Much better now

May 2, 2009

As I write, I'm sitting in a hospital bed. Ugh. But fear not!! I'm doing much better and hope to be going home soon (like before the day is over).

Thursday night I woke up around midnight and realized I was having watery diarrhea. It kept going on every twenty minutes or so for the next couple of hours. I woke Jeremy up, "Hey sweetie?"
"What? What is it? What's wrong?" (Poor guy.)
I told him what had been going on. "I think we should probably take you in Abby. We don't want to mess around." So I agreed. As I was starting to get dressed, I also started feeling a little queasy. And then the vomiting hit. We got to the ER. I started vomiting in the triage so they got me back to an ER bed right away and got fluids going. After about 15 hours in the ER and a couple of bouts of dry heaves, they admitted me. My surgeon for the first two surgeries, Dr. V came by and is the doctor following my case as Dr. T is out of town. It was actually kind of good to see him since I haven't seen him since December. The man saved my life, I will always have a great affection for him.
I got plenty of anti-nausea meds which knocked me out good. The nurse and Jeremy were laughing at all the twitching I was doing in my sleep on all the meds. But hey, they did their job!! I had a good night - as good as one can expect with being woken up every two hours to take vitals and an IV that wasn't in quite right.
This morning, just as they were deciding to re-do my IV because my vein blew, Dr. V came in and said if I was feeling well enough to drink and could tolerate liquids and food, I could go home tomorrow. I talked him into me going home tonight if I was doing well. He said he was okay with that. So far so good!
Through the course of this event, I'm realizing that this is just going to be par for the course for us now. When you don't have a colon you can't absorb fluids as well. If you can't absorb fluids and catch some bug that causes fluids to leave you too quickly, a trip to the ER is going to happen. Jeremy was right, we can't mess around. They told me when we got to the ER after only two hours of not being able to keep fluids in me that I was pretty severely dehydrated. They pumped four liters of fluids in me in the fifteen hours I was there - and I didn't puff up at all.
I think the whole thing was easier on me than on Jeremy. He immediately goes into crisis mode and is concerned that something else is happening; something that could be life threatening. But I think with time we'll figure out how to deal with these types of things. I didn't really feel panicked, I just felt sick. But like I said, I'm feeling better now. Keep your fingers crossed that I can go home today! I would be so much happier on the couch in my living room with Jeremy and Django chilling out with me!! PLEASE!!! (smile)