The next day I awoke (ha...I hardly slept) feeling groggy and sluggish. They had given me 2 units of blood overnight, but I still felt like I was running on empty. I was on strict FLAT bedrest due to my concious issues the night before. They told me that I had 2 procedures ahead of me. One, a blood study in which they would radiate my blood and then I would lay under a scanner. This was to look for the source of my internal bleeding. I think that I failed to mention this. I was bleeding internally...a LOT. We thought that it was from the stent that had been placed in my stomach area, but needed to confirm this. I would also have a different type of drain inserted into my stomach into my abdominal cavity. It would be screwed into the tissues where I had an absess and lots of infection.
With great anxiety, I am wheeled down in my bed to the radiology dept. They were to take CTs, locate where the drain needed to be, mark it on my skin, give me sedation, and then place the drain. After it was placed, they would do more CTs to make sure it was just right. Little did I know that my anxiety would increase and I would have to dig deep...really, really deep. My pulse was high. My blood pressure low. A dangerous combination when you're talking about adding in sedation. The dr said to me, "I'm not comfortable giving you sedation with your vitals being so unstable. We need to get this infection out. Do you think you can handle it with just local anesthetic?" In a nano second, my mind was flooded with thoughts of, "NO WAY! I HAVE to get home to my babies! I just HAVE to do it. It's not POSSIBLE! I am too much of a whimp! I can DO it! I HAVE to do it!" It was a cacauphony of doubts, fears, bravery, and courage...perhaps those are 2 in the same, but each wave of emotion hit sure in hard. With tears in my eyes, I said, "I HAVE to do it. I have babies to get home to and I have got to get well." Over the next few moments as they prepared to switch up the plan, I kept saying, "I can do it." to the nurse. I'm sure she thought that I was delirious, and I might have been what with all of the pain meds. The lidocane burned like fire as they shot it in once, twice, three times, four times, but each time was a little less...each time the fire died out a little sooner. There was lots of pressure pain, but come on, I've had 3 babies! You can't take the pressure pain away and this was minimal to delivering a baby! :)
They finally declared the process complete and took the remaining CTs. They declared it to be perfectly placed and sent the cultures that were collected out to be done.
I was taken to a different room where they extracted 5 mL of my blood. I then had to wait 30 min while it was radiated. They put it back in and put me under this huge camera box thing. It was basically a camera that only picks up radiation. I watched as thousands of little white specks went from my arm where my picc line was located and scattered across the screen as the blood made its way throughout my system. It was very cool to watch. However, I never saw it pooling anywhere and this set the medical side of my brain to whirling. I would soon make a connection that would be pivotal (sp?) to my road to healing. After laying there for an hour, I was taken back up to my hospital room and waited for them to come and get me for my repeat ERCP. When they confirmed that the bleed was in that area, they were going to remove the stent, cauterize the bleeding, and put in a different stent. So, I waited.
No comments:
Post a Comment