Stress Test

I've gotten a little better when it comes to the stuff that was going on last week. But I've certainly made up for it in other places.

One day I all of a sudden felt really, really horrible and shortly after had an "ammonia episode". Apparently the ammonia has been building up in my brain and I haven't been keeping on top of it as well as I should. I went a little crazy. I don't care to go into details.

Also started having a raw-feeling throat and before long a cough. Saw the doctor today and I've got swollen glands and red spots in my throat and all that lovely stuff so I got put on antibiotics.

Yesterday I got an echocardiogram and a stress test done. I'd never had a stress test done, bt UNMC wanted the info so they could make sure I was still ship-shape (relatively) for transplant.

First the nurses screwed up accessing my port so they had to call in an expert.

For the test I was given a medicine that sped up my heart rate. It didn't really work so they gave me some stronger stuff. A minute in to having this put in me I started screaming. I thought I was having a stroke or an aneurysm. The muscles and blood vessels in the back of my neck and head felt like someone was stretching them on a taffy puller. My heart was beating in my head as if I'd been standing on my head for hours. My jaws shut and my tongue swelled up. It was all I could do to tell the doctor what was happening. They stopped the medicine immediately. I had to squeeze the doctor's fingers and it felt like a Herculean effort. The only thing to do was wait while the medicine wore off. I probably lay there for five minutes (it felt like 10 years and I was sure I was going to die at any moment due to Exploding Head Decapitation or something similar) until the pain was low enough that I could start crying like a baby. Even then the pain was at about the level of a banging-my head-on-hard-objects-and-going-to-the ER migraine. After about 10 more minutes, an oxycontin and many cold compresses I was able to slowly roll over so that an full echo could be done since the doctors were obviously not going to be getting a stress test.

I was then wheeled out to where my mom was waiting to pick me up. She must have wondered why a nurse was wheeling me out of the hospital after an everyday medical test.

The fact that I had sinus congestion, had taken my blood-pressure lowering medication the night before, have asthma and two minor heart problems are probably some of the reasons the test went the way it did.

I came home, took an Imatrex and went to sleep. My head still hurts horribly today. I've had to take hydromorphone to make it bearable. Hopefully the horrible heartbeat-speeding drugs get out of my body soon and all is back to normal. Well, semi-normal.