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Jan. 20th, 2009 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarflameI spent the first half of the day mostly hiding behind closed doors, so the kids wouldn't see that I wasn't coping well with INSANE abdominal pain. I can only compare it to contractions during transition: but it wasn't like that, just a pain level similarity. I came out periodically, gritting my teeth, to ask Ananda and Aaron to do things I'd never ask them to do normally, like diaper and dress a naked Elise, finish making the oatmeal that was almost done, and make sure Jake didn't go outside. I talked to Laura and to Grant on the phone, going in a couple of hours from "I don't know what's wrong...but something is wrong" to "I need help...NOW".
The second half of the day I spent in the ER, which was sort of a relief, because I knew my kids were in the capable hands of my sister, I could lean on Grant (though I couldn't actually LEAN, as that was agony...), hospitals automatically make me dissociate, and I knew there was strong pain medication on the agenda for the very near future.
THEN...I had to lay on my back while a doctor palpated and generally tortured the hurt area. I nearly screamed, which is A LOT for me. I lay there trying to recover for awhile afterward, before being taken to x-ray, where I realized...it didn't hurt anymore.
The pain was just...gone. After my tests it was time for the pain meds the examining doc had ordered and I remembered wanting so badly...but I was like...there's no reason. I don't need them now?
I have experienced this same pain, right up front in the middle by my diastasis, for an hour or two several times over the past week, but it's never been so severe or stuck around so long. I was really weirded out to suddenly have my appetite back and be reading a novel in triage, after NINE HOURS of misery.
My diagnosis is "intermittent obstruction". The theory being that some intestines or what have you are slipping through the big hole in my muscles, and then I eat or whatever and they swell and can't come back through, and then it hurts really bad until they're freed up again. Which laying flat on my back and having the doctor push and prod them apparently did. And I am supposed to muster the fortitude to do that myself should this situation arise again before I get a reparative surgery. Thus far I do not have intestinal inflammation or infection or death from lack of circulation, as my white count is normal and things look ok on CT scan.
Good News: They really think I can get just a normal hernia repair, like cut open skin, sew muscles shut, sew skin shut. It's sometimes outpatient, or a single night stay. Nothing like a full on tummy tuck REMOVING excess skin and fat and shaving muscles down and so forth that takes six weeks to recover from.
Bad News: I have to get it done pretty damn soon :/ They say I've "gotten lucky" so far that the obstruction keeps clearing. A doctor actually said to me, "You cannot get constipated, you'll end up in emergency surgery".
So here I sit in the house my sister cleaned very well while I was away, after largely unattended children had completely trashed it. With all my kids tucked into their beds, I'm feeling strangely anticlimactic, relieved, confused, burdened, and emotionally exhausted. Somehow I don't see sleep coming so easily.
The second half of the day I spent in the ER, which was sort of a relief, because I knew my kids were in the capable hands of my sister, I could lean on Grant (though I couldn't actually LEAN, as that was agony...), hospitals automatically make me dissociate, and I knew there was strong pain medication on the agenda for the very near future.
THEN...I had to lay on my back while a doctor palpated and generally tortured the hurt area. I nearly screamed, which is A LOT for me. I lay there trying to recover for awhile afterward, before being taken to x-ray, where I realized...it didn't hurt anymore.
The pain was just...gone. After my tests it was time for the pain meds the examining doc had ordered and I remembered wanting so badly...but I was like...there's no reason. I don't need them now?
I have experienced this same pain, right up front in the middle by my diastasis, for an hour or two several times over the past week, but it's never been so severe or stuck around so long. I was really weirded out to suddenly have my appetite back and be reading a novel in triage, after NINE HOURS of misery.
My diagnosis is "intermittent obstruction". The theory being that some intestines or what have you are slipping through the big hole in my muscles, and then I eat or whatever and they swell and can't come back through, and then it hurts really bad until they're freed up again. Which laying flat on my back and having the doctor push and prod them apparently did. And I am supposed to muster the fortitude to do that myself should this situation arise again before I get a reparative surgery. Thus far I do not have intestinal inflammation or infection or death from lack of circulation, as my white count is normal and things look ok on CT scan.
Good News: They really think I can get just a normal hernia repair, like cut open skin, sew muscles shut, sew skin shut. It's sometimes outpatient, or a single night stay. Nothing like a full on tummy tuck REMOVING excess skin and fat and shaving muscles down and so forth that takes six weeks to recover from.
Bad News: I have to get it done pretty damn soon :/ They say I've "gotten lucky" so far that the obstruction keeps clearing. A doctor actually said to me, "You cannot get constipated, you'll end up in emergency surgery".
So here I sit in the house my sister cleaned very well while I was away, after largely unattended children had completely trashed it. With all my kids tucked into their beds, I'm feeling strangely anticlimactic, relieved, confused, burdened, and emotionally exhausted. Somehow I don't see sleep coming so easily.
