Now That Was Unexpected...

Since it's normal for me to have a lapse in blog time, this current lapse is perhaps not unusual, but the reason is most unusual, so I suppose it is time for an update.

Last week on Tuesday I met up with SH for dinner which was cool. We had a really great evening actually and it was loads of fun. It was just really great to hang out and I am so excited about her moving here and moving in. As our evening wore on however, I started to get some cramping in my side which was somewhat uncomfortable and causing me to shift in my seat a bit, but I didn't think too much of it. If anything, I thought it was good timing that I was supposed to see the doctor on Wednesday, finally.

So SH and I parted ways and I headed home, the pain not going away at all. When I got home I tried to do some stretching and stuff but still could not get comfortable. I got into bed hoping it would lessen up, and it wasn't. So I called T. T was concerned and said I should go to A&E but I wasn't really sure because it didn't seem that bad, so she said she'd come over and we could decide if I really needed to go when she got there.

Getting off the phone, it seemed to get worse, and I ended up puking up my entire evening meal. I figured I should probably go to A&E so I called a cab and got myself downstairs. T met me outside where I was still retching into the gutter and about a minute later the cab came and off to the hospital I went.

Hobbling into the hospital and trying to explain to the man on reception what was wrong, the intake nurse just pulled me in her exam room and started taking my history. I explained about the cyst, and how I had an appointment (at the same hospital) the next day and that this had happened before which she was able to call up on her computer. So she called the gynecology on-call doctor to say they should really just admit me since they'd have to come look at me anyway and knew what the problem was, in the meantime I was going into one of the emergency cubicles to get a line in and some morphine.

Which is basically what happened. I was not comfortable and could not rest- twisting and turning and shuffling about. They gave me a bunch of morphine and I managed to calm down a bit, though there was still loads of pain, the body just tends to still. Then at some point they came to wheel me away and put me into a ward. The theory was- if the morphine seemed to be working, then the next day I could have a scan and they could decide how to proceed, but if the morphine wasn't working, then I was probably bleeding internally or something else terrible and there would have to be emergency surgery. Since the morphine took the edge off, it was into the ward for the night with me.

The next day I had an ultrasound scan which was pretty much the same as last time and in fact done by the same technician who indicated she thought the cyst had grown. So back to the ward and waiting for the registrar who said that they felt they needed to take care of it and I should be in surgery that afternoon.

I should also mention that in contrast to past attacks of the pain, it hadn't really gone away by morning and was still there at a low to mid-grade level, not as bad as the evening, but not gone. The past two times I'd gone to the hospital it had basically dissipated by morning.

So the rest of the day was something of a haze as I was still doped up on quite a bit of morphine. They came and had me put on special socks and a 'shower cap' and around five or so on Wednesday they came to take me away.

Waiting in the anteroom to the operating theater was very surreal. I also didn't know what to expect, which added to the bizarre quality of the experience. They knock you out there, before you're really connected to anything, before you are taken into the theater. I didn't know this. It just happened. Next thing I knew, I came to with a start in the recovery room where I was the only person since I had been the last scheduled surgery of the day.

Which was also very surreal because I have been there when other people have come off of anesthesia and they have been pretty out of it. And my surgery, which they had not been sure about going into it, had required both keyhole and full incision and had taken over an hour and a half (had it been possible to address the issue laproscopically it would have only taken about thirty minutes). At any rate, I came to like I had just woken up. Very alert. Though of course I'm saying I felt very alert and maybe I wasn't as alert as I remember, but we just talked and talked and talked as she monitored me and I was even cracking jokes because the machine kept insisting I wasn't breathing when clearly I was.

So after a while there they determined I was good enough to go back to the ward so they wheeled me out and I saw T and SP waiting on a window ledge and SP leaned in to T and said "She looks really groggy." to which I replied, "No, I'm not really groggy at all actually, I'm pretty alert." to which they both looked somewhat startled.

Then it was an entire night of self dosing morphine and hourly checks of my blood pressure and stuff. So Thursday, which was my birthday saw me fairly incapacitated and out of it, at least until they had me get up and move into a chair so I was sitting up which felt like someone was ripping into my gut and was most unpleasant. The nurses also got me a cake which was cool and I think by the end of the day I had managed to move spots so I was next to the window.

So there's probably loads more detail that no one wants to hear about. Catheters and laxatives and first showers and blood and pressure tape. There are also things about how my cyst went from 'large' to 'very large' to 'extremely large' by description. The most important thing to mention is how much of a star T has been throughout the process in terms of taking care of me and my life and being a contact for friends and family. I mean, it was bad enough that this happened the way it did, but if you consider that my birthday part was supposed to be this weekend and I'd invited a million people to my house, you can see how it was all going to be a bit messy. But I don't think I could say enough about how great she's been and helpful and organized so I think I won't even try to make any more of a mess of it, but just that without her, this would have been a complete disaster and with her, although unexpected, it has all been manageable and okay and that has made a huge difference that is immeasurable with simple words.

Anyway, my mom has just landed and should be here soon and I need to drink another glass of water. So I'm sure I'll update more later this week as I sit around being bored. But that was my birthday for this year. You know me. Gotta be different.