(no subject)

[becomingkate]

 The following is two entries mashed together because I realized I didn't post the first entry here, I posted it on LJ.

So, I went through a pretty serious health issue in late April. On the 27th I started having kidney pain again. You might remember I had kidney stones in February. I had gotten a call after all that, that I still had some debris in there and we should make a follow up to see about that. That was all in place, but apparently some of it moved and started causing me pain again. So I went back to the shitty ER in town who ambulanced me to Boston where they had taken care of it before. I told them the wrong hospital, but the one I told them is also excellent so it didn't really matter.

I remember being ambulanced there with an extremely handsome EMT. I remember him dropping me off, and then I don't remember the next 4 days. Apparently I developed a serious infection due to the kidney blockage. They had to drain a lot of fluids from me and they put me in a coma for 4 days. They also had to take out the shunt in my brain because they were afraid it would become infected. This gave me a lovely scar from my sternum to just below my belly button.
Next thing I remember, I was awake and I had a breathing tube and feeding tube in. I remember them taking them out. That's not something you want to remember, folks.
After that, I remember having some kind of cone of shame around my face that was blowing oxygen at me and I thought I was in a big room with music playing. There was a curtain in front of me that had little printed animals on it, and the animals were dancing. I thought, what a cool effect, I wonder how they do that. This "big room" was my hospital room. There was nobody else there, except my husband, and yet I felt like I was in some big arena surrounded by people. Every time I closed my eyes I felt like people were around me, with me. I thought people were in my bed. I thought I was at a concert and I had a vision so real of a little girl next to me asking if she could use my phone to send a text. When I was lucid enough I actually went into my messages to see if that happened. I thought I could control music with my mind. I kept thinking I was using my phone and then I'd look at my hands and I wasn't. When I tried to sleep I imagined hellscapes with demon birds chasing me, huge mountain ranges and burnt landscapes.

As soon as I could ask, I got off those meds.

My husband came every day (even when I was not conscious), and my son came a few days later when I was feeling better. I had excellent nurses but I was still sleeping most of the time. Eventually I moved from the ICU to intermediate care where they bothered me less and I was actually feeling somewhat normal. I had to wait days to replace my shunt because I kept getting infections, but I felt okay, so that was super frustrating. People came every day to take my blood for labs. Sometimes it was someone who was good with difficult draws, sometimes it wasn't. I finally asked the woman who was good at it to come back every time. I was seeing so many different medical teams, I could barely remember who was who.

When physical therapy came to get me out of bed, I could barely walk 10 feet without breaking a sweat. I needed a nap after the session.

Hrrm, I seem to have lost the last half of my entry. I wonder if it's in drafts somewhere. Would be a shame to lose it all.

(entry 2)

So I just wanted to kind of update, and finish the story. I'm sorry if I've repeated some. Basically after they replaced my shunt they waited a couple days to see if it would cause no issues, and it didn't seem to. Then they sent me home. The first couple weeks at home were rough but it was still good to be home. It seemed like when I got home I just had more hope and optimism, and that I could choose to get up when I wanted to because I wasn't hooked up to anything anymore and I didn't feel at the mercy of doctors and people who wanted to take my blood in the middle of the night and fun stuff like that. I needed a lot of help at first, I could barely move. I got a cane and managed to get up and down stairs slowly to shower and go to bed. I had PT come and give me exercises and that helped a lot. I still had ongoing things to deal with including a tube in my kidney which came out a couple weeks later when they discovered it wasn't actually working anymore. That was removed with no sedation because I had eaten that day. I wouldn't recommend it.

I felt like I healed relatively quick after that but I still had to get the kidney stones out. That happened last Friday and it went well. I only felt pain for a couple days after that, and I also had my period, so I honestly couldn't tell the difference between the surgery pain and cramps. On Monday I had to remove a tube at home that they kept in my bladder to help keep things open while I healed. That also was not fun. But now I am free and feeling pretty much back to normal, except now I am getting mild headaches. I have an appointment with a neurologist in a couple weeks so hopefully he can schedule me for an MRI or something to see if the shunt is functioning.

My husband has been home this whole time and I'm actually not looking forward to him going back. I have appreciated all the help especially with my son who is tough to deal with. I think I'm just going to have to make a schedule for him so we can stay on track. He too is dealing with a couple health issues, I don't know if I mentioned but he has an immune disease similar to arthritis and the meds weren't working so now we are trying an autoinjector of Humira once a week. His scoliosis has also worsened so now he wears a back brace and does exercises. So we have to keep up with his things too.

I took up watercolor painting last week and I've been having fun with that. I also took this downtime to try to find more people to chat with online and I actually met a woman who I have been getting along really well with as a friend and we might meet next week. She lives an hour away, but it's nice to have someone else to talk to and possibly hang out with once in a while.

Yesterday I started couch to 5k again. I was only two weeks away from finishing the program when all this happened, and now I'm starting over. I couldn't complete the first day-I got tired after 20 minutes instead of 30. But I will just keep repeating the first day until I can do it.

I'm talking with my college advisor to plan the fall semester. I have to rework a couple things because I dropped the statistics class I had planned for this summer.
I completed my spring courses-I had two incompletes after everything happened and I completed all that last week. The other two classes were nice enough to drop the things I missed and grade me from there.
So I'm just hoping to make it through the summer and get back into a good routine in the fall.