The month of November has pretty much disappeared for me. And today I am 3 weeks and 2 days post-surgery. Let me start from the beginning.
Part I: Figuring it out!
On November 5th we took our sweet Jared to the airport and said good-bye for two years. The very next morning at 5:30 I was woken with a pain in the top of my stomach that radiated to the bottom and to both sides, mostly my left side. Three hours later I call Dave home from work to take me to ER. I wanted to go to Everett but Dave felt like we needed to go to the smaller hospital in Monroe. The car ride in Dave's Jeep was intensely painful. We got to ER and I couldn't even make it through the walk-in doors. I crawled into the ambulance entrance because I was in so much pain. I was feeling nausea and I was on the floor. The nurse brought a wheel chair to me and a bag for the nausea. In the room, dressed in a hospital gown, and all pertinent information given, narcotics on board, they begin to try to determine the source of my pain. My body does not like narcotics. And they make me hallucinate. At one time I asked Dave to take the sword before I dropped it. He looks at me with one eyebrow cocked and replies that he is going to call work and tell them I won't be in to teach that day. After several hours and a CT scan later I was given a diagnosis. Because the Doctor wanted the scan in a hurry, he didn't bother giving me any contrasting solution, which might have shown the real reason for the pain. He told me that they couldn't find my appendix but that I had a golf-ball sized cyst on my left ovary. He gave me some Vicaden (another narcotic) and sent me home with instructions to come back if I couldn't manage the pain at home. He then told me to make a follow up with my OBGYN. The soonest appointment I could get was eight days away.
Only one hour after arriving home I was writhing on my bed in agonizing pain waiting for the medication they gave me to work. After one and a half hours of debilitating pain the drugs start working. During that whole weekend I dealt with the pain and could scarcely walk and when I did I was bent over. The Vicaden made me nauseous and hallucinate as well. I was also on anti-nausea medication so that I could keep the pain meds down and not throw them up. During my hallucinations I saw a bug-eyed lizard in my living room, a gigantic centipede on my bedroom bay window, and Darth Vader in a wheat field. It was trippy. Our home teacher came over the next evening and helped Dave administer a blessing to me. In it Dave paused A LOT. He prayed, with much trouble, that my cyst would resolve itself. And that I would be able to resume my normal activities. His excessive pauses really perplexed me. But I was so sore and tender and was just grateful for the priesthood in my home. We later realized why he had such trouble with the blessing. A cyst wasn't the problem. Over the next few days, however, I was able to somewhat resume my normal actives. I went to work on Monday and continued to carefully carry out my other responsibilities.
By Wednesday morning, I was still tender and walking slowly. I decided to go into work but felt prompted to pray first for something specific. I prayed that I would be able to make it through work and make it home. I wasn't sure exactly why, but I did it. I made it through four hours of singing with my Montessori children and the 45 minute commute home. I wasn't liking the Vicaden previously given me and so after only 24 hours I was self medicating with 2 Aleve morning and night and 4 Ibuprofen every 4 hours during the day and during the night. I had been doing this for days, and if I missed the 4 hour mark I was in a lot of pain again. Only 10 minutes after arriving home from work, having 2 Aleve and 4 Ibuprofen in me, I sit on my chaise lounge and the most excruciating pain begins. I was writhing and groaning and Ryan grabs my cell phone and calls his daddy. He tells his dad to come home right away and that mommy is in trouble. This pain goes on for 10-15 minutes. It was so excruciating that I grabbed onto the arm of the couch and hear a very loud "crack". I was thinking that I had just pulled the arm of the couch out. At home now, Dave gives me another kind of pain medication and the pain begins to lessen. Dave called my OBGYN to ask if there was any chance of getting me in earlier than Friday. The answer was no, but the nurse talks to me and asks me to please stop dumping Aleve and Ibuprofen in my system together. She then put me on a new regimen and also puts me back on smaller amounts of the Vicaden. During the night I go from bad pain to worse pain.
By Thursday morning I was self medicating again using Excedrin Migrane to manage the pain and off to work I go. That afternoon, I was not feeling comfortable about going to my OBGYN the next day by myself, which I was originally planning to do. I wasn't sure why. Dave set up a sub for his classroom and took another day off of work to come with me. That night he gave me a husband's blessing. In it he says that Heavenly Father is in complete control, not the doctors, not us, but Him.
Friday morning couldn't come fast enough. In her patient room, my doctor comes in and gives me a hug and just lets me whimper on her shoulder for several moments. Crying was too painful. I love my OBGYN and have been seeing her for nearly 20 years. She has been with me for all three of my boys. By this time, I had been living with the pain for EIGHT days. She did her examination and told me and Dave that a cyst would not cause this much pain. She told us to IMMEDIATELY go the the ER, that she thought it was my appendix, and that she was calling to let ER know that we were to be treated as priority #1. This had become a critical emergency situation. A member of our bishopric is an optometrist in the same building as my OBGYN (which is in the same parking lot as the hospital), and Dave called him over to help give me a blessing.
Part II: Aha!
Back in the ER I don a hospital gown again, get hooked up to all sorts of stuff, have Narcotics pumping through my veins, and they get the CT scanner ready for me. This time they gave me a contrasting solution in my IV. I had to lay down flat again for the scan. I was terribly sore and tender and incredibly uncomfortable. The scan showed a halo around my appendix. They were not happy with this image so they warmed up the scanner again and gave me a 48 ounce pitcher of another contrasting solution that was a red liquid. They told me I had only one hour to drink it all up. It looked like Cherry-Pomegranate Crystal Lite but tasted like cherry flavored talc. One and a half hours later I was back in the scanner. Only after they took me back to my room did they realize that the solution didn't have enough time in my system so it was back to the scanner. It was incredibly difficult at this point for me to get off the bed and onto the table for the scan. I could hardly uncurl my body from the tenderness, and pain I had been through over the last eight days. They scanned me once again and then left me there, in misery, while they tried to determine if it worked or not. That was three scans for the day. I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. The pain was returning and my breathing was becoming quick, shallow and labored. The technician took me to my room where a nurse begins loading me up on Morphine. My body doesn't do well with this much medication in me. And I really wasn't processing all that was going on because I am so heavily medicated. As we started putting all the information together we begin to realize that Wednesday was when my appendix had ruptured and that I had gone 52 hours with a ruptured appendix before being wheeled into surgery. It was when I had nearly ripped the arm off the sofa that it ruptured. And then I went to work the next day WITH A RUPTURED APPENDIX. It is a miracle that I am alive. My appendix had encapsulated itself and the poison, preventing it from spreading throughout my whole body. This is a rare occurrence, but not unheard of. At this point I did not have any fever in the preceding eight days until just before taking me into surgery. They, the surgeon, doctors, and nurses talked to Dave about what was going on, put a cap over my hair and wheeled my bed over to admitting. They began prepping me for surgery and asked Dave some financial questions and talked about liabilities. I was scared. A whole bunch of things were explained to me, which I was not completely understanding, I said good-bye to Dave, they took me into OR and then I was out! Thank goodness, I did not want to be awake when they intubated me (put a tube down my throat).
I woke up in recovery to Dave and a nurse trying to revive me. I was wheeled to my hospital room and tried to begin processing what had just happened. Dave stayed with me as long as he could, and then went home to two very scared little boys who had been with my parents the whole day. That night I had these compression cuffs on my legs that pulsated every few minutes, next door was someone snoring, across the hall was someone hacking out a lung, a nurse's assistant kept coming in to take my vitals, the nurse kept coming in to administer more pain meds and anti-nausea medication plus the antibiotics, and my monitor kept beeping. Needless to say, I was exhausted and got very little real sleep.
Saturday morning I was doing well and Dave came to spend the day with me. I even got up and walked a little bit. My parents even brought the boys to see me. That was a good day and I was optimistic.
Sunday was a whole different story. I had been on a liquid diet, because during surgery they had to fish around to find my appendix and then had to vacuum out all the poison, so my intestines had completely shut down. I was to have no real food until they began working again. The liquid food was horrible and I was still having terrible nausea from all the pain meds. They would put me on one pain med and then I would become nauseous and because of all the sutures and stitching, they defiantly didn't want me to heave, so they would put me on an anti-nausea, then they would put me on a different pain med and I was nauseous again, so they would put me on yet another anti-nausea medication, all the while pumping me full of 2 very powerful antibiotics which also caused sever nausea. And I was not doing very well. I was starving which caused me more nausea that they could not control. I think that I have a pretty high tolerance for pain, but when it comes to starving-nausea, I just cannot handle it. I had now been three days without really eating. I was becoming increasingly restless, going from a chair to the bed, standing up, and back again to the bed and chair. The nurse was coming in and out trying to help us figure out what to do for me. I would carefully rock myself back and forth saying "I just can't do this anymore", over and over again. My breathing was becoming shallow and my legs were starting to spasm. I was having a panic attack! I had never had one before and they are not fun. At one moment I began feeling very much alone, and a strong impression, not a voice, but a very penetrating emotion said, YOU ARE NOT ALONE. And at that moment I was never more grateful to my Savior who knew exactly what I was going through. Finally the nurse remembered a protocol that they used to give with the anti-nausea medication. It was called Ativan. She got me all settled into bed, socks, covers, pillows, she put a heating pad over my legs because my body temperature was plummeting, and told me not to move and then administered the Ativan. I twitched my feet for about 5 minutes trying not to move, then dropped my head back and was out. Dave said it was instantaneous. One second I was moving and the next I was comatose. He said I laid like that with my mouth open for about 5 hours. I NEVER sleep with my mouth open. This stuff is not like taking a sleeping pill, you don't dream and it is not restful. It just shuts you down for several hours. And when I came to, the last thing I was moving before falling out became the first thing that started moving again. It was like coming out of a deep freeze. First my feet, then my legs, and all the way up I started to regain feeling. That was all I needed to reset my system. Sunday evening I was doing much better, but not well enough for the little boys to come see me. I was looking like a train wreck. Near bedtime, Dave left to go home to the boys again and I was left alone to try to sleep. This time I had ear plugs. I still didn't sleep very well. The nurse even tried to take me for a walk. I just wanted to get down on the floor on all fours. I had only gotten about 10 steps out of my room when she took me back. She stayed with me much of the night taking care of all my needs. Her name was Eva. She was from Ethiopia, and she was so compassionate with me. I was glad to have her stay with me through much of that night.
By Monday morning I was doing better. The surgeon came in to do his daily rounds and said I could be discharged that afternoon. I was so glad to hear that. I HATE hospitals!
Part III: Home Again, Home Again!
Finally at home in my own bed I tried to get comfortable and slept much of the afternoon away. I was still extremely tender from all the surgery and no position was really very comfortable. I had to sleep with a mountain of pillows under my knees to help with the discomfort. By that evening I was 4 days with very little food and still only liquids. And now I had to be taking the antibiotics by mouth, which caused me even more nausea, and try to keep it down. Monday evening I began digressing, and I started having anxieties about having to go back to the hospital. At one point, I started to feel the cyst on the left side hurt, and in my anxiety I said to Dave, "Oh no, what if I have another appendix"? He said, "Kath, everyone only gets one. You are done". Our home teacher came over again to help Dave give me another blessing. I didn't really remember the blessing too well. I was beside myself with hunger and nausea. Later that evening I emptied out my stomach, orally took the nausea inducing antibiotics, the nausea inducing pain meds and anti-nausea meds , and I take more of the Ativan, and wait. We thought it would only take 5-10 minutes to start working. An agonizing hour and 20 minutes later of trying to not empty out my stomach again, it finally worked and I was out. And for three hours I was motionless.
The next several days got better and better. I was able to sleep better, I was able to move around better, I began to camp out on the couch and get out of my bed and I began eating again after five days with little to no food. I couldn't laugh or cry, sneeze or cough and when I did cough, it was horribly painful. But as the days passed on so did the pain and discomfort. For the first week I was afraid of being left alone and so my parents stayed with me. But by the next week I was able to do a few things for myself and it was just Ryan and myself at home. The third week I was cleared to go back into work. It was wonderful to return to happy, smiling faces of the children I love so much and to hear how much they missed me.
I have now had three plus weeks to process the last month and the one thing that struck me most is how much my Heavenly Father loves me and cares about me. I knew He was with me the whole way, from start to end. He never left my side. And every time we prayed and asked Him for something, it was granted. Maybe not exactly what we wanted, and not instantly. And every time we asked something of Him we had to put forth effort and go through trial and error to figure things out, but none the less, those blessings and favors were always granted to me. The other thing that struck me was the blessings that come when you have a missionary out. I am so grateful to Jared for choosing to serve the Lord. The blessing of his choice contributed to saving my life. I am eternally grateful! Although not an ideal situation, everything happened under Heavenly Father's control. I was grateful that I knew I could just let go and put my life in His hands and let Him drive. I am one lucky and blessed daughter of God to be alive today. I am so thankful...I have a lot to live for!!!
