Counting My Blessings

I am inspired to write today because of my near death experience yesterday morning. I was choking yesterday morning and alone in my apartment.

I had prepared my breakfast for the day and I was taking out my pills that I take twice a day. Once in the morning and once with dinner. I take two daily vitamins, two fish oil, one iron and one vitamin D. Those are all capsules with a smooth outer surface. The last two pills I take are called Curcuplex. They are a pressed pill made of Turmeric. The surface of these are ruff and dry. I was given the ability to swallow a lot of pills at once. I have in the past, every time, taken all these pills at once to save time and save myself from swallowing a whole glass of water. Yesterday was different than the other times that I have taken my pills. As I swallowed those pills I immediately knew that something was wrong. I have once or twice before had an issue swallowing the Curcuplex. They have taken a little longer to go down before. But this time they were no moving at all!! I tried not to panic and think of what to do. I first tried to drink more water. I thought ok maybe they just need a little more lubrication and push. I drank a few large sips and nothing they were still stuck. At this point I could still breath so I was not freaking out. I tried to hack them up and to my surprise one came out. So I tried to hit my self in the stomach and the back. Nothing was moving. Then I tried to swallow again and again with water. This time the pill got stuck more. The last sip of water actually came back out of my mouth and went all over the floor. Now this is when I knew I was completely by the book choking. I couldn't breath or cough. I was in complete PANIC I went from thinking I was OK to thinking oh my god I am going to die alone in this apartment and no one is going to know about it. I immediately knew that I needed to go to someone and have them give me the Heimlich.

I went to my neighbors door and started pounding on it like a crazy person. If you have seen in movies when the girl being chased by the killer is trying to pound on the front door of the house to try and get someone to answer it so she doesn't die? That was me. I was trying for what seemed like for ever. They weren't asnwering right away and I was really scared that I was going to have to go down a flight of stairs to the next door and try my luck that someone else would answer. I started thinking maybe they are too scared to answer this kind of knock at this early in the morning. It was 7 AM. I know I would be worried. I saw someone walking past my building and they just looked at me as I was pounding on this door. I tried to yell for help but I could project my voice. Then suddenly the door opens and the neighbor and his wife are bewildered. I had woken them up and now they were confused and looking at me like "what the hell is going on". I put my hands on my throat and opened my eyes wide trying to convey that I was choking and I needed help. Side note here is that my neighbors first language is not English... The wife knew pretty quick that I was choking and asked me "are you choking?". I nodded yes and she got behind me and started giving me the Heimlich. After a few thrusts the pill became unlodged from my throat and I was able to breath again. I thanked the neighbor for helping me and went back in my apartment. I sat down on my couch to try and process what had just happened. My neighbor did come back a few minutes after and asked if I was OK and if I needed any tea or if I wanted to stay in their house for a while. I declined as I just really wanted to call Robert and talk to him. I thanked her immensely and gave her a hug and went back in side. I soon had to start working so that helped my focus on getting myself back together.

It took me a few hours to calm down enough to think about what had occured. I had just experienced the feeling of thinking that I was going to die. It was really hard to deal with and I cried as I tried to call my fiance and tell him what had happened. I felt really alone and scared. Scared is the only word to describe it. I felt a little anxiety this morning as I was preparing my breakfast and getting my pills ready.

Definitely was a seriously life changing and learning experience that I won't soon forget.

What seemed so endless

I haven't written for a while. I have been getting busier at work and with life. I wanted to reflect on last year a bit as well so that I could remember as much as possible about my 5 month ordeal with the Crohn's.

So I left off with me starting a medication regimen with the doctor at Valley. I was on steroids and a mix of antibiotics. They were working for a little while and my symptoms were calming down a bit. I was doing that for about 2 month. I had dropped out of Vet Assisting school in December because I had a bad feeling about continuing on. I felt like I would possibly fail for not making it to classes. Boy was my intuition spot on. With in about 3-4 weeks of my last class I started having pain and swelling in my lower right abdomen. It was hot and painful. I was having trouble sleeping and walking at times. I started having fevers and sweats as well as getting extremely tired to the point of passing out. I was alarmed and called my doctor. I told them that I needed some vicodin for this because the pain and discomfort was getting so bad that I wouldn't deal with it anymore and they needed to give me something. If the doctor would have seen me sooner maybe something else could have been done but that is besides the point.

Contrast for my CT Scan!

That same day I called the doctor they told me that I would need to immediately come into the hospital and have a cat scan to see what was happening. Of course as usual they don't tell me what they think it might be. I had to leave work early and drive myself down to the hospital and go to the imaging center. Once again I was drinking the gross thick white liquid and waiting 40 minutes to take the image. I was called into the back where I was given the scrubs to change into and then given an IV. I laid down for my scan and then I was made to wait for the results. That day I was not in for any good news. When the Technician came out to speak with me I was told that I would need to be transported to the emergency room. WTF! I was so freaked out and while being wheeled to the emergency room I asked what was going on and they said that the doctors would explain. Basically this is what happened... When I got my colonoscopy the doctor told me that I had a stricture which is a narrowing in my bowels. Hardly anything was able to pass through. So pressure built up and needed to be released so a fistula formed. A fistula is a tunnel that made its way through my bowel wall to the inside of my body. For a month at least, waste was passing through the fistula to the outside of the bowel. That caused my body to develop an abscess to contain the waste. This abscess then created a second pocket. I had two abscesses growing inside my body and they were incredibly painful.

I was admitted into the Hospital and they had scheduled the next day to have a JP drain "installed" in my lower abdomen "in hopes to remove the pus". That procedure was very painful and scary. I was sent to a CT scan room. They put me on the table with a IV and about 4 people around me. They scanned the area they wanted to put the drain in and after some local anesthetic they took a giant needle and inserted it into the area of the larger abscess. They fed a tube down and held it in place with a sticker with a lock on it to hold the tube. I was crying and whimpering in pain and the anesthesiologist would just keep upping the diluadid to make the pain disappear. Eventually I got to a place where I was able to calm down.

After that procedure I had to stay in the hospital for a few days and they let me go home. I didn't stay at home long because the drain was leaking a couple days after I got home.

The Jackson Pratt Drain AKA JP.

I had to come back to the Radiology department a few times for them to look at the drain and make sure that it was still in the correct spot. There was a chance that  the position would shift and inhibit the drains ability to drain. That would happen periodically where the drain would get clogged with fluid and the pus would start to leak from under the tape.

Here is a picture of the drain leaking.

After I was at home for a couple days I started to experience this pain that I had never felt before. It was in my right leg upper thigh on the outer side of the femur. It started slowly and gradually got worse and worse. The pain felt like a burning sensation. It would happen when I would try to walk. I spent a whole day seated on the couch to see if the pain would go away. I didn't eat or drink any thing so that I wouldn't have to get up. In the evening my mom came to my house to check on me and help me make dinner and what not. By this time if I moved my leg the pain was too much. We called the on call Doctor and he said that it was up to me whether or not I needed to come in immediately. I decided that I needed this to stop. The time it took me to get down 2 flights of stairs and seated in the car took around 30-35 minutes. By this time I could not put any pressure on my leg and the pain was so intense I was crying and screaming in agony. My mom stood by me absolutely helpless as I didn't want her to touch me for fear of her movement causing me more pain. I managed to make it down each step. Then came getting in the car, an H3, with out moving my leg. That proved very hard. I am still screaming and crying in pain and after what seemed like an hour I was in the car. I had my mom drive so slow as to not move my leg that we were barely moving at all. As it turned out I never got a straight answer as to why this was happening. They said that it was possible that there could be a nerve that was being irritated by the drain tube. 

To this day I have no feeling in that part of my leg...

 

I think for now this is all that I can get through. Next time I will talk about what happened after this. Thanks for reading.