The Week from Hell
I was only going to write about my fertility up until the egg collection but life has a way of surprising you at every turn.
When I started my fertility treatments I was told that I was a highly unlikely candidate for something called OHSS - ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome, because I was only getting my eggs retrieved and not actually getting pregnant. It felt reassuring to know that everything should be nice and easy after the procedure finished (in terms of fertility) and I could move on to the next stage of my treatment plan.
Some of the risk factors for OHSS are:
- being under 30
- having a large number of follicles
- using the injection type of HCG instead of an oral pill
Mind you, this isn't every risk factor but they were three criteria that I definitely met. So after having the most incredibly painful experience I was looking forward to it all being over, but life wasn't done shaking me down yet. The day after the procedure I still felt awful to the point where my mom called the gyno's office and they prescribed me Tylenol #3's. When Mom came back from filling the prescription I eagerly knocked back the meds and hoped I could feel some sort of relief. I waited and waited for the numbing effect but it never came. Mom was making soup for supper and I couldn't wait that long to eat something, I felt shaky and weak so I figured a small snack would do. I had about five chips with salsa before I felt I couldn't possibly eat more. I went down for a nap and woke up with this incredible wave of nausea. I rushed to the washroom and asked someone to bring me a bucket. I sat and rocked back and forth and wished I would just throw up already and feel better or have the swelling in my belly go down. Around 7:00 I made it out of the bathroom and into my bedroom doorway where I sunk to my knees and began crying from the pain. Dad found me crumpled over on the floor and we all decided it was time to go to the ER.
During the car ride to RUH every little bump felt like it was a personal attack on my ovaries. When we got there I couldn't give them any information I just stood and wept. I don't like crying in front of other people but there was a sweet moment when we sat down in the triage line. I was sitting there sobbing and this older native man ahead of us asked my mom, "Is she feeling ok?" Mom told him I was pretty sick and he said, "Well she can go ahead of me. Can I pray for her?" When they were ready for me, two hours later, they gave me my own room and prompt attention. By that time I had sat still long enough for the tears to stop. The doctor came in and yawned five times before he finished asking me questions but when he asked if I had any pre-existing medical conditions and I told him aplastic anemia he definitely perked up. They started an IV for me and after assessment gave me a drug called Dilaudid (hydromorphone) which is five to seven times stronger than morphine. I felt it rush into my body and needed my head tilted downwards to prevent me from fainting. It helped with my pain but made me very jumpy as well as very sleepy. Every time I would close my eyes to sleep I would wake with a start like those dreams you have of falling off a cliff. They sent me for an ultrasound at 12:30 a.m. and found I was bleeding into my abdomen.
The next step was admitting me into the hospital around 3:30 a.m. I was put on postpartum/maternity where moms stayed with their newborns. The next six days were nothing short of miserable. I was in a lot of pain and had a harassing nausea that would often make me feel worse than the pain. My belly kept growing to the point where I gained 25 lbs in five days and looked like I was 6 months pregnant. They were giving me 2mg of Dilaudid every four hours which helped with the pain for only two hours, so one night they gave me another 2mg after I was still rocking in agony. It must have been too much because I started tweaking out hard and I went into these whole body twitches that looked like extreme shivers. I also had blurred vision, dry mouth, dizziness, trouble breathing, and a time gap between when things were happening and when I perceived them to happen. After that night we switched to morphine and still found that my body was hypersensitive to narcotics. After a day or two of morphine we went back down to Tylenol #3's since the big name narcotics weren't doing my pain justice anyways. Some of the best medicine I received, and the major source of smiles I got during my stay were from the visits I got from two of my closest friends, Megan and Jessica. Having visitors in the hospital broke up my days so nicely and allowed me to focus on something that wasn't me and my current crappy situation.
Don't do drugs kids.
From all the narcotics and the irritation from the blood in my abdomen, my entire intestinal system shut down and I had something called an ileus which they decided would be resolved by giving me a nasogastric tube. This "fun" little tube goes in through your nose, down your throat and into your stomach where it pumps out whatever you've got in there. I was pretty uneasy about it going in and I told the nurse that I was definitely going to throw up. She didn't believe me and told me that it's not so bad, that I would just swallow some water as the tubing went down and it would all be okay. Well the naso part went okay but as soon as it reached my throat, I puked all over her hands and then another 4 or 5 times. After all the puke was gone, I made a retching sound that could compare to what I assume Arnold Schwarzenegger would sound like while gagging loudly. Once the tubing was in things settled down a little but I was still so unhappy about the way I could feel it move in my nose and throat. I was only comfortable tilting my head to one side and tried to limit my swallowing as much as possible since every time I did, the tube in my throat would feel like I was choking on a marble. To add fuel to the fire, the tubing would suction the contents of my stomach out through the nose piece so that I could be reminded of fragments of things I had eaten earlier that day as if I was gently blowing them out my nose. I was not allowed to eat or drink anything to give my body/intestines a rest and I only spoke a few words which were to complain. By the next evening they took the tubing out and I had an absolute hallelujah moment.
Looking elated about my nasogastric tube.
The major reason I was in the hospital was for the complications my SAA had on the OHSS which caused the blood to leak into my abdomen from my bursting ovaries. Basically, once my eggs were harvested the follicles that held them filled back up with blood and the mature egg follicles that didn't get harvested burst open and filled with blood as well. All of this led to bleeding which extended my abdomen to a circumference of 94.5 cm. I couldn't sleep on my sides and getting in and out of bed was a challenge because of my watermelon belly but became especially difficult when my hemoglobin dropped from 89 to 54. One night I went down for an x-ray and had to lay flat on their table which pulled my skin so tight I thought for sure it would tear open. Then the technician asked me to lay on my side and I just about couldn't do it. Having all that fluid shift put pressure on only my left side was like being stepped on by an elephant. The nurses measured and tracked everything I peed out and would sometimes test it for different things like blood or pH or checking on my liver/kidneys.
On Tuesday Nov. 1st four doctors consulted each other and decided I needed an abdominal drain which was then scheduled to be inserted surgically at 9:30 a.m the next morning. I wanted my mom to be there so when she finished her night shift in Humboldt she went home, changed out of her uniform and rushed to Saskatoon to be with me. She flew into my room just as the porter was starting to wheel me down to the operating room. It was pretty much a movie moment! The operation started with an ultrasound to decide where the best placement of the drain would be. Then they inserted the needles with the numbing anesthetic and after that I didn't feel anything. Though I had the chance to look and see what was happening, I wasn't going to take the risk despite being very curious. They drained off 2.6 litres of bloody fluid and I immediately felt better. Mom bought some celebratory hospital cinnamon buns and it was the first solid food I had since my nasogastric tube and man was it tasty. The first time we put the drain to use we took out another 750 ml followed by smaller amounts every hour or two. By the evening I was feeling much better, all things considered, and I was visited by this wonderful doctor who told me I could go home. She had barely left the room and I started crying. My parents asked what was wrong with such a look of concern that it was wonderful to be able to tell them, "No! No! These are tears of joy! I am just so happy I get to go home!"
Driving home was a feeling of pure happiness and comfort. We stopped and got a burger on the way and when I sunk my teeth in, it was like trying a burger for the first time. I couldn't believe food tasted this good!! Three hours after we got home, my drain sprung a leak and saturated my bandaging gauze eventually to the point of it leaking out of my bandage and down my leg. We called a doctor who said I should be fine until the morning to get my bandaging changed. I went to Aurora to see my gynecologist and they did an ultrasound to check on things and then changed my nasty looking gauze. I came home pretty relieved only to have my drain fall out on its own sometime during the evening. It was hanging by the guide wire from the operation so again we called a doctor who said to just take the rest of the wire out and come see them in a few days. The next day I got a fever that reached 38.5°C and felt like my bad luck would never run out. On Saturday the 5th I peed out a total of 2.8 litres and I went from 143 lbs to 131 lbs the next morning. In a matter of four days I was almost completely back to my old self and felt so good I kept laughing at things that weren't funny. It was nice to feel somewhat normal.
The week from hell taught me a lot about resiliency and to take control of my health, speaking up when I feel sick or have questions about the things that are happening to me. A few days after I was admitted to the hospital I found a place in my mind that I had never ventured to before. I had lost all my hope and felt that not a single thing was going right for me and thought my bad fortune would transfer over to my transplant. I felt deep down for the first time that maybe I wouldn't make it after all. I have never wavered much in my optimism, and so having these kinds of feelings shook me to the core. Now, since I have been out of the hospital for a few days my optimism has bloomed back into my soul, only with a small black spot that now contains a healthy (or not so 'healthy') dose of reality. It was a stark reminder for me to appreciate some very small things in life as even the ordinary days are pretty precious.
