Hello everyone! Sorry that it has been so long since I last wrote, but even in this day and age computers with internet access are difficult to access from a hospital bed. Yes, I just spent a rather unpleasant week in the hospital, as a result of complications from having my appendix out: scar tissue twisted around my intenstines and started choking them. I must say, it was the most excrutiatingly painful thing I have ever experienced, and I have experienced some reasonably painful things!
Last Friday at around two it came on as I was sitting a a computer at school, but initially I just thought it was hunger (I had only had Special K for breakfast, and it was past two o'clock). Just before I started eating a Subway roast beef sub, I experienced a wave of agony in my stomach. Stupidly, I still thought it might have something to do with being hungry, so I ate. It kept happening, generalized stomach pain with occasional waves of agony (as if someone was twisting a wire around my guts), so I went to the emergency room. There they pressed on my stomach, which was not distended and tested my urine for a bladder infection, which it turned out I didn't have. Eventually they just said to go home and take some Tylenol. So, I picked up some Tylenol Extra Strength (which did absolutely nothing) and went to a friends, where I spent a few hours with my legs up against my chest, enduring periodic waves of pain. Eventually I decided to go back to the ER, where again they were unable to find anything wrong with me and told me to go home.
Frustrated (and a little worried, since they sent me home when I had appendicitis too), I gave my mum a call and she called a family friend who is the wife one of the major surgeons in the area. I was advised to persist and to try and get them to call her husband in and give me a surgical exams. Anyway, it was there opinion that I had already had a second opinion, and I eventually decided to go home. The drive was agony: for some reason sitting in a driving position was quite painful.
My parent were waiting for me, having that day just arrived home from a two month trip to Mexico and Belize. I took some more Tylenol Extra Strength and attempted to sleep on the couch (I couldn't get comfortable on a bed), but at around two in the morning I crawled to the toilet and started vomiting. It was in some ways a relief, but I was still experiencing a lot of pain. If anything, it was getting worse. Eventually, my parents came by and discovered me bent over sobbing in pain on the the bathroom floor. Now, I am not at all ashamed of crying (I do it during the occasional movie or book proudly), but this was the first time mere pain had ever reduced me to tears. They put me in the car and took me to the ER, where they finally gave me enough morphine to cut the pain enough that I could actually communicate.
After a few x-rays and a cat scan they discovered that my intenstines were blocked, near the location of my appendix surgery. So, they shoved a naso-gastral tube up my nose and down into my stomach, and rushed me off to surgery. Later, I woke up in a hospital room with a rather large incision up the front of my stomach, from my pubic bone to below my bellybutton, between my tattoos. So, I began the length process of attempting to get better, after a couple of days I got my catheter out and could manage to shuffle to the bathroom, a few days later I got the NG out (which was heaven, that thing makes swallowing torture), and then my IV, and today the released me, about eleven pounds lighter than went I went in.
I am far from being fully recovered, but definitely anticipate one. Thanks for listening.
-Paget
Last Friday at around two it came on as I was sitting a a computer at school, but initially I just thought it was hunger (I had only had Special K for breakfast, and it was past two o'clock). Just before I started eating a Subway roast beef sub, I experienced a wave of agony in my stomach. Stupidly, I still thought it might have something to do with being hungry, so I ate. It kept happening, generalized stomach pain with occasional waves of agony (as if someone was twisting a wire around my guts), so I went to the emergency room. There they pressed on my stomach, which was not distended and tested my urine for a bladder infection, which it turned out I didn't have. Eventually they just said to go home and take some Tylenol. So, I picked up some Tylenol Extra Strength (which did absolutely nothing) and went to a friends, where I spent a few hours with my legs up against my chest, enduring periodic waves of pain. Eventually I decided to go back to the ER, where again they were unable to find anything wrong with me and told me to go home.
Frustrated (and a little worried, since they sent me home when I had appendicitis too), I gave my mum a call and she called a family friend who is the wife one of the major surgeons in the area. I was advised to persist and to try and get them to call her husband in and give me a surgical exams. Anyway, it was there opinion that I had already had a second opinion, and I eventually decided to go home. The drive was agony: for some reason sitting in a driving position was quite painful.
My parent were waiting for me, having that day just arrived home from a two month trip to Mexico and Belize. I took some more Tylenol Extra Strength and attempted to sleep on the couch (I couldn't get comfortable on a bed), but at around two in the morning I crawled to the toilet and started vomiting. It was in some ways a relief, but I was still experiencing a lot of pain. If anything, it was getting worse. Eventually, my parents came by and discovered me bent over sobbing in pain on the the bathroom floor. Now, I am not at all ashamed of crying (I do it during the occasional movie or book proudly), but this was the first time mere pain had ever reduced me to tears. They put me in the car and took me to the ER, where they finally gave me enough morphine to cut the pain enough that I could actually communicate.
After a few x-rays and a cat scan they discovered that my intenstines were blocked, near the location of my appendix surgery. So, they shoved a naso-gastral tube up my nose and down into my stomach, and rushed me off to surgery. Later, I woke up in a hospital room with a rather large incision up the front of my stomach, from my pubic bone to below my bellybutton, between my tattoos. So, I began the length process of attempting to get better, after a couple of days I got my catheter out and could manage to shuffle to the bathroom, a few days later I got the NG out (which was heaven, that thing makes swallowing torture), and then my IV, and today the released me, about eleven pounds lighter than went I went in.
I am far from being fully recovered, but definitely anticipate one. Thanks for listening.
-Paget
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Are you stuck in bed or can you do normal stuff? Been back to Subway?