Monday, February 6, 2012

Scariest day ever

Last Saturday we stayed over at Jenn and Taylor's house.  We went to bed about 11 and that night in bed I noticed this little sharp pain in my gut, I thought it was just gas from what we ate a couple of hours ago and it wasn't really bothering me so I paid no attention to it.  About 6 a.m. it was time for Korbyn's medicine so I got her out of bed and set her on their kitchen table.  I was standing right in front of her when all of a sudden I felt like I needed to vomit, the room started spinning, my ears were on fire and ringing and my vision was getting blurry.  I immediately put my head down on the table and started calling out Colton's name, but of course he couldn't hear me, so I just waited it out and it passed.  Weird, but still felt completely fine that whole morning.  We left their house about noon and I remember getting into our car and telling Colton I think I'm coming down with something, I'm not sure what exactly I just don't feel right.

Once we get home we all lay down for a little bit and about 1:30 I check my temperature and I'm running 101.8 and have slight body aches and the chills.  I then realize that the pain in my side is still there.  It's still not really bothering me, it's just not going away.  That night in bed it's getting a little more intense.  I notice that it doesn't hurt as bad if I lay on my right side, but if I rolled over in the middle of the night on my back or my left side it would hurt so bad that it would jolt me awake.  So the next morning I call the dr. at 8 a.m. to try and get an appointment, the earliest they had was 10:45.  When she lays me down on the table to examine my abdomen it was physically painful for me to try and lay down.  When she pushed her hands on my lower right side, tears started seeping out of my eyes, it was super tender.  She said the symptoms I have can lead to a number of things, it could be an ectopic pregnancy, cyst on my ovary, appendicitis, kidney stones etc.  She first was going to send me to Caldwell to get some tests run, then came back in and sent me straight to the ER.  She said I just have this feeling that it may be something a little more serious and I would rather have you at the hospital already.

I get in my car and call Colton to see if he could meet me to ride with me up there.  Of course I start crying when I get on the phone with him because obviously something is wrong, but we have no idea what.  We check into the ER at 12:45 and this is when I start to get a little pissed.  I know everyone deserves an equal opportunity to have quality health care, but this was ridiculous!  The ER was packed full and only a handful of these people looked like they needed medical attention.  Some of them were actually walking in with pizzas and sodas and saying hello to all their friends that they saw.  Then there were people like me who could barely sit down in their chair!  Like I said, I don't really want to go into it, but in MY situation I think things could have turned out a lot differently had I gotten immediate attention.  Anyway, about 4:00 they give me a contrast to drink so they can run CT scans at 5:45.  In the meantime they tell me that there was blood in my urine and my white blood cell count was high, not good.  They run the scans and a few minutes later a surgeon came in and told me that my appendix looks really bad on the scans and it may have already began to seep and we're going to be doing surgery in a little bit....uhhhh.....ok.

I just start tearing up because I'm so flippin scared.  I've never had surgery before!  And now all of a sudden I'm going to have emergency surgery?!  Thankfully Colton was there but I just wanted to see everyone, especially Korbyn, just one more time.  The surgeon was very blunt when he came in (which I'm glad he was) and said that although it's a simple surgery, my highest risk is the anesthesia.  There could be paralysis or death, and because it's an emergency I didn't have time to fast so there's a bigger chance of me aspirating so while they're operating they'll be applying a lot of pressure on my throat so nothing comes up.  At this point I'm kind of in a daze, like "this isn't really happening to me!"

I think it was about 7 when they were wheeling me down the hall and they told us to say our goodbye's.  They wheeled me into the operating room and I had to scoot myself onto the table and they didn't even count me down or anything, they just started going to work and put the mask on my face and I felt a pinch (I remember because I said "OW!") and then I was out.  It felt like I had just closed my eyes and then they were telling me to breathe after they took the tube out of my throat.  I can remember wanting to open my eyes and look around so bad but just physically not being able to.  Then the pain hit me.  Oh...my...goodness.  My stomach was on fire!  I've never felt a pain like that before, it was really intense.  Then a few minutes later they wheeled me into my room where my mom, dad, brother and Colton were all waiting for me.

When I'm a little more conscious they tell me that when he opened me up it had pretty much already ruptured and they had to do some major damage control.  They had to clean up everything that had seeped out of my appendix and that meant going deeper than just snipping my appendix off.  I've got about a 4 inch incision held together by 10 staples and a plastic tube coming out of my abdomen.  The drain that they put in me is still with me unfortunately!  I have my follow up appointment tomorrow where I'll get my staples and my drain out and then he'll give me more details on what I can and can't do.  I went into the hospital on Monday, discharged on Friday and haven't been able to do anything since!  I'm still really sore, but it's definitely getting a little better every day.  And of course to top things off, I was scheduled to take my second exam on Tuesday!  That's a whole different mess that we're having to deal with.

I just felt so bad for Korbyn the entire time.  I didn't get to see her until Thursday when they came up to the hospital.  I missed her terribly.  She stayed with Colton's mom and Wednesday evening they called and we got to talk to Korbyn.  I tried to talk to her as much as I could but when I heard her say "momma" after she heard me I had to put the phone down and I just started bawling my eyes out.  I missed her so much it hurt.  Thursday when they came in she would just look at me and the poor thing was so confused.  And it made it so much worse because I had my IV in one arm and my drain was sticking out on my other side, so they couldn't even set her down in bed with me, we could only air hug :(  It makes it really hard at home when she runs to me with her arms open wide and all I can do is squeeze her hands and giggle because I still can't pick her up.  It just breaks my heart about what she may be thinking or feeling about why her mommy won't pick her up!  I really do love you baby, and hopefully mommy can pick you up and give you the biggest hug ever very soon :)

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