My Year of "Internal Voyages"

So, a friend recently suggested that my round of medical issues in these past few months could be 'Erma Bombeck' story worthy........I'm going to do a short review of those issues to see if there's any fodder worthy of that great woman's perspective - and could be expanded at a later date.

So, as last year was my 50th birthday and was a year full of 'great trips', I've designated this year (my 51st) as the year full of 'internal voyages'!

They started in February with scheduled surgery on my left shoulder.  I had hurt it the year before and tried several types of physical therapy to no avail.  And when I got to the point where I had to wear strapless bras because my shoulder hurt so much, I knew it was time to choose surgery.  I mean, a girl has to have her standards - and, damn it, strapless bras hurt!

The surgery was textbook simple - the doctor had to do less than he was anticipating, and I was back home by late afternoon.  I spent the first six week after that doing nothing with my left shoulder, keeping it holstered in a large, bulky sling, sleeping in the recliner in my living room.  (For those who have never had shoulder surgery, it takes a long time before you can lay flat on your back.)  At the end of those six weeks, I was given a simple stretching exercise to begin - and I thought I was going to die!!  It hurt so much - more, in fact, than I ever anticipated. But I kept it up - 3 times a day, and within two weeks, I moved on to Occupational Therapy at a local Rehab clinic.

My occupational therapist was great! (I actually went to him before surgery to see if therapy would help my shoulder heal - so I knew him.)  However, again, therapy hurt a lot more than I expected.  My second visit - which I thought would be similar to my first (The one where they do minimal things just to evaluate you and see how much movement you have? That one.) - was so much more........'vigorous' (for want of a more frightening word:), that I almost blacked out.  Brian, my OT, told me to just lay still and relax.  In retrospect, it was of 'providential' forethought that John was able to be with me on that particular visit, so that he could reassure Brian that while my response was extreme, it was within the 'norm' for me.  In other words, since I respond BIG to most things - why would I not have an extreme response to allowing a medical professional to 'hurt me' on purpose!

My therapy was going along smashingly - I had gained substantial use of my left shoulder/ arm - when all of a sudden, I woke up on Friday, June 1st with some pain on the left side of my abdomen.  This was the day we had chosen to clean out our 'very old in need of knocking down' shed.  John, Katie and Peter were outside beginning the cleanout, and I did my shoulder exercises.  The pain continued to grow.  I made breakfast doubled over from the pain and invited the fam to come back in and eat.  I went straight into the bathroom where I remained for an hour in pain and throwing up until John came in and announced that he was taking me to emergency.

I was admitted that night, given very strong pain killers and for 4 days, the doctors had no idea what was wrong with me.  On the fifth day, they did a second CT scan and decided that I had perforated diverticulitis.  (As a side note, I lost 14 pounds while in the hospital!)  On the 9th day, they did a 3rd CT scan to see where they would put 3 drain tubes to hopefully drain the abdomen full of infection that I had.  They were hoping to not have to do surgery on my colon.  My doctor (a really groovy surgeon) came back very quickly that morning to tell me that the Radiologist had called in another doctor to review my scan, and they changed my diagnosis: I did not have perforated diverticulitis - my appendix had ruptured!

I was in the hospital for 14 days and when my white blood cell count finally came down and stayed down, I was released.  Actually, it was more like I was 'dumped on the front stoop'......I was going home with a pic line to administer IV antibiotics at home and one drain line to continue to help my abdomen heal.  It was a friday, and all the doctors had come to see me but no one realized that in order for me to get my antibiotics for home, I had to go to the Infectious Disease doctors office that day!  At about 4pm, hospital administration came and announced that I would have to be discharge and in a hurry, since the doctor's office closed at 5pm - and they wouldn't be back in the office until Tuesday.  They had to show me personally how to administer the IV antibiotics.

**Thankfully, Katie and John did my antibiotics at home most of the time.  I couldn't do it myself - it was too weird.  And I really felt like a junkie the few times I had to do it!!  

Now, you realize that during this whole time: the two weeks in the hospital, the 3 weeks after that that I had the pic line and drain line, the 2 times I went in to have the drain line examined, then the weeks before my colonoscopy and my appendix surgery on August 16th, discovering that my system was biochemically 'out of whack' because of all that had happened, I was not doing shoulder therapy.  Not one single exercise or stretch or resistance workout.  I was too 'afraid' of something else going wrong....

Finally, a couple of weeks after my appendix surgery, I went back to OT.  Thankfully, I hadn't lost a lot of flexibility in my shoulder - and it didn't require a lot to get me back up to speed 'occupationally' speaking.  In fact, I finally finished having to actually go to the rehab clinic in early October.  I was just doing exercises on my own at home - continuing to strengthen my shoulder from that surgery wwwaaaaayyyyy back in February!!

And again, all was going well, when 'WHAM!', my gallbladder flares up!!  Yep!  On October 13th, after a 5 hour stay in emergency, an ekg, a chest xray, several labs and an ultrasound, they discovered that I had gallstones!  I could only laugh! The absurdity of it!!  (Well, laugh I say, AFTER they had given me pain killer!) I went back to my hospital stay doctor/ appendix surgeon  - telling him that I had missed him! I mean, it had been 2 months since I had my appendix removed.  He assured me that he could also remove my gallbladder, and the surgery was scheduled for the next week.

So, almost two weeks ago (Oct 25th), I had my 3rd surgery and 5th procedure for this year! 2012 - The Year of Internal Voyages!! My post-surgery checkup was completely uneventful - oh, and in case you couldn't tell, that's a good thing!!  I  think I've had enough drama to cover me for a good long while!

Okay, so I don't know if any of this is Erma Bombeck worthy??  But it's definitely been quite a storyline to follow.......and I'm tired of writing about all this!!  Time to move on to groovier topics!

I'll Do My Best (old post I finally finished)

Now that my appendectomy is done -- textbook A+ done -- I feel like I really need to put the past few weeks in written form. Not sure how well I'll do it but I need to try.  When I left the hospital on June 15th - 14 days after I went into the hospital - I had some issues with anxiety and depression.  I had a pic line so that I (or my family) could administer IV antibiotics, and I had a drain line because there was still so much infection in my abdomen.  I was anxious about doing everything correctly, wondering how long it would take for my body to heal, putting my life on hold until I got past all this.  Because despite modern medicine, it's very difficult to attempt normalcy with all that 'stuff' coming out of your body.

Those few times when I went out to somewhere other than a doctor's office, I always felt very conspicuous, vulnerable to more infection and therefore more sickness, on edge emotionally and physically.  The world is a VERY germy place!!

And I know I made my family crazy - asking them to disinfect themselves and every surface in the house everytime they did anything - and I mean EVERYTIME.  They were phenomenally patient and loving!  So, that first night home, I cried quite a bit.  I felt bad for my family because I didn't want them to think that I wasn't happy to be home with them. 

At that point, I wasn't experiencing any sense that my emotions were overwhelming me.  I felt like I was 'stuck' - with no forward or backward motion.  And I felt a small amount of anxiety that I was going to feel like that forever.  But, again, nothing that I couldn't handle.

Well, over the course of the next 7 weeks, I began feeling worse emotionally, mentally.  One emotion in particular - anxiety - began growing - quietly, slowly -  ramping up each day.  Oh, at first it was only lasted for only an hour or two a day....then it was 4-5 hours a day - and pretty soon, I realized that a large portion of every day was spent trying to calm myself down, watching tv to distract my brain, sitting in the recliner in my living room.  I stayed home all the time.  I felt like I didn't have the energy to keep my anxiety under cover if I went out anywhere - almost as if I had tried to do anything or go anywhere that my body was going to literally 'fly out of itself'.

On July 20th, I made an appointment with my surgeon to see about some pain in my upper abdomen I was experiencing. He said it was to high to be related to the appendix issue.  And I wondered to him if maybe I had developed an ulcer?  He said, if anyone had a reason to develop one - I certainly did!!  So, he told me to get some prilosc and some pepto bismol and watch myself over the weekend;.  So, I did, and it seemed to help some.....but I continued to have anxiety throughout most of each day.  Only at night as I got closer to Ambien taking time did I begin to feel relief - and I don't think it was only because I knew sleep was coming - I think my hormones/ biochemistry seemed to 'catch up' or right itself later in the evening.


July 26th I went to see my psycho-therapist - I had decided that I needed to get some medicinal help for the anxiety, and I needed encouragment that I wasn't some kind of pathetic person because I needed some outside help.  She was very encouraging saying that she believed that this anxiety was mostly biochemical (and a bit emotional) and suggested a medication that would help to not only relieve my anxiety but help to level out my biochemical imbalance: buspar.

I got an appt that afternoon with the doctor's office so I could get a prescription for the buspar.  I took one - it made me worse.  I called my therapist the next morning - she suggested I get Xanax.  I got an appt that morning, got a prescription for Xanax, took one and it made it worse.  I ended up in the emergency ward - I felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin.  The doctor gave me a shot of Geodon and assured me that I was going to sleep and John would have to stay at the hospital for hours until I woke up............you guessed it - it made it even worse.  We discussed with the doctor my staying in the hospital overnight so that I could see a psychiatrist the next morning but they wouldn't have let me take anything (including Ambien), so John and I decided that if I just went home, I could at least get relief that night for a few hours. This was Friday night - I had all weekend...................

Saturday turned out to be okay (unbelievably), Sunday it got worse and Monday, I got the names of several psychiatrists from my therapist.  The first 3 that I called had no openings for two weeks.  Well, that was definitely NOT going to work.  So, I got a couple more doctors' names to call - finally -- finally, I got an appt with a psychiatrist for that Wednesday (2 days).  By the time I got to the psychiatrist's office, I was hysterical, believing at that moment that I would never find relief, that I would be in this neurotic state forever.  The doctor assured me that I would not.

(**Spoiler alert** I have not! :)

It took a few days and several dosage changes but my psychiatrist found the exact medication with the exact amount to return my sanity to me.  (Of course, during this time, I was also in contact with my medical doctor to start on some hormone meds too.  They're also working very well!)  Unless you've ever experienced something like what I've described,you cannot know how HUGE the relief is.  There are no words that would help me to tell you other than to say I went from feeling like I would never be able to enjoy my life to experiencing peace and rest all day long.  And now my doctor and I are even starting to reduce the amount of medicine that I take so that I can get to a place where I take the least amount to manage my biochemistry/ hormones/ mood!!  

Thots from the Gallbladder.....

And with the flare up of my Gallbladder, I have another 'N-1 things to go wrong with my body' off my list!  And it seems that each issue this year has been of a 'decreasing level of drama'.  (This concept will be discussed in a separate blog.)

This issue/ surgery was only day surgery: I checked in at 8am and was home by 3pm.  During that time I made an interesting observation - that different careers/ talents/ skills have different job preparations.  For example, doctors don't seem to need any pre-surgery preparation - other than sterilizing.

As an actor I have gotten to the theater to physically and mentally prepare for a performance anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half before curtain.  And in my experience stage actors do this before every performance, no matter how long the run of a show is.  An architect might consult the design specifications for a project or review the blueprints before directing the construction of a building.  A teacher reviews their lesson plans before beginning the days' instruction.  A chef follows a recipe in order to create a masterpiece.  But doctors/ surgeons don't seem to need such prep.

My surgeon did not arrive until right before the surgery - in fact, I was prepped for surgery and the team was ready but we had to wait for the doctor to arrive.  I don't know where he was before and don't presume to judge anything about him, I just make the observation that he arrived right before surgery, cruised in, smiled and said hi, explained the procedure, sanitized his hands (I'm assuming:) and dived right 'in' to remove the offending organ.  No before surgery prep - he didn't have to review the script to remember his part or remind himself of the blocking.

Maybe because of all the years of extra training that doctors have to go through they don't need to do 'pre-whatever' prep?  I suppose it would make me nervous if my surgeon had to do pre-surgery prep to know what he was doing......:*)  I'm definitely glad that he knows his way around my insides!!