Hello everyone, I hope everything is going well your way. I have had an interesting couple of weeks to say the least. Sit back and let me tell you a story..
Well, just when I thought nothing else could go wrong..it did. For the past month I have been feeling very fatigued – I mean I was fighting to get through the day. Of course this is a big symptom of having Crohn’s Disease so I didn’t think much of it when it happened. My next symptom was my aching chest and back (I tried so hard to get my daughter or my husband to rub my back but they declined; it turned out to be a blessing in disguise). I also developed a low grade fever with all this. It was then that I thought I could have pneumonia, as I have had this so many times and I thought I knew the symptoms well. Boy, was I wrong on this one – there is another culprit out there with the same symptoms that I had..I will tell you the story now.
On March 29th, all the symptoms that I have been feeling started to come together and escalate. I had a low grade fever, my chest and back was aching and I felt like poop. I told my husband that I was going to call the doctor the next day. I called my doctor first thing in the morning and got an appointment to see her later that day. She knows that I have had pneumonia a few times and therefore she knows what my symptoms are and listens to me when I tell her that it feels like I have it again. She told me that she heard cackling in my back so she prescribes me a z-pac and sends me to the hospital to get an x-ray. I was surprised when she emailed me later telling me the x-ray was clear, no pneumonia.
That night, my back on the right side was really aching badly so I put a heating pad on it. It felt better temporarily but the pain would come back. Later, around midnight I had gotten up to go to the bathroom and all was fine. However, when I got up at 3:00 am to go to the bathroom, I could not make it to the bathroom without running out of breath. I started gasping for air and began panicking! Somehow I managed to unhook myself from my TPN nutrients and flip on the bedroom light to tell Mark to get up, we were going to the ER. I stayed in my pajamas and just pulled my hair back in a ponytail and we took off.
When we arrived, thank Heavens we were the only people in the ER at that time. They took my blood and an x-ray was performed. The x-ray came back negative so they ordered a ct scan to be performed. By this time, I had 2 IV’s going in both arms! The ER doctor came back to our room and he looked a little worried (okay a lot)! He preceded to tell us what was found on the ct scan. They had found a large blood clot with several smaller ones in the right side of my lung. It had lodged itself near the bottom of my lung therefore cutting off the blood circulation and killing off that part of my lung. This is called a pulmonary embolism with infarction. Immediately they gave me oxygen and started filling my IV with Heparin to thin my blood and start dissolving the clot. The doctor told me that they were taking me to the ICU from the ER and I had strict orders not to get out of the bed for anything! They didn’t want the clot to move. This all happened so fast it was like a blur to me. Before I knew it I had some very good drugs and a catheter in me. They weren’t kidding when they said I wasn’t to get out of the bed!
I’m going to stop here and make this story a part 2. I believe people, including me, tend to get bored when the post is too long. In the next post, I will tell you about my stay and my experiences in the hospital. Oh yeah, by the way, they said if I had gotten that massage I was sooo begging for, it could have dislodged the clot and the clot could have traveled to my brain giving me a stroke or my heart giving me a heart attack. You won’t catch me asking for another!!
Chow for now!