Summer is a weird time for me. Ok, to be fair, life is a weird time for me. But let's not tug too hard on that thread.
We like to measure things. Time, length, height, diameter, success, do we measure up? We mark times in our lives that were significant because of new beginnings or mournful endings. Our anniversaries, birth dates and the beginnings of new years are often the high points in our calendars. We rejoice at another revolution round the sun, because hey, life is a miracle, and why shouldn't we use that as an excuse for a little jubilation?
I am no exception to this rule, and as summer approaches, I find myself reflecting upon the last two years of my EPIC HEALTH SAGA and where I was not too long ago.
Tl;dr Where last we left, I had been struggling with pain in my right knee for undetermined reasons, but things seemed to be getting better with time and gentle exercise. I figured that things would be ok, so long as things were progressing.
We call that the freakin' eye of the storm, you guys. But let's continue the story in earnest.
The last time that I felt euphoric was the summer of 2015. I had just come out of a string of terrible relationships (both intimate and platonic) where I put others needs above my own, and was now feeling self-love, personal power, and freedom. My knee was on the mend; I had been working out and felt amazing. I was happy, ready for adventure. I had taken a leave of absence from work, reducing down to 60%, eager to explore other career opportunities. The world was my oyster. I luxuriated in the sunshine that seemed to promise days of abundance, stretching lazily on for an eternity.
I crafted, sun-bathed, kayaked. I explored nature, frollicking through the wayside with my best friend Rosie, picking wildflowers and adorning our heads with daisy wreaths. I found my joy that summer, exploring anew things I had long forgotten would bring me delight. I rose again from the ashes of the life I had burned down, a joyful and inspired Me.
Around the middle of August 2015, I went on a trip to South Dakota and Wyoming with my brother and his family. We were gone for just over a week, doing the touristy things. I was all excited because my family had almost convinced me that behind the faces of Mount Rushmore were butts (Google 'rear of Mount Rushmore'). I mean, I didn't really think that it was true, deep down, but I was disappointed that I couldn't at least walk round the other side to see for myself. Alas.
Our first stop was in Buffalo, then we proceeded to Devil's Tower in Wyoming. The rest of our trip was spent hanging around Rapid City, doing Bear Country, Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns, Reptile Gardens and Mount Rushmore. We also stopped at every rock shop we could find, where I bought lovely stone beads and other pieces.
The moment things started going wrong with my health was when I was walking up towards Devil's Tower with my nephew, Zane, on my back. I felt something in my right knee tweak. I had Zane climb down, and I kept on walking. Every day thereafter, my knee grew hotter and more painful, and my shoulders were hurting too. By the end of a day of sight-seeing, I was laying down on my mat in the hotel room, icing my knee and trying to rest. I had unfortunately not brought my heavy-duty hinged knee-brace with me, so I had to settle for a combination of two ill-fitting braces that I found at Walmart several days into the trip. It just kept getting worse and worse. When we got home on April 16th, I limped into the house, got my crutches and would use them for the next 11 months.
My first three full days on crutches were spent in Professional Development. I clomped from session to session, taking my seat at the back of the class on the countertop, where I could prop up my leg with my backpack. By the end of the second day, the bruising from the crutches rubbing underneath my arms was rivalling the pain in my knee. My energy levels were plummeting. I couldn't sleep at night, was using up to twelve cushions under my knee JUST SO to get it comfortable and I was sleeping on a pretty tough futon to boot.
After about a week of this, I couldn't take it anymore and was in to see the Doc. He didn't know how to help me, so he gave me a referral to meet with an Orthopaedic surgeon. While I waited for the next step with the surgeon, he gave me a prescription for Naproxyn (NSAID painkiller), which I would be taking three times every day. This barely even touched the pain, creating only a slight buffer, making it slightly tolerable. I also went to the walk-in sports injury clinic, where I set up to see an orthopaedic surgeon myself, hoping to hedge my bets a little bit on which referral would come through faster.
As though that wasn't enough, I was suddenly getting these painful little skin lesions popping up, that would erupt in pus and not heal (I've had these before, but I thought they were boils, always going away after a time, often leaving a faint scar). I was spending a LOT of time in the tub, trying to cleanse these open wounds and relax my excruciating knee. I felt and looked like garbage.
Now, the new and exciting school year was fast approaching, but I was spending most of my days trying to recover. It was getting increasingly more difficult to put food into my system, because I was getting this heavy feeling in my gut. I was embarking on my journey with my new friends Pain, Fatigue and Loss of Appetite. My previously near-dormant Rectal Proctitis symptoms had started coming back at the beginning of the summer (right around the time that I was feeling amazing) which meant blood in my stool, an urgency to "go" and unproductive trips to the washroom where I would push and nothing would come out except some blood and gas. But now I was passing blood, gas and hemorrhoids were shooting out of me too (my new friend Hemmorhoids!). I tried to call the GI I was seeing at the time, but my referral with him had long since expired (who needs check-ups when you're feeling fine?) so I was out of luck there. I had no energy and could barely keep myself together. I did my best to get through September long-weekend with my family, and said goodbye to summer. It really was an end to the days of plenty (quote link).
The school year began, and I just barely made it through the first two days of opening conferences. On the first day, I crutched around my new school assignment, wondering how I was ever going to get through a school day when I was already drained and in so much pain. On the second day, I was really feeling thick in the guts and exhaaauuussted while I attempted to passionately discuss with my school principal ideas that I had for the new year, including starting a Green Team.
The following two days (which were now off on my reduced contract), I rested and tried to eat really simple, clean foods, hoping that I would be ready for school on Monday. On Saturday, I was in so much pain from my "Proctitis" symptoms that I went to ER. This time they took me off of Naproxyn and put me on Prednisone, hoping that it would deal with the Proctitis symptoms. I was given a sick note for the first full week of school.
After a few days, I noticed with relief that the urgent bathroom trips were subsiding. Things were easing up. I was relieved. That week, I saw an Orthopaedic surgeon at the sports injury clinic, who had me in for an MRI of the knee within days. On the Saturday of that week, I was feeling slightly more energetic, so I decided to power through and go for some light shopping with Rosie at The Forks, hunting for some clothes that I was hoping to wear when I got back to school. For supper, I grabbed a soup at the deli, and a cinnamon bun for breakfast the following morning. After shopping for a bit, we set up a picnic blanket and rested under the trees (myself in an awkward fetal position because of the pain in my guts and in my knee).
I woke up the next morning, Sunday, September 20, and dug into my delicious cinnamon bun, reminiscent of the ones my Gramma used to bake when I was a kid. Mmmmmmm. And then all of a sudden things went wrong. I felt confused. Something had sort of, 'let go' in my stomach. It didn't feel right. Actually it hurt quite a bit. I felt very winded. I broke into a cold sweat, hobbling to the washroom. Did I just really need to go? Why couldn't I breathe, was I just panicking? I tried breathing through it. I sat on the toilet for a bit while watching some nature show about sharks on Netflix, just trying to calm down. I stumbled into the living room and climbed half onto the futon / my bed, crawling into the fetal position, gasping for air.
Rosie was insisting that we go to the hospital. I really didn't want to. I hadn't had energy to bathe in a few days and my hair was greasy from being unwashed for over a week. For the previous half hour, I had been sweating into the clothes that I had already been wearing for the past twelve hours. And I did NOT want to go sit in the ER waiting room for the next 8 hours in this state.
But then I realized that I was being foolish, and that it was time to go to the hospital. I grabbed my purse and climbed into Rosie's car, without a bra and or even a goodbye glance at my traumatized little dog. I reclined the seat all the way and shuddered with pain every time we passed over a bump. I opted for driving 35 minutes to rural Ste. Anne Hospital, where I knew that I wouldn't have to wait for hours in the waiting room.
I went through triage and waited about an hour before being taken in, put on painkillers, and given an X-ray. The Tech who did the scan was in disbelief... apparently this sort of thing didn't usually turn out to be anything but a sore stomach. I suppose I was a source of excitement that day, because what they found was a perforated duodenal ulcer. Basically, a sore had formed just below my stomach, getting so bad that it let go, and now my stomach fluids were leaking into the rest of my body. I later found out that Naproxyn was the likely culprit for the ulcer, and that I could have been given another drug to protect my stomach lining from the drug. Cheers, Docs, thanks a lot.
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I was told that I was to be transferred to the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg for an operation to repair the ulcer. Around 4PM, Rosie called some of my family and my boss to let them know what was going on. Then I gaspingly called my folks, who were on vacation with my aunt and uncle in the maritimes, and told them what was going on. I tried to reassure them that I would be okay until they got back in about a week, and promised to keep them posted.
My first ride in an ambulance was eventful, and admittedly, a little exciting despite everything. I helped guide the paramedics through the local detours, and they apologized every time we hit a bump or drove over train tracks. I was at least being comforted by Richard the Hot Paramedic, who was so kind and warm I would have definitely given him my phone number if I wasn't hurting, sweaty and not wearing a bra. When we arrived at HSC, my paramedics waited with me while we waited for my admission, which took about another hour.
When I was taken in, my comforting and kind paramedics said goodbye to me and wished me luck. Rosie had followed in her car, stopping at home to grab me a couple things (a bra, for one). They gave us the low-down on surgery, the risks and at 8PM, I said bye to Rosie too and plead to the Universe that I wake up on the other side.
When I came to, I had this horrible concern that I would be one of those people that, when they opened me up, they would find something more sinister. They reassured me a million times that they didn't find anything except for the ulcer, which they successfully repaired via laparotomy (which meant that they had to do the work in my stomach through a big incision in my abdominal wall).
What can I say about that week that I spent in the hospital? It was the worst, most uncomfortable experience of my life. Every five minutes I could click for painkillers (Hydromorphone). Four well-timed clicks in a row meant that I could sleep for a bit. My abdomen hurt so bad - nothing like getting your core ripped open to make you kind of want to die. I could barely move for days, so the muscles in my back were spasming painfully from being in the same position. A physiotherapist (who I had actually worked with before) came in a few times to give me some relief. They would have liked for me to get up and walk around, but of course, I couldn't because my knee was still hot, painful and propped by pillows. I had an NG tube going in through my nose, removing any fluids from my stomach so that the operation site would heal. I had a catheter, and my bowels had been put to sleep for the surgery. I had two IVs, because the drugs they were giving me couldn't be combined, otherwise they would interact badly. So for a few days, I hung in this agonizing limbo, suspended in time by tubes (that one time leaked stomach juices all over my bed and the nurses... fun!).
I harassed my nurses constantly to take out my tubes, my IVs and to let me get the heck out of the hospital. The first thing to go was the catheter, and gradually my bowels woke up too. This made things more frustrating, if anything, because now I had to shuffle painfully onto a commode to go to the washroom. I remember fighting with the health care aids, trying to get them to actually come and clean it out. Some of them wanted to line my commode with those blue absorbant pads, which I thought was disgusting and wasteful, so I refused to keep them in there.
My veins kept blowing the IVs, so my arms were functioning as a pin cushion more than anything else. For the first few days, I wasn't allowed any fluids except for being able to moisten my mouth with a little sponge on a stick, so my mouth was dry and tasted like death (often metallic in taste because of the meds).
My roommate wasn't exactly helpful to my healing either. He was constantly berating the nurses, complaining (sometimes about me, for nothing) and would poop his bed usually three times a night. So between the nurses and doctors coming in and pestering me to take blood or overwhelm me with too much information, my roomate keeping me up all night and the pain, I was not in the ideal situation for resting or healing.
I was emotionally wrecked, trapped in this miserable little shoebox of torment. Rosie and other loved ones had done their best to make my room look nicer, putting stuff in the window, sending flowers, magazines, a stuffed bunny. People wanted to visit me, but I didn't have the energy or the wherewithal to chat. I couldn't keep from wincing long enough and I just wanted to sleep. I was so grateful for one particular visit from Rosie, where she helped me sponge bathe and washed my hair in a basin while I hung my head over the end of my bed. At least I was clean and feeling a little bit more human.
With a couple days left in my stay, I was transferred to a bigger room with more people. I was hopeful about leaving, now that my tubes were out and I was down to one IV. I was trying to get food down, but I was feeling so much nausea from the medications (antibiotics, painkillers), that I started throwing up the night before I was supposed to be released. The next day I was keeping some food down (still throwing up some), and I was released. My parents had arrived in the meantime, so on Sunday, September 27th I was whisked away. We picked up some of my stuff at Rosie's house, went and got my prescriptions from the pharmacy (which was a debacle in itself, because there were mistakes in the scripts and when the pharmacist called the hospital for help, they couldn't find any record of my having been there for the last week) and my dog Louis and I settled in with my folks, where I expected to stay for the next six weeks while I healed from my laparotomy.
Oh, if only it would be that simple. But that's a story for another day.
Summer was over, and it would be for the next two years for me, anyways. I had hit rock bottom, and would stay there for some time. I wish that I could say that I maintained a positive attitude through all of this, that I was an untapped well of hope throughout the worst of my trials, but a dark cloud would hover over me for several months after my surgery. When people say wonderful things about how strong I am, I feel a little tug in my thoughts to the anti-social, grey winter of my life.
Do you ever find that you ask for something, ready to receive, but you don't get quite what you were looking for? I had asked the universe for time to explore, to learn, for new opportunities and a chance for change. I had learned to love myself and I was ready to embark on a journey. I had asked for time, and had gotten it. With a twinge in my stomach, I thought of what it would feel like to get back to my life and have nothing to show for it, for no greater good to have come of it. I resolved to use the time I was given as a gift, and I have tried to treat it as such as much as possible. That's all it means to be positive, after all: dwell more on the silver lining instead of the cloud, because, rest assured, both the positive and negative will always be there. We reap what we sow.
I leave you with my favourite quote:
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