spoospirit

I've been away. I got violently ill on Tuesday morning at work and went home. I thought I had the flu and when I went to see the doctor on Wednesday morning, she said the test was negative but all symptoms pointed toward flu. Sent me home with an anti-nausea pill and orders to call or got to ER if fever persisted or I got worse.

By Thursday morning both happened. By afternoon I was in an ambulance headed for hospital. Worst three days I have ever lived through. Tons of saline drip, four potassium drips and two high-powered antibiotic drips and apparently I am ready to go home. Still waiting for someone to come in with my orders to go home and hopefully a diagnosis.

Glad to be on the mend, going home, and slowly getting back to normal again.

Oh,yeah. My husband was laid-off right after I called to tell him I was on my way to the hospital!!

kathyd

I'm so sorry to hear all of this, spoospirit - except for the part about you being on the mend and able to go back home.

I hope you'll have a full recovery very soon. Take care and let us know how you're doing.

spoospirit

Thank you Kathyd....after much persistence with the meds and good care, I finally made it home this afternoon.

I had gastroenteritis or stomach flu. It, obviously, quickly escalated beyond the norm. I didn't get to go home yesterday because they decided it needed to be treated aggressively with the antibiotic drip. I had to have two of them before I could be released and it was just as well because I ended up with another serious bout last night and back on morphine to get me through it.

I am home and enjoying sitting in my recliner and trying to get back to some normalcy. I have two meds for the stomach infection to be sure we kill it all.

The worst part about it is that I think it was accidentally self-inflicted. I cleaned a fish tank that had been sitting empty and going stagnate for three weeks the night before I was struck with the first bout of illness. I should have used gloves and a mask but I wasn't thinking and didn't.

Guess who is never going to clean anything like that again without proper protection? ........

Glad to be home!

WonderPup

Ummm WOW and here I thought my week kinda sucked... Nope not even close!

I hope you get to feeling better very soon! It's never fun to be even slightly sick so I can imagine how uncool the last few days have been for you.

cuddleparty

Awwww... spoospirit!!! I'm so sorry to hear the news. As your namesake suggests, hope you are keeping up in good (spoo)spirits!
Keep in mind that everything that goes down, must come back up! So I'm sure there will be good news for hubby and you on the horizon

Oh, and thanks for the FYI about the fish tank. We have one that has been sitting off to the side that desperately needs to be cleaned. I will be leaving this task to my boyfriend and I will be sure to make him wear gloves!

Get well soon

Mandycasey'smom

Dont push yourself All things happen for a reason and your hubby off is to help you mend slowly and completly and then he will get the call back to work.

I know so much flu going around her it is crazy. July almost and people still getting flu

T o d d

WOah!

Glad you are doing better.

Be sure to rest lots when you get home for the next couple weeks to get back to 100000% health.

spoospirit

Thank you everyone. And, good for you Cuddleparty. If just one person can avoid the hell I went through most of this week, at least it served someone.

A little dissertation of what I went through (some of it is funny which is a good sign for me):


I was in the hospital for a really bad case of Gastroenteritis (stomach flu). But it wasn't the flu (how odd??) because it was ruled out on Wednesday with a test. It was an infection of my entire digestive system that made me sicker than I have been in my entire life.

I cleaned a stagnant, 20 gallon fish tank that I had sitting around my house for a few weeks (fish were put in the pond) without gloves or mask and I believe that is how it happened. The next morning, I got violently ill at work and went home. Things went downhill from there.

An ambulance came to get me on Thursday because I was alone and in too much distress to drive so my doctor's nurse (I was on the phone with her) insisted on calling one (embarrassing and I felt stupid when I had to fight with our dogs to not get in with me!!). You should have seen me crawling on my hands & knees into the back (I didn't want the indignity of being 'carried out' on a stretcher) and trying to push Billy and Brandy out of the it while trying to hold things inside me. The attendant dove in beside me as soon as I was in and let both doors slam shut before they could make another run at the ambulance to go for a ride with momma.

I couldn't stop going diarrhea and it was humiliating. The ER doctor finally admitted me late evening since it was obvious that I was declining rather than getting better.

I have more holes and bruises in my arms from attempts to draw so many vials of blood from veins that were almost non-existent from dehydration. I could be mistaken for a junky right now! LOL Thank God the IV drip needle was no problem and the rest of the stuff could be administered through it. I had to have contrast dye for a CAT scan, four bags of potassium, two bags of potent antibiotic, four shots of morphine, and countless shots of anti-nausea meds through it. But they didn't kill me. LOL

I actually had to ask them to move the IV out of the crook of my arm where it set the alarms off on the machine all night long from bending my arm. Here I am dreading the next episode, in crazy pain, totally exhausted from lack of sleep for the past three days and I have to spend the night feeling bad about waking up other patients. They put it in the back of my hand with little trouble. But, those danged blunt ended butterfly needles were killers and they were a double draw every time they need more blood! (meaning that they had to take it from a different vein for each needle). Not one single tech could get one in without probing forever and settling for impossibly small veins that they had a hard time fishing around inside of me for to HIT the right spot. Can anyone say 'SCREAM'?

Oh, did you know they give you a shot in your belly every morning if you are bed-bound in the hospital to thin your blood to prevent clots? Cool! NOT!

And, those potassium drips.......yeah, I really thought they were going to kill me with those. I was warned about the possible 'burning' I may experience and that most people can't tolerate it but it didn't make a wit of difference when it finally snaked its way down the IV tube and hit my vein. Immediate crushing pain that I could distinctly follow as it traveled up my arm into the joint of my shoulder and up into my neck. I never felt a burn; it was like my arm was being crushed in a machine. The nurse had a look of shock when I explained it to her that way. Oh, well. I guess one person's burn is another person's crush.

I was on the verge of screaming with four nurses in the room who were working on another patient. Then I started shaking violently and groaning steadily loader as the pain intensified. The male nurse saw it and came right over to find out what was wrong. He saw the IV bag and knew immediately. He tried turning my saline bag upside down so it would flow with the potassium but it didn't work and by then I was yelling LOUDLY to STOP IT! My nurse ran over and turned it off. She let me rest and then tried to run it at half rate. No go! I started shacking and was on the verge of being physically ill by this point so off it went again.

She told me to hold on; she had another idea. She brought in this big, bad a** looking IV machine and moved all my stuff to that. She called it her 'Mickey Mouse' solution! It's funny now, but it wasn't then. It let her run the potassium and the saline through separate controllers so that they could be mixed to a tolerable rate. Lends a whole knew meaning to 'The cure could kill 'ya'.

Now that I am back from the light, she tells me that she'll just run one bag at a time with the new mix and it will probably take all night instead of running two bags at a time without the saline. WELL, DUHHHH!!! And I was going where for the night? And, I have to have a continuous drip of saline anyway because I'm loosing fluids as fast as they can pump them into me. As sick as I was, I could still appreciate the irony in that.

Anyway, the CAT scan revealed that my colon was quite inflamed and the rest of my digestive system was inflamed as well; which meant that I had an infection. It wasn't anything that I ate or drank because I had nothing out of the ordinary. I am sure that i got some of that rank crap from the tank from my hands to my mouth and it happily took up residency in my tummy. Ask me if I'll ever do that again!!!

My husband was really afraid on my second day at the hospital. I was beginning to be afraid too. Now I'm just happy to be feeling much better and still here.

And, OH, I wore adult diapers for the first time at my own request. After a whole night of misery for me and the ones who had to take care of me, I suddenly remembered my mom and her problem and that she has to wear Depends to make life easier for her and everyone else who care for her. Why didn't my caretakers think of that. I didn't even have one miserable chuck on my bed during the night and I had the bed furthest from the bathroom (did someone forget that they had commodes in inventory?). They were tickled when I requested them and I was able to be less tense since I wasn't worrying about accidents and embarrassment. I know this is backwards, but I felt like a very big girl after that. I'm not proud; I'm practical!

Now, they're thinking they're probably going to send me home later this day since I lived through the night. But, wait! Someone had the brilliant idea of handing me a menu of regular food for consumption. What is this?? Am I supposedly doing well enough to eat real food straight from eliminating everything that entered my body until this moment??!! And what is on my plate? Oh, God! It's waffles and syrup!! I'm sooooo hungry and it must be OK because they gave it to me. Right? I eat the first bite and it crashes into my stomach like a bomb. Whoa...maybe I should think about this. I try another bite and it is better so I finish it and drink my orange juice. Now I get to choose what I want for lunch and I'm going to be easy. A Pita with a bit of tuna and a tomato and sticking to the diet cola on ice which is the only thing that ever stayed in me. It comes. I'm excited. I eat the smaller half and drink a bit of the soda and push my tray away. I have a bad feeling about this.

Oh, JEEZ. It only took five minutes and all h*** broke loose. Pain ripping through my gut, can't breath, sweating, dizzyness. S***, I'm going to die! I'm sitting on the commode doubled over and I can see my pan on the other side of the bed and I'm cursing that I had to jump so fast I couldn't grab it. The groaning starts and it's getting louder. I'm in a four bed room; all beds filled. I have a thin curtain between me and the rest of the world...sob! All sense of decency is gone; someone just help me. I yell as I hear a staff member enter the room. 'GRAB THE PAN PLEEEEEEAAASE!' She comes running over with it and kneels at my feet trying to help but not knowing what to do. She starts rubbing my arms in a really motherly attempt to soothe me while trying to pump out of me what happened and when and so on and so on. I'm babbling incoherently because my mind is trying to go anywhere but where it is. I see my sode cup and ask for it between gasping breaths. Four big gulps and it's all over. Minor relief, but relief non-the-less.

Back into the bed, shacking for two hours, fever spikes again, screaming pain in the abdomen and exploding headache. Another shot of morphine and two extra-strength Tylenol, coaching on how to breathe normal again and then finally I'm in the zone I can tolerate. Everyone feels bad, but none more than I. I don't recover until evening and I'm there for anther night.

What's up with that. Every mother and every mother's child knows you give chicken broth to a sick tummy. At least I have an excuse; I'm too sick to think straight. Another 'won't happen again'!! moment.

I am pumped full of meds and finally I sleep for part of the night. I start my morning off easy but I already notice that I'm feeling differently. Apparently the two bags of antibiotic and working. OMG! I'm not going to die here. I get to go home to see my hubby and my loving puppies and blue sky and smell fresh air. I can use the bathroom with total privacy (if you don't count the fur babbies). YAY! Thank God something in modern science worked. I am sooooo happy to be home again.

spoofan

Oh my gosh,you poor thing.
I just found this...haven't been around lately.
I hope you will have a speedy recovery.

passion4poodles

WOW, that sounds awful, I am so sorry. I am glad you are getting better and you are no longer in the hospital. Prayers are going out to you and your hubby.