Last Sunday I began experiencing some rather strange symptoms. I felt flush and cold all at once. Disoriented. Exhausted. Nauseated. Most of these symptoms I have also experienced with multiple sclerosis and chronic migraine only in a different, milder sort-of way.
I passed it off to the exercise regiment I’ve been doing {to help with energy which also exhausts me if I veer from that sweet spot of just enough exertion v. too much}.
By the evening I was so nauseous that I ate only half of a pretzel for dinner thinking it would settle my stomach. Then I thought well darn, maybe I’m dehydrated being out here in this dry Arizona heat. I knew that wasn’t likely, because I drink almost a gallon of water every day.
Normally I’m not snappish with my sweetie. Sunday evening I was down-right hateful and cranky. Yet, I could not figure out what was wrong.
Throughout the evening the nausea never let up. From hot to cold; cold to hot and endless cold sweats. It was when I had to go to the bathroom that things started getting weird. Ever heard of black poop? Like tarry, icky, smelly, black poop? Yeah, neither had I. Thank goodness for Google and Bing and Yahoo.
I determined that I was experiencing an upper-GI bleed. Most of the articles said this was an emergency. How much of an emergency Google wouldn’t tell me.
It was a very long night. By early the next morning I was so dizzy I couldn’t stand up straight. When I started throwing up blood my sweetie insisted it was time to go to the emergency room. I was in full agreement.
Once we got to the ER I was admitted and taken back for an upper-GI scan. There was so much blood that the dr could not even see where it was all coming from. So out came the stomach pump, or rather, in went the stomach pump.
I have had so many tests, probes, scans, surgeries, etc etc that I thought I could handle most anything. Let me just share, if you can go a lifetime without having a line put through your nose to your stomach and then hooked up to a giant clear cup then you will have won. Seriously. Add that one to your blessings.
If you can go a lifetime without being hooked up to a stomach pump then you will have truly won….And those giant cups? That look like the hospital ones with the big fat straw you see in every patient’s hospital room, filled with ice? It’s that size, but clear. So you can see all the gunk coming out. It was not pretty. Not pretty at all.
I had stayed relatively calm until I woke up from the scope to discover the tube in my nose – I admit, I lost it. That thing hurt so badly. Of course it didn’t help that they put it into my right nostril where the bone is all crooked and messed up from a car accident.
By now the doctors had figured out my hemoglobin was dangerously low, and thank goodness, I was pretty much out of it. The next several days were spent in the care of the wonderful doctors and nurses of the ICU.
You’d think with all that time lying around I could have gotten at least one book read. Nope. No tv either. Pretty much all I did was sleep.
So Why Share Such a Personal Experience?
Three reasons.
- If you are a blood donor, thank you. This makes the third time you’ve saved my life, not counting the three years of immunoglobulin treatments for MS. Your gift of blood saves countless lives, every hour, every day.
- If you take any type of NSAIDs – Ibuprofen, Aspirin, Aleve, please know that those things can do irreparable harm. Take in moderation {like the never-kind-of-moderation}. Or at least not the kind of moderation where you’re taking 2-6 pills a day for an extended amount of time.
- To all those that sent prayers and well-wishes – you made a tremendous difference. To those that helped my sweetie through the ordeal with moral support, guidance or a listening ear – thank you, so very much. To my mom and oldest daughter – thank you for dropping everything to come be with me. and My Sweetheart – you’ve been through hell and back for me and with me. You know {or at least you should know} that you’ll always be my hero.
