Day 36

Wednesday, July 5, 2023

 I haven't updated for a while, because it has been a wild couple of weeks. I woke up Tuesday, 6/27,  morning in tremendous pain. My stomach was cramping. My stomach had been hurting for days, and I had felt nauseous as well. I thought that the lining of my stomach was inflamed from using NAISDS. The "googler" said that the only thing to do was take antacids, stop taking ibuprofen and get on a regimen of Pepcid. I had my kid bring home some Pepcid, but the package said to take it on an empty stomach in the morning, so I asked my husband to bring home some Tums. My intent was to wait until the next morning to see how it went. When my husband got home, he said insisted that we go to the emergency room. I was in no condition to protest. I had been in pain in a fetal position all day.

When my husband called the ER, they said that it would be a short wait if we came immediately. We got there very quickly, but the wait was incredibly long. We got there at about 8:45PM, and we weren't seen until after 2AM. I was in a lot of pain. At some point I went in the car so I could curl up, while my husband waited in the ER.

The experience of waiting in the ER was horrible. People were sitting for hours, moaning, obviously in a tremendous amount of pain and no one even checked their vitals. Once I was actually in a room, everything went very quickly. The staff was attentive and made me comfortable. They gave me fluids and offered me pain medication. I told them that I had been having such a hard time with the pain medication that I'd like some other option. The doctor listened and gave me Benadryl to help me sleep. They took test after test, including at CT and came up with a definitive diagnosis. I have diverticulitis. It's an infection in the intestine. It almost certainly happened as a result of being constipated after surgery. It is very painful, but not difficult to treat if you catch it quickly enough. The doctors gave me a dose of antibiotics intravenously and sent me home with an antibiotic and anti-nausea medication. I also needed to stick to an all liquid diet for two days.

I left the hospital at about 6AM. The cramping was completely gone. I just needed to deal with weakness of lack of food. I had eaten nothing the day before and probably very little the day before that. Now I had to go two more days on very few calories. The hardest part was staying hydrated. If I drank big gulps of water, I would start to get nauseous. I could only drink sips at a time. It was just hard to remember to do it.

Thursday, 6/29, I felt better, but I had been doing too much to try and straighten my leg, so I had a set back.

Today, was the first day of my 6th week. I went to the PT and got ROM measurements. My flexion unassisted is 127. Assisted its 130. Extension is -3 1/2. I have been feeling a lot of pain the last few days, but I took yesterday off and felt much better today.