes home. I try to sit and relax, hoping the pain will subside, but we've decided that i probably need to go to the doctor, so I call my friend and see if there's a way she can get her daughter a little earlier because i need to go to the doctor. since our car is in the shop, we call some friends and find a ride to ther urgent care center.
2:30ish: i begin to lose track of time around here. we get to the BYU urgent care center, and i'm take back to a room pretty quickly. the dr feels my abs, makes me try to lay down and sit up...i start crying...dr. says that my muscles aren't engaging like they should because even when i try to lift my head while laying down, my abs should feel firm, but mine are soft. the intense pain in located in one very specific spot in my lower right abdomen-- anywhere else she could feel, but touching that spot was excruciating beyond my standard won'tt go away twisting knife in gut feeling. she orders a bood test (CBC) and urine test to test for pregnancy, and an ultrasound to test for anything abdormal with my ovary.
4:30ish: i'm told to drink about a 1/2 gallon of water in 15 minutes, and then hold it til 5:20 when the ultra sound tech is supposed to arrive. silly me, i drak it in more like 5 minutes.
5:25: i'm crying in pain. don't know if it's because i need to pee, my side, or a combination of the two. the ultrasound tech is late and i'm about to further embarrass myself by not only literally crying in the dr's office, but also wetting my pants when the u/s tech lady arrives at 5:30.
5:35pm: apparently, my bladder is too full... i have to let out "just a little bit of urine" because my bladder is so full she can't see my right ovary on the u/s. stopping midstream is one the list of things very hard to do when you really need to pee.
5:40pm: ultrasound shows everything dealing with my ovaries and uterus are normal. this mrans they are sending e to the ER to get a CT scan to check for something else. the dr thinks maybe a kidney stone, but it seems unlikely. or appendicitis, but that also seems unlikely.
6ish: we arrive at the ER and no one is in the waiting room so they take me back right away. they're all assuming appendicitis, but i'm not throwing up, so that seems odd. maybe a kidney stone, but the type and intensity and location of pain doesn't fit for a kidney stone. they start me on an IV and warn me that if it is my appendix, i'll have emergency surgey that night.
6:15ish: i go back for the CT scan. i have to have radioactive contrast put in through my IV. the first time, i guess the IV isn't in right so it leaks all over my hospital gown, and it has to be fixed. when it finally goes in, it makes me feel all warm inside. weird.
6:40pm: even weirder-- when the results come back, everything is normal. pretty much. i have a double kidney pelvis on my right kidney, and a kidney stone the size or the tip of a ball point pen in my right kidney, but the dr's don't think that has anything to do with what i'm feeling. my appendix looks happy and healthy. so they tell me to go home and take some ibuprofen or tylenol and come back in 12 hours for another scan if the pain stays the same or gets worse.
7ish: we leave, go buy 2 six-packs of jello, since i'm on a clear liquids diet until tomorrow, and then pick up munchkin from the babysitters. in fact, our good friends who were watching naomi agree to come back to our place and help take care of naomi while i just veg on the couch in pain while brad goes to bowling and hockey that night. they were wonderful.
10ish: casey puts naomi to bed and the picketts leave for the night. i try to go to sleep, but naomi wakes up after about 40 minutes. she's crying a lot and wants to get up. she knows that i'm here, she can stand up in her crib adn see around the corner into the living room, and i'm on the couch. i try to get her out of her crib, but my side is still hurting, and now i have an IV in my arm (they didn't take it out before i left because they figured i'd be back in the morning and didn't want to stick me again). i struggle to lift her with just my left arm, and put her on the floor. she continues cry until brad gets home close to midnight. he takes over so i can go to bed. i struggle to go to sleep of an hour or more because of the pain. i continue to be uncomfortable, thought the ibuprofen really helped, through out the night.
7:30am Wed: I wake up and don't feel anything. the pain is gone! we go to the hospital, they take out my IV and tell me that i don't need another scan since i feel better. we don't know what it was, but am so glad i feel better. i think it's really a miracle, and i'm so glad i didn't need surgery.
here's a happy pic to make you smile after all that drama...
No comments:
Post a Comment