Continued Health Updates

September 17th:

Just want to let you all know I'm home from the hospital. More info later

September 19th:

Hi everyone,

Well, I'm back in the hospital. This time I'm in room 508 instead of 504. I had some crazy pain last night that couldn't be controlled, went to the ER and they admitted me. One X-Ray session and an ultrasound later all we have is an old, deflated ovarian cyst on my left ovary. It may have been there from the beginning or it may have been a new one that burst. My gyno is coming to visit me and talk about it tomorrow.

In the meantime, my dad is in town and I plan to drink as much fresh veggie juice as I can get my hands on. Gonna see if I can't get my juicer brought in.

September 23rd:

Hi everyone,
I've been so busy recovering I haven't gotten around to updating you all.

I was admitted back into the hospital Friday night/Saturday morning. I was still having fevers and was having so much pain that it took multiple doses of hydromorphone throughout the night to control it. Sunday morning the pain was doing better and my dad was in town so I wanted OUT! And out I got. I've still been having a lot of pain and tiredness but I can pretty much control it at home, although I'm having to take far more narcotics than I'd like to. Hopefully it's only temporary.

During this second hospital stay I had an ultrasound done that found a deflated, small cyst on my left ovary. The pain may have been it bursting. We don't really know.

The diagnosis from my first hospital stay: a had E. Coli, a UTI and, of course, that obstruction (which is now gone to the best of our knowledge).

Anyway, I'm home!

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Health Updates

Later on September 12th:

Let's see...I've been put on Cipro (an antibiotic) and I had a very painful ultrasound of my liver done. UNMC said that if my bile ducts looked dilated that I was to be transferred to the hospital there. I hear the ultrasound looked normal, but tomorrow we'll find out for sure. My fever went down but then this evening went up to 100.2 . I just want to keep my blankets!!!

Been having a lot of aches and pains today that aren't controlled very well. I've also felt very weak and cranky. Not feeling very happy right now. Still, not a bad day. I made lots of origami and gave a string of stuff to my nurse. I have a barf basin on my table filled with origami things with a sign that says, "Take One! -Becca) except instead of a dash there's a heart by "Becca".

Natalie/Ginny came to see me and got me a balloon and real food from Open Harvest. She also tought me to play the card game, Golf. Thanks, Gin!
Well, I'm off to fall into a drug coma.

September 15th:

Hi all.
I'm still in the hospital (Bryan West, room 504). I've still been running fevers and have E. Coli and a UTI. I've been having a lot of pain and nausea so I've been pretty doped up most of the time. I have a thriving origami business going on. I make things for my nurses and docs and other people started wanting them to so I kept making stuff. Now the whole front of my table is filled with origami. There are papers to take, too. One I wrote out about what Origami Wishes is about and what the different things (like turtles or stars) symbolize to me. The other paper is a copy of the newspaper article I was in. I've been given $1 in tip money and now have a little box sitting out that says TIPS.

Kathy brought me veggie juice yesterday. I cannot even tell you how good that tasted.

Today I got an abdominal CT and I'm still running a bit of a fever. We were thinking I might be able to come home today but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Anyway, there's probably a lot of stuff I'm leaving out but the drugs have made everything kind of a blur.

Later:

Okay, so I may be getting an ultrasound to look at my ovaries to make sure they're not the source of the fever. The fever should be gone by now with this much time on the antibiotic. Also, since bowel stuff is still an issue I'm going to be getting a colonoscopy on Thursday. So I'll be here at least until then.

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Hospital Time

Okay, so I have a fever of 102.8 and have narcotics in me. So, if this update is a disgrace to the English language, I apologize. Happy reading!

September 8th: The past few days I've been feeling feverish, weak, etc. I'm having big time nausea. I go to the hospital to get a shot of Zofran through my port so I can take my meds. The nurse is kind enough to leave my port accessed. This means that the needle that goes into my port is left in like an IV. There's a tube sticking out to administer medication. Accessing my port can be a pain, so having it pre-accessed is nice. Saves me a poke if I have to get more med put in.

Nightime: I'm having bad stomach cramping and lots of gas. I take my breakthrough pain narcotic (hydromorphone) but don't have any luck. I'm up all night with pain.

September 9th:

7:30 AM: We go to the ER to get my pain under control. I get an X-ray that shows I'm somewhat constipated but have a lot of gas. I'm given an enema and I go home.

The rest of the day is spent at Gramma's so I could be in a supervised drug coma. Mom had to work. I continued to have pain and took lots of narcotics.

That night I started to have body aches and a fever of 99.5.

September 10th, 2009

Midnight: Mom and I go back to the ER. An X-ray is done and it turns out I have a partial bowel obstruction. Time to suction! One of those nasty tubes is put down my nose and into my stomach and is them hooked up to suction. I started to get some relief from that, although the tube was a pain in the rear. Or rather, the throat. I'm admitted to the hospital for the night so they can continue to suction and give fluids and pain med.

During the day I have X-rays, blood tests, etc. The main thing is the pain in my throat from the tube. I even had to have major doses of pain med to make it somewhat bearable. I learned from my local GI and some of the on-call docs that the obstruction had happened because scar tissue in my abdomen (from all the surgeries) had tangled itself in with my colon. By late afternoon my tube was pulled. Hallilujah!

I'm on clear liquids, which to me means coconut water, clear veggie juices, water, herbal tea and vegan veggie broth with no MSG. To the hospital clear liquids means enough high fructose corn syrup to give me fatty liver disease. Jello, "fruit" juices from concentrate that have all sorts of weird acids in them and caffinated tea. The veggie broth was tolerable. I had coconut water (high in electolytes, potassium and mighty tasty) and herbal tea brought from home. Otherwise I ate a little jello, veggie broth and water.

At night I had serious itching so they tried Benadryl through my port. Omg, I was so out of it and asleep in minutes. I have very little recollection of the rest of the night other than continuing to itch and getting a pill of some sort that cleared it up.

September 11th, 2009

I'm put on a "soft foods" diet which includes milk, pudding, more high fructose corn syrup drinks and more milk. Thank God for Cream of Wheat. I mean, what's a semi-vegan, lactose intolerant girl to do? I got to have foods of my choice for dinner. The salad was sad, but hey, it was salad! I asked for whole wheat bread and got white bread with brown coloring in it. Mom brought me brown rice cakes. Thanks, mom!

This day I slept a lot. I read. I organized my room. I waited for doctors. Mom was at work so I was alone most of the day. I had a student nurse taking care of me. She accompamied me on an X-ray check-up. A nice guy always pushed me there in a wheelchair. The student nurse and the wheelchair dude were talking about school and careers and whatnot and I realized they were both younger than me. It's werid to be getting older and have people younger than you taking care of you in the hospital....

At some point I spiked a fever around 101.7 . Of course, there was no leaving the hospital with that going on. I had blood cultures, stool cultures, urine tests, one of those nasty nasal swabs and an exam by the doctor. In the evening my temp started going down to about 99.2 . They tell me I can go home in the morning provided my temp doesn't go any higher.

I'm still having body aches and needing pain med for it.

September 12th, 2009

5:00 AM: The tech comes in and takes my temp. It's 101.8. Later it's 102. 8 . My blankets are taken away, a cold cloth is put on my head and my room temp is brought down to 60. It's awful. I'm always cold.

Blood cultures are done, I'm given Tylenol. Now we're waiting for further instructions from the doctor. UNMC will be contacted.

My temp was just taken again and it's down to 101.2

Phew! It's a crazy world.

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Colonoscopy Craziness

After two days of fasting and bowel prep (leaving me nauseous, constantly sleeping and 5 lbs smaller) I went in for my colonoscopy on Friday. I had asked multiple times during the previous week if anesthesia had been scheduled since I'd had to cancel the year before because someone didn't schedule them. On Friday none of the nurses could access my port (which has been moody lately) and I had to have an IV put in. I was ready to go when the doc noticed anesthesia hadn't been scheduled!!! A nurse tried to get someone to come but anesthesia was booked for the rest of the day. So home I went. We were NOT happy.

Saturday I ate very little since I was still nauseous from the prep. Sunday I started prepping all over with 5 different laxatives (since I can't take the one they would normally use). It didn't clean me out as well as I would have liked but I was guessing that doing a prep so soon after the other one was part of the reason. Also, I only fasted for one day this time. I wasn't going to starve myself and I was low enough of vitamins already. I did my best and went in today. Again my port couldn't be accessed and I had to have an IV. I went under full anesthesia even though I have possible bronchitis.

When I woke up the doctor told me they hadn't been able to do anything because I was FOS (Full Of Stool). So now we have to reschedule AGAIN. That is, if I consent. I'm kinda feeling like I'm done.

In other news my MELD is 15, and apparently I'm having some sort of problems because I had to have extra blood tests done over the weekend. Guess we'll find out about that.

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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.

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