Calvin's Weblog

I Finally made it to the I.V. league!

Barring the birth experience, pneumonia at age 3, and a subsequent visit after an unfortunate incident with a lawnmower at age 11, I've never spent the night in a hospital. In 22 years, I've never gone to emergency - sure, when I was a kid I had sprains, stepped on a few nails, had big slivers removed from under my figernails, you know, the basic "boys will be boys" trips to the local clinic - but until last Monday, I had never had an "emergency".

I'm not sure if I've written about it before, but my doctor told me a little more than a year ago that I had gallstones and that I'd be needing surgery in the next 6 to 18 months to have my gallbladder removed. Of course, I had never had a gallbladder attack, and I figured if it don't hurt, don't fix it. I changed my diet, lost 10 pounds, and lived happily until about 5 months ago when I finally had my first GB attack. It was brutal - it lasted about 9 hours - but I had absolutely no idea what was causing it... having never had an attack before, I figured it was food poisoning - of course, the next day I knew for sure I'd had my first attack. I took extra special care after that to avoid fatty foods, but after a few months of good health, forgot all about it - or perhaps I just chocked it up as a 'one time experience' and slipped into the fast food routine again. Seven weeks ago, I whipped through DairyQueen on my way home from work and picked up an couple of their 2-for-1 cheeseburgers on my way home from work. This would be the fourth day in a row that I had eaten hamburgers - I hadn't eaten much beef all year, and then it just kinda happend that I found myself in the situation where I was busy and hungry and in a hurry, and, well, anyway, as you've probably guessed - I had a whopper of an attack that night. Sixteen hours of the most intense pain in my life. I honestly don't think a gunshot to the abdomen would feel any worse (no, I don't want to find out...) and the aftermath was just as bad... ten days of feeling like all my ribs on the right side had been kicked in. I went to the doctor later that week, and he said I should have gone to emergency. Honestly, that had never crossed my mind - I hate drugs, I hate hospitals, I figure if I'm going to sweat it out somewhere, it may as well be my own bed, not some hospital bed... but he convinced me - kinda, that the NEXT time this happens, go to emergency!

I wasn't going to go easily though. I cut out all meat and cheese and bread and sauces and even beer for four weeks straight, losing yet another ten pounds - everything was fine! But then Holiday season came around. It started with my work's Christmas dinner on December 15th - blammo - 7 hours attack that night. I stayed home though, since it wasn't nearly as long or intense as the previous one. A couple days later, another Christmas dinner, and another mild attack. I let my doctor know, and he said "GO TO EMERGENCY!!!" but it wasn't that bad, so I didn't. Then Last Sunday night, another Christmas dinner - and, you guessed it, another attack.
It came on quick - in only three hours it was more painful than most are after 6 or 7 hours - so I decided that instead of going through one of the bad ones, I'd better begrudgingly got to the hospital.

Four AM checkin. They take some blood tests and say I'm dehydrated and potassiium deficient - both signs that my body is in physical distress - so they hook me up to an IV and give me a potassium boost.
This is my first IV ever...
After about an hour the nurse asks me if I want a morphine shot, and I say "I've never had morphine before - I don't know what it'll do to me - I'm in pain, yes, but I don't know if I want to take a shot..."
She says "I'll give you the lowest amount, just to see what your tollerance is - 2ml floors some people, and it doesn't even affect others." She gives me the shot. Ten minutes later, the pain has increased significantly, and I tell her. She gives me another 2ml. Five minutes after that, the pain is nearly unbearable - she says "For future reference, you've got a high morphine tolerance. I'll give you one more shot and that should be plenty." Five minutes after that, I couldn't even breath I was it so much pain - in fact, I felt like I was going to pass out, were it not for trying so hard to breathe through the constricting in my chest, I probably would have...
As it turns out, this is called Anaphylaxis, and it's a potentially fatal allergic reaction to morphine. Joy of all joys, I now get to have an emergency Narcan shot (usually reserved for overdosing junkies). Amazingly enough, not even two minutes after the narcan, all the pain is gone. I ask "Am I on any painkillers now?" She says "No, the narcan completely neutralizes the morphine." - Amazing - this is the best I've felt all morning. Of course, once the initial joy of 'not dying' has subsided, the gallbladder pain slowly returned - so she gave me a demerol shot, which made me pretty woozy - but got rid of the pain completely. Phew!

So, all told, I was out of emergency at 8AM - I was out of pain, and I learned that I'm alergic to morphine. But I've still got the gallstones in me (I was half expecting emergency surgery) and I'm back on the zero fat diet. However, I've still got the rest of the holiday season to get through... it's going to be tough - I've bought some nice champagne for New Years that I'm not going to let go to waste, so I'm prayin' that doesn't hurt me...
I've lot 24 pounds since the beginning of last year. I have a feeling I'll be losing even more before I finally get my surgery...
I've got an appointment with the surgeon in February, who knows how long it'll be after that before I actually get the operation...

Anyway, that's my story - I got hooked up to tubes and shot full of wonky drugs, and I still made it to work the next day - heck, what else was I gonna do - stay home n' drink beer?

Posted by Calvin at December 21, 2004 09:53 AM