25 July, 2017
WHMP: 25 July 2017
It's been a crappy 24 hours! I woke up at 12.30am in absolutely excruciating pain to the point that I was doubled over screaming and crying in pain. The pain felt very similar to that of a gall bladder attack, but I knew that it couldn't be that because o had my gall bladder removed 10 years ago.
I sat on the floor of the shower in the hot hot water and cried my way through the pain and after about 30 minutes is finally passed.
Just as I got back into bed I had another wave of horrific pain hit, and if anything it was worse than the first time! I couldn't deal with this pain so off I went to the Flinders Emergency Department.
I couldn't actually move upon arrival as I was doubled over screaming and groaning as another wave of pain hit me. Eventually got it and was triaged and then sat in the waiting room for not 1 hour, not 2 hours but just over 3 hours before I was seen. And during this time I had another 4 chronic pain waves pass in which I think I scared everyone else in the waiting room from all the noise and tears coming from me.
Was given endone which was fine for managing the constant dull thumping in my abdomen however it didn't even go close to touching the pain as the waves came through.
Will all the commotion of the other patients in the emergency department I didn't really want to make a scene but it got to the point I couldn't do it anymore and I unloaded with how severe the pain was. The fentanyl really helped lower the severity of the pain but the downside was that it played funny buggers with my heart rate and substantially dropped my heart rate, caused me to have dizzy spells and have my entire body do massive involuntary shivers.
Once this happened the doctors came quick smart! The plan of attack was bloods and an x-ray.
This was all done with me enduring another 4 waves of pain which then resulted in me being hooked up to the heart monitor with a low heart rate alarm set for when things were too low.
The first round of tests have come back with no definitive results so the next step was to have a CT scan with the contrast ink. By 2pm, 13 hours spent in the emergency department, I got to speak to the medical registrar who stated that they didn't know what was wrong she couldn't see anything adverse in the scan so I had to be referred to the surgical team.
The surgical resident came and did a consultant and was also equally confused about what was going on. He wanted to wait for the radiologists report to come back from the CT scan and to set me up with an IV as after 15 hours of no fluids I was beginning to look dehydrated.
The surgical resident returned with the senior surgical consultant to advise all my tests had returned without any indicators to define what was going on and is causing this lingering pain and these acute waves of pain.
He added in another medication (somac) into the IV to try and help settle my upset little stomach and advised that they were admitting me for ongoing pain management overnight. He was going to review me in the morning for consideration if he needed to do an exploratory endoscope to see what's going on internally that could be causing these severe episodes of pain!
It has not been a fun day. I obviously didn't get to my sleep specialist appointment and instead I spent the entire day in the hospital rotating between pain, tears, nausea, napping and wishing that I could have something to drink!
Lucky I rarely feel hungry these days as it makes not eating for 24 hours a bit easier to cope with!
No weigh in Wednesday tomorrow as I'm not home to do it…..