The surgery I had in September of 2009 was the biggest operation I've had to date. After more weight loss, nausea, and general malaise my doctors decided that surgery was my best option. I had excessive scar tissue in my small intestine after multiple episodes of Crohn's flare ups in the same spot. (I had an obstruction a couple years earlier in my small intestine that left me in the hospital for a week, but doctors decided that surgery wasn't needed at the time. But more on that later.) I remember my current GI doctor and surgeon saying, "I don't know why you didn't have this done years ago."
Let me preface this by saying that I am convinced that environmental factors contribute to disease. I was feeling probably the best I had felt in a long time shortly before the worst. My friend passed away in a car accident in December of 2008 and I had never been so close to such a tragedy. When people grieve a loss, I think it's generally hard to feel "good". And so during this time, my health nose-dived. I think a combination of grief, depression, anxiety, and withdrawal all contributed to why my disease so swiftly returned full steam.
During this time, my doctor ordered some tests to see what was going on inside of me. One of the tests required that (because the disease is most active in a place that can't be easily reached by Colonoscopy scope or Endoscopy scope) a long tube was put in my nose and down my throat--yes again--and to pump up my stomach with a huge bag of liquid that could be seen on an X-Ray monitor. I told my doctor that I just couldn't do the NG thing again, and he reassured me that they would knock me out for that part. But did that happen? Not without a fight it didn't.
I got into the room and asked the technician if I was going to get anesthesia like I was expecting. He said, "No you don't need it." To which I responded with an insane amount of crying and shaking and repeatedly telling him that my GI doc said that I could be knocked out for this. He kept fighting me and then a sweet woman came in and advocated for me. He was not happy I could tell. So to humor me, he gave me this "numbing agent" that looked like WD-40 in a can and sprayed the aerosol spray up my nose before the tube was to go in. It stung and made my eyes water. It did numb the inside of my nose, but he did it way too soon. By the time the tube was supposed to go in, the numbness wore off and he did it again. Ugh. So I laid on the X-Ray table with a numb nose and cried in hysterics. I cried because I felt betrayed. I cried because I was scared. I cried because I didn't get directions to the hospital and got there late in a blizzard. And I cried because it had barely been a month since I lost a friend that I had just started to get to know and didn't know how to deal with it all. Eventually, they bargained that they would give me an IV to sedate me but that I'd still be awake because I had to do things that required awareness and cooperation, like swallow the damn tube and let them know if my stomach was so full that I was about to vomit. Great. My two least favorite things in the world coming together in one mega-awful situation. So I cooperated, still fully aware. I swallowed the tube in the terribly familiar way, and went in and out of consciousness for a while. At one point I woke up feeling the urgency to vomit and alerted the nurse and she cranked up some anti-nausea medication in my IV and it somehow made the feeling disappear. (If only I had access to that in real life.) So the procedure eventually ended and it was time for the dreaded removal of the tube. The guy ripped the thing out of my face so hard that my nose bled for a few hours afterward. From what I can remember of this horrible moment, there was some kind of balloon around the tube to keep it in place once it was in me that had never been deflated. I decided being unconscious for the rest of that day would be best.
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