How I Spent My Friday Night

Looking back in hindsight, the pain actually started Wednesday night. I mistakingly thought it was due to doing to much as is sometimes the case with my fibromyalgia. I had been going through boxes. O.K. I had gone through every single unopened box left in my house from the attic eaves to the basement to the garage. Every hiding place, trying to find some missing items that I suspect my have been “taken” by either the moving men, the cable guy(s), or the phone repair man. Anyway, my back had starting hurting and I thought it was the kind of pain you get when you’ve been lifting things or bending over or reaching too high up or all three. I took some Tylenol and snuggled up with my animals on the sofa.

As I said on Thursday, I wasn’t feeling well, I had a bad day, and I thought my fibro pain was up. Physical Therapy only helped as long as I was in the warm water. Well, then my stomach started to have a sharp pain. And I got to thinking. I checked my calendar and sure enough, it was time to schedule a Depo shot. My PMSs are pretty painful. I usually get intense stomach cramping combined with backaches and migraines. I did think it was odd that I hadn’t had any migraines this week, but I was taking that as a wonderous thing and not complaining — plus I have a theory that there was mold in the walls of my old apartment that was triggering my migraines, but I digress.

By Thursday night I was pretty uncomfortable but I’d written things off to physical therapy, tired from unpacking, and PMS. I took a Tylenol with codeine and curled up with my animals on the sofa.

Friday morning the pain was extremely uncomfortable in my back. I made the appointment with my doctor’s office for the Depo but I couldn’t get in until Tuesday. I figured I’d just take a lot of Tylenol.

Besides, I didn’t have time for all of that pain, I had a lot to do at home to get ready for a holiday pot luck at my house on Sunday. Plus mailing Christmas cards and presents.

So, imagine my surprise after lunch when I was on the phone, helping a user in peril when I suddenly felt as if something were very wrong. I felt feint. I felt overheated. I felt frozen. I felt it all at once.

This would come and go. At one point, a very low point, I ended up in the women’s bathroom on the floor, laying on my back, reveling in all that is the coolness of the bathroom tile. For the next hour or so, I would go slowly and wobly back and forth between my co-worker BM’s desk and my desk trying to decide if I were going to go to the ER or not. Lots of decisions needed to be weighed after all. Pugly was at daycare. The cats were at home. How would I get home. I felt like I was dying. The pain was getting worse. I was now gagging but unable to throw up and unable to poopie as I tell Pugly.
After collapsing in BM’s cubicle in pain, she took me to the ER and I called the daycare and made arrangements for Pugly to spend the night and the spoiled cats would just have to wait for dinner.
I arrived sometime after 3pm, but I didn’t get into a room/bed until almost 6pm. I was reunited with a friend who was able to get me into an overflow bed after 3 hours in the waiting room, I didn’t see a doctor for another hour and a half. They sent me to Ultrasound where they probed the most tender areas with cold, wet, gelled, round paddle that’s just the right size to be a torture implement. They have to press into the tender area good to get the best picture, you know.

It then took over another hour to see the doctor again, but he says that I probably have passed a gallstone. He thinks that Surgeon back in August that didn’t want to remove my Gallbladder may want to reconsider now. Apparently the duct leading away from the Gallbladder is definitely enlarged now.

I had to drive home before I could take any painkillers. That’s right! I suffered the nightmare without the morphine drip they offered me in the hospital. I am such a responsible adult, damnit! I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the pain, but I did what I had to. Honestly, I don’t know how I made it home. It was unusually foggy too. I could barely see. More than once, I thought about pulling over just to take a painkiller.

When I got home, the Oxycodone the doctor gave me, did nothing. Nothing. I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t find a way to get comfortable. I spent the next five or six hours moving, shift, changing positions, wishing I would throw up, trying to find some magical, miracle position where there was no pain, no queasiness, no pressure, no agony.

I almost called the ambulance to take me back at 2am.

I finally decided to just lay still on my back because there was no position that was comfortable. I guess maybe I fell asleep at 3am.

The agonizing pain had receded by the time I woke up around 8am. The queasiness is still with me even now. Bleh.

I ended up having to postpone my potluck and I haven’t wrapped my Christmas presents to mail. I hope they make it to New Mexico by Christmas. I still have presents to buy actually.

I did get my Christmas tree up, but that’s about it.

(Click for larger view.)

Tags: Gallbladder Surgery, ER, agony