Get Well Glencairn!

Nugget, I love you! Thank you so much to everyone! Here's what happened. Two full weeks in the hospital with a major surgery that saved my life.

I went to a new gastro doc (my 4th) and he prescribed a brand new medicine, so I filled it and took a dose Thursday night (the 11th) and right away noticed that my wrists were tense and sore, but all of my other muscles were like jello, I had absolutely no muscle control and it made me so ridiculously disoriented. I literally couldn't hold a complete thought or even remember simple words. It was scary. The next morning I took the next dose and noticed the same symptoms all came back so I immediately called the doctor to ask about it. I didn't get a call back, but figured that I should take the next doses and call again on Monday. I took Friday night's dose as well as Saturday morning and the same thing, but by Saturday around noon or so, I was feeling so sick to my stomach with hard stabbing shooting pain as well that I could hardly move. I thought some of it might be from the new med, but not sure if all of it was. I took saturday night's dose and within an hour, I hurt so bad I was just sobbing and knew something was wrong. Russ bundled me into the car and we went to the emergency room.

After arriving at the emergency room, I had some x-rays taken and they discovered a blockage that had come out of nowhere and hardened to like stone just since starting the new med and said that it would very likely need surgery. They couldn't do it there, but transferred me to their sister hospital who could. Both hospitals are about the same distance from my house just in opposite directions. I arrived at the other hospital by ambulance and was admitted and the surgeon took a look at everything and said that they could do two things, first was a suppository and hope that the blockage passed, but the doctor didn't recommend that because he thought it might be just far enough past the time that would work or the second option was to do a smaller surgery to remove it and that was what he recommended. So, we agreed to what he thought was best and went ahead. While doing the first bit of surgery the doctor came across by accident something that no tests, x-rays, CT scans or anything else had found...a small segment of intestine that was damaged and in the process of dying and was already mostly necrotic. He completely removed that necrotic segment and then re-attached the good ends and finished the surgery up. The re-sectioning was the more major of the two parts.

That was very early on Sunday the 14th, just after midnight. I spent the next week with an NG tube (a tube that they put down my nose, throat, and into my stomach) and it was miserable, but the relief when they finally removed it was incredible. I had a picc line attached instead of an IV and had a monstrous IV pole command center that looked like it had enough components attached that I could have piloted the Mars rover from it. For about a week I also had a PCA pump. Basically, they let me control my own pain medication administration with a little button that I clicked every time I needed a bit more. It wasn't a full dose, but just a tiny portion of the dose and only clickable every 10 minutes and only so many mg's per hour. It was a life saver, though, and since I didn't abuse the button, got to keep it longer than they usually let patients have them.

My body did its level best not to cooperate at any point of this and that was part of why I was there for so long, my body kept not cooperating and things were going wrong and not working as they should, but finally it got with the program and I was doing a bit better and we started looking at release times. I got blood drawn every morning and complete tests run and one thing that they monitored closely was my white blood cell count that had been so high. After removing that necrotic segment of intestine, my WBC count dropped pretty drastically right down into healthy/normal range and stayed there every day but one and that was when I developed a bit of an infection, but the very next day, it was right back down to normal again.

The doctors believe that the necrotic segment was what was causing all of the problems that I have been having for the past 10 or so months and now that it is gone, they will monitor my health for a while, but think that I should go back to normal and be healthy again! So, I am angry as heck that the new gastro doc prescribed a med that caused me to need to go to the hospital and have surgery, but on the other hand, if he hadn't prescribed a horrible drug, the surgery never would have happened and the necrotic segment wouldn't have been found until it was too late. They said that if it hadn't been found until it died completely, it would have resulted in about a 60 to 70% chance that I would have died from it and if I did survive, my life would be entirely different. I would have lost a far larger section of both small and large intestine and been reliant on an ostomy of some variety for the rest of my life with far more limited mobility and quality of life.

Now I have weeks of recovery here at home (and still a huge number of doctor visits to monitor me for a while) and I will be online, but it will be smaller amounts of time than previously for me, just because I am only able to sit up at my computer for very small amounts of time at a go. I'll be able to check in at least once or twice a day as far as I know, I just won't be online as often for a bit here at the start of my recovery until I can be up and about a bit more.

So, I just wanted to update and let everyone know where I vanished to and how I'm doing now. Thank you for all of your concern through all of this. You guys are truly a large part of what kept me motivated to find a cause/cure and kept my spirits up while I was in the hospital. You are an amazing family!

I had the start of some bruising on both of my arms from daily blood draws and the initial IV and after that was removed and replaced with the picc line, from those. Now, after a few days, my left arm is about 1/3 purple green and black both above and below my elbow from all of the blood draws every day and my right arm has mostly lost all of the dark bruising from the IV line that was in initially, but is dark purple and black from where the picc line was. At least the picc line bruise is on my upper arm and not quite as visible as the blood draw arm.

I hope your recovery is swift and you don't get any more problems glencairn. Too many people are having problems like that nowadays, it wasn't so uncommon before, but it is a lot more common now.

The basis of many medicines can be found in foods.  They just learn to refine the chemistry.  Many foods are actually pharmachology active.  If you consume a lot of a certain food, it can give you the same effect as the meds had on you.

I hacked the Pharma to find out how the meds I was intolerant to to control epilepsy worked and where similar chemistry is found in nature.  I utilize all five chemistries on a small scale to help regulate my temporal lobe epilepsy.  I was strongly intolerant to all of those meds, the thing is if I try to control my diet completely with foods with similar chemistry to one of the meds, I get the same side effects as the meds.  I am using moderation of a combination of the chemistries plus a lowering of the energy factor, restricting sugars and tyramines, to control it well.

People don't think food chemistry is very strong, they are misled.  The various plant defense chemicals can be very strong.  Some can even kill you.  All foods are also psychoactive, even water.

I did have my first post-release follow up with the surgeon today and he was super impressed with how well Quin and Russ have been helping me with my incision care. I can't reach it easily to take care of the dressings by myself so Quin taught Russ how to help with packing the incision and re-dressing it and doctor was really big on complimenting them about it. I mentioned that Quin works at the veterinarian's office and gets to observe and sometimes help with the surgeries and she used what she learned working with the animals and applied it to helping me and doctor said that she did an impressive job.

Mostly it wasn't too exciting, just that I got my staples removed and told how to use the smaller dressing gauze as much as possible and told no, doc won't let me have a wheelchair for days that we will be out for a while. He wants me to walk so that I will build the muscles that were cut into back up and get them back to a stronger state faster. He said to come back in two weeks to check again on my progress, but warned me that recovery is going to take a long time and not to overdo it as much as possible (but still no wheelchair) and said that I am still looking at at a minimum, a month of recovery and then a "soft recovery" where I will be mostly better, but still might have some pain and may not be completely 100% healed.