5 Days in The Hospital…

Feb 27, 2009

Well as you have noticed, I haven’t been on all week and that is because I was in the hospital since Saturday night!!! Looks like the problem I had with the pasta last week, that I thought passed, didn’t pass after all! It seems that the combination of that and all the puking I did I broke a stitch and my intestines looped and closed off all the way! Saturday I got up, took the car in to be checked out, went to the gym for the first time to get my workout setup, came home and played basketball for an hour or so with my oldest daughter then had lunch. The pain didn’t start with lunch, but I did throw up a little as I had been all week. After an hour I decided it was time to start taking water again and as soon as I drank the pain started. 

Of course my wife had been bugging me all week to call the doctor since the pasta problem, but being the man that I am I didn’t think I needed to call. And I kept telling my self that Saturday afternoon until the pain got so bad I was about ready to cut my own stomach open and remove what ever was causing the pain. I broke down and called the doctor to ask them what I could do, short of removing my own stomach. They called back after consulting with the surgeon and I was instructed to get to the hospital ASAP where they were waiting for me with my room ready.

We are only about 8 miles from the hospital, but in a city, with traffic lights, that can be a long ride, and when you are in so much pain you want to die it was a VERY long ride and as soon as we got to the front doors I was opening the car door and getting out before my wife even fully stopped!! I limped into the hospital and the quickly got me in a wheel chair and started checking me in. My wife had to take the girls back home and figure out a baby sitter in order to come back later. What seemed like hours, though I know it had to be less than 15 minutes, they finally got me checked in and on my way up!

Was like home coming in the hospital as most the staff that was on were the same group of people who took care of me, 10 weeks to the day, before when I had my RNY. They hurried to get an IV in so they could start pain meds and get me at least comfortable. Once they got the IV in they started the drugs and took blood for blood work. After about an hour the pain started to subside, UNTIL they brought in two 8 oz glasses of this wonderful liquid they wanted me to drink so we could do a CAT scan. Well I laughed at them, telling them there was no way I was going to be able to drink that much in this pain and they said I had to try and I had to get at least one of the glasses down! As soon as I took the first swallow the pain came back… It hurt like hell, did I mention that? It took me about another hour to get that glass down and I thought I was going to die every moment of it. Then I had to wait another hour after drinking it before we could do the scan. 

When they started to hook me up for the scan they needed to add something to my IV so it would show up on the scan. As they started putting it in, my arm started getting bigger and bigger! Now if it would have been my upper arm, I would have been fine with that, but since it was at my elbow it just didn’t look as good. It seems in the rush to get my line in they didn’t use a big enough one and they didn’t do a very good job putting it in, so it burst and was leaking out into my arm tissue. Fun! Off comes one IV and in, a much larger one goes into the other arm! Did I mention that my stomach hurt like hell??? Well for some reason I didn’t felt at as bad at this moment because my arm was hurting from all the hair that was just removed buy taking out the old IV and my other arm hurt from having the hunk of pipe jammed into it for the new IV!! Oh did I mention that I don’t like needles! No IV drug abuse for me in my future!

Ok, CAT Scan done, will have to wait for morning to learn my fait. They told me Saturday night that it would most likely be a blockage and they would go down with a scope to check it out. Imagine my surprise when Sunday morning came and in comes a nurse to shave my belly! Why do you need to shave my belly if they are going down my throat with a camera? She laughed and said, “Oh no, you are being prepped for surgery!”   Great, news to me!!! They said it would start as soon as they could assemble their team!! Hope it’s the A team, but since it was Sunday I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be.

Ok, so they knew my history, did a dumb thing with food a week ago, hadn’t been able to get much in my stomach in a week, been tossing my cookies a lot, hurt like hell to even just drink.. So knowing all this, even me who doesn’t have an M.D. after his name, would know that there must be a lot of fluid and “stuff” in my gut. Hell I just drank a ton of nasty liquid for them less than 12 hours before… Hell yes there is stuff in there! Well they didn’t think about that, so as soon as they put me under I was told I looked like a gusher and must have puked a gallon of “liquid” and “stuff” and yes some when in my lungs so they had to “flush” my lungs to make sure they were clear! How do they flush you ask? J Nothing like our friend “Salt Water” to do the trick. 

They found that I had an internal hernia and my small intestines were completely closed off! They were able to repair it, without removing any more intestines, lucky me! Came out of surgery with a lot less pain that the first time. I guess there was less gas and one less hole involved but it didn’t hurt at all, my stomach that is.. My lungs were on fire! Nothing like getting a light case of Phenomena! 

I spent the next four days trying to get my lungs working again, breathing treatments, walking, motivating others that had surgery within a few days of then, meeting new ones and trying to breath. I went through an amazing amount of pain meds! I was discharged Thursday morning and came home with the plan of returning to work on Friday. Nice thought, but far from reality! I felt like shit all day Thursday, low grade fever, 100.4, very dizzy and just didn’t feel good. Tried to sleep with my CPAP and it felt like it was going to blow my lungs right out of my chest! In the 5 days at the hospital I lost 6 more pounds! I am now down 79 pounds for a weight of 222! Here come the two hundred teens!

Friday I just hung out at home, got the tax refund so paid a ton of bills, including the last of my RNY stuff and tried to heal! I am feeling better, should be able to get back to work on Monday and I have my follow up on Tuesday! 

So let’s see what I learned from all of this!

1. Don’t eat raw pasta, even whole wheat pasta!
2. Don’t eat too much cooked pasta, same as above.
3. If you can’t eat for two days and do nothing but puke, call the doctor!!!
4. If something doesn’t feel right, call the doctor!
5. Catheters hurt coming out, no matter what anyone says!
6. Night nurses are not as nice and helpful as day nurses.
7. “B” surgical team only needed 4 holes not the 5 holes the “A” team needed.
8. Spending $40 on scar cream over the last two months was a total waste of money on 4 out of the 5 holes I have in my stomach!
9. If you’re a man, and have a woman in your life who tells you that you should call the doctor, CALL THE DOCTOR!
10. If you don’t keep a positive about all this, you are going to hurt a lot more than you need to!
11. Yes, it was still all worth it! I am down to 222 pounds!!!
12. Oh ya, and the last, and most important, when in doubt CALL THE DOCTOR!!!!

Cheers to all my friends!
Gavin

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