From Toyota to Bowel Obstructions

We had a very eventful, both good and bad last week. The good being that Scott bought his brand new Toyota Tundra and is in LOVE. I'm so over the moon happy for him. He's wanted a truck for so long, and finally treated himself to his dream last week.

Insert the ugly part which is where I thought I may be starting to obstruct while we were at the dealership. I was confident that I was ok since I was able to eat and drink without problem. This is something that doesn't happen with a "normal" obstruction. So after a few hours at the dealership and driving around to show some of our family/friends our new toy I felt pretty good. I even went home and ate a giant bowl of cereal and had plenty of bubbly and gurggly sounds so I was pretty happy.

The next morning I woke up feeling like I was having contractions. Not cool. I was feeling super dehydrated too (classic) so I headed to work had one of the Nurses start a quick IV on me for some fluids. It didn't do a thing for me unfortunately.

I worked most of the day then decided to head home after lunch and just relax to see how I felt. No doubt it was progressing horribly. I called my Nurse at Hopkins and she suggested I go out and buy the Miralax/Gatorade solution and drink the entire 64oz. of joy...(insert sarcasm here). Ok so it's actually not bad at all and I like Gatorade, my nerves were just shot.

So after drinking all of that liquid I thought I was going to explode, correction...I WISH I would have exploded but nothing. Then I knew I was in trouble and needed to get myself in gear for the ER.

We get to the ER and by now I'm just a sobbing mess in so much pain and having so much anxiety over this impending doom of an ordeal. Scott had to go park so I walked in the front door to be greeted by a tiny elderly lady offering me a wheelchair because "you're pregnant and can't breathe" hmm, well you got part of that right little cute lady. My stomach was sticking out so far I really did look about 6-7 months pregnant. The pressure was so bad that It was taking my breath away. Really just not a good combination I must say.

Skip ahead a few hours and lots of pain medication later. I was finally comfortable but the usual tricks of my obstructions weren't working. I got scared. Fast. Then came the dreaded statement that had I not been drugged I may have just lost it..."You need an NG tube" gah!!!!! I had a horrific experience when I was 19 with an NG tube and really wasn't trying to relive those memories but alas I did.

The Nurses were great and so supportive, but still missed and it took 3 tries for the NG (a blood bath horror scene and a lot of vomiting) to be successful. Once it was in about 500cc of fluid came off my stomach. Ahhh. I had visitors the next day but I can barely remember to be honest. I was upset, drugged, emotional, snappy (apparently) and miserable and I barely remember any of it now.

Vaguely I remember a doctor coming in to tell me that they were going to have a surgeon come evaluate me. I've had about 6 obstructions and never had to have surgery. Apparently my small bowel and colon heard those words and got scared. A few hours later I was home free if you know what I mean ;)

Luckily I was discharged from the hospital on Friday after going in Wednesday night. Not too shabby considering how bad this one was, and how bad it had the potential to be. All in all I'm so grateful to be home and NOT recovering from bowel surgery right now. It could have been a lot worse than it was, I recognize that.

After not eating for almost 4 days I'm happily indulging once again, but of course being careful :)

When Life Hands you Lemons....

Oh it was that kind of a week no doubt, and I hope that I have officially seen the end of GI issues for a bit. I think I've officially paid my dues in the Gastroenterology department. Earlier this month it was Gallstones, and after seeing my GI doc he clarified I did NOT have pancreatitis, bonus. Although on Monday night I had a raging bowel obstruction that sent me to the ER. Awful, just awful.

To see the silver lining which I'd rather do, my body is amazing. My body passed those stones early this month, and we've been feeling good "stone wise" ever since. The bowel obstruction situtation was brought on by steamed crabs, so I need to make some changes there. Over all I am so grateful because my body naturally took care of itself and fixed itself without major intervention. Honestly all it took in both situations was some good old aggressive IV fluids. For this I am happy beyond belief. Me and my "gut" have been through a lot this August, but she's tough ;)

That all being said, I am so ready to move on. I had my follow up with my GI doctor on Wednesday and he made me feel so much better! He said "Jessica I just think you've had a run of bad luck this month, you are doing wonderfully!" I don't think he realized just how much on so many levels I needed to hear those words. Again, for this I am grateful. For now it's on to healthier things, positive moments, and a lot of HOPE.

"When you are at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on"

Golytely

Bleck this stuff is gross! So my nurse called to tell me that overall my Xray looked ok. And they found I have a kidney stone hanging around. That's beside the point. However there was still some stuff hanging around the colon and they want me to drink the Golytely. I haven't had to drink this stuff in over 3 years. Funny how just looking at the container made me shudder, ew. They were supposed to call me in the unflavored stuff, but somehow I got lucky and received Pineapple, mmmm (insert sarcasm here) ;) So it's just me, my book, and a gigantic container of Golytely tonight. I know, this is quite an exciting evening!

*Fingers crossed for good results!*

And it continues

I decided to stay home from work today. It hit me last night around 9:30 pm. Scott and I were outside on the screened deck enjoying the rain falling. Every muscle in me ached and throbbed. I know I pulled a ton of muscles with all the vomiting I'd done over the last several hours in the ER. I also broke down and just started to cry about everything. I called my boss and she just said for me to take care of myself and do what I needed to do. I agree that I can be too hard on myself, but working makes me feel "normal." I can't stand it when something holds me back from that. But in reality I needed to take a day to relax since my body has been through hell the last few days.

So this morning I called Hopkins to fill them in the events going on. They decided to send me for a follow up Abdominal X-ray today. I had that done around 5pm. I'll get those results back tomorrow. If they aren't as they'd like them to be then it's time for Golytely :/ My fingers are crossed that my intestines decide to behave and we can bypass the Golytely. We shall see. My CF nurse also told me today that she'd like me to have a colonoscopy in the future. I'm not afraid of the colonoscopy since I'm a GI Nurse, it's what I deal with all the time. I just hate that it's even happening. So tomorrow I'm going to talk to the chief GI doc that I work for and have him give me a recommendation. Obviously I'm not going to the guys that I work for, for something like this. They were concerned about the "intussusception of the ascending colon." They said that a lot of pediatric CF patients have this but not adults. It means one of a few things. Either I have scar tissue or adhesions from previous abdominal surgeries, still am obstructed, or have a polyp? Who knows.

I did meet Scott for lunch today which was nice. I'll admit I was terrified to eat, but I was so hungry! I then decided to relax some more on my day off. I love Starbucks so I got a coffee, and I actually sat outside for a while at Starbucks and read my book New Moon. It was very relaxing and something that I felt really good doing.

I'm hoping that July is much nicer and more positive around here. May was awful with the miscarriage and all. That was foremost in my mind during my ER visit unfortunately. Reason #1 was that I was back at the ER again where I just had been for the miscarriage. Reason #2, they put me in the exact same room as I was in for all the miscarriage stuff. How's that even possible I wondered? The ER is huge what were the chances of me being in that same exact room again?
:( So all those painful memories came pouring back yet again....on top of the bowel obstruction. June has now been filled with yet another obstruction in my history book. I want a fresh start. I want to clear my head and have these things simply behind me. I want to move forward....

Definitely an Obstruction

So here's how this all went:

Again I was up at 3 am Monday morning with stomach pains. I tried to hydrate myself and things started to feel better. Went to work, pain got worse and left work. CVS got some laxative type stuff and layed in bed. My stomach was soft and lots of rumbly noises so I was hopeful.

Then last night all the sudden my stomach got 100% worse. It was so tight that I could barely touch it. I had the feeling I was going to vomit (red flag) but I didn't. I told Scott to call 911 :( The ambulance came and then of course I start to cry my eyes out. Thinking to myself, is this really happening right now?

I get in the ambulance and they inform me that they're not able to start IV's in that specific unit. Ugh. I just wanted hydration. I had an obstruction last August (amongst several others) and I knew that hydration and lots of it, did the trick last time.

We get to the ER and my stomach looks like a basketball at this point and they did their assessment again on me. I was able to stop crying but just in so much pain. The nurse comes in to start my IV and poor thing had such a hard time because I was beyond dehydrated so she had to stick me 3 times. I felt so bad that my veins weren't cooperative. So they infused Normal Saline on me and gave me Zofran for my nausea and Dilaudid for the pain. As soon as the nurse started to push the Dilaudid I vomited :( Luckily the basin was ready to receive. From there on out for hours I just kept vomiting despite Zofran. They bring me in a 32 oz. oral contrast to drink. That made no sense to me. You know basically from my history and presenting symptoms that I'm obstructed, I'm vomiting non-stop, how am I supposed to drink this stuff and keep it down? I tried and no sooner one sip of contrast I was vomiting uncontrollably again.

They went to take me down to CT and my nurse said forget it, they'll just do IV contrast on me. Yay, no more drinking and vomiting. Well they have me move from the stretcher to the bed and no sooner the Radiology tech was telling me what to do I was begging for a basin. That's right vomited a hundred more times. Poor guy wasn't ready for that one.

I get back to the room where Scott was waiting for me and I'm still vomiting. I asked them to please give me something different for the vomiting since clearly the Zofran didn't work on me. So they gave me Phenergan and that did the trick for me! Granted I was completely passed out but hey at least I wasn't vomiting non-stop anymore. Scott left to go have his Gallbladder ultrasound done (he's in the middle of a GI workup currently) and came back without me knowing he'd ever left. I was so sleepy!

The nurse decided to put a pulse ox on me half way through my stay. My sats were 100% but after the Phenergan I was so passed out that my sats dropped low. This has never happened to me before. She put me on 2 Liters of O2 which was fine. But I caught myself holding my breath for some reason. Weird, maybe I was just that sedated? I'm not sure but I remember I was holding my breath? Weird. I definitely wasn't doing the "normal" breathing. I was also given ice chips at this point too. I've never been happier to see ice in a styrofoam cut in my life. Ahhh.

Well they came back and said that my CT was ok. I was just happy that this one reversed on it's own too. Last time I was in the middle of a surgical consult when nature called thank goodness. This time we never even got that far. When I was 19 it was so bad they put an NG tube in gave me Golytely, gross. So overall I'm extremely grateful that it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

The hospital called me tonight though which alarmed me. A doctor got on the phone with me and said that my CT scan was being "re-read" and that they wanted me to come back to the ER for another one. Huh!? Then I wondered to myself why was I even discharged if something was wrong? So I questioned it and then finally said that I was a G.I. nurse and could they please just tell me what it said.

• First was intussusception of the Ascending colon
• Dilated common bile duct
• Enlarged small and large bowel
• And lastly them not visualizing my pancreas fully

Thank goodness I asked about this or I would have worried sick. These are the exact same things as I had during my last CT scan. Which, mind you, was done during an obstruction as well. I just wish the radiologist would have read my history before calling and scaring the crap out of me. Then he questioned my pancreas, I said "I have CF." And as for the common bile duct stuff, I've had my gallbladder removed, and my duct is dilated on purpose as per my surgery so that the stones could pass easily (bile duct sphincterotomy) I mean if they know someone is in the middle of an obstruction, do they really expect the small and large bowel to look "normal?" Just wondering.

Well I'm glad to be home now in my own bed. I was offered to take the day off tomorrow, but I don't know what I'll do. I feel fine now, just tired....exhausted really. The nurses were great to me, and as always Scott was wonderful and so worried about me. I'm so grateful to have such great people in my life.