More of my Hospital Story

So last we spoke about this, I was merrily eating yummy tasting ice chips after my bowl obstruction surgery was over, with a side of excruciating shoulder pains.

Over the next few days I was able to eat more than just a few bites of my clear liquids diet, and everything stayed down. Yay! When I ate though, it stimulated my intestines and that meant sudden and urgent flying trips to the toilet. What a nice surprise. Okay that was sarcasm. What ISN'T sarcasm was the great surprise that BK and Jake planned on that Saturday to drive down to Toronto to let my family visit me, and to pick up Dhara and take her back with them. It was so great to see my family, but Sage was shy and made strange with me because I had an oxygen tube in my nose and the IVs in my arm. I let him have a drink from my pitcher of water and ice (which looked like a giant paper cup) and that eased his apprehension. Hayden asked a bunch of questions and Jake sat quietly holding my hand. It was great to see them but I got tired quickly and they didn't end up staying very long.

That night around 10pm I had heart palpatations which lasted (by the clock) 3 minutes. I called the nurse and let her know. She said if it happens again she would call the heart specialist to come take a look. At 11:30pm they started again and I rang for the nurse. They didn't stop this time. At first I thought "I hope this lasts until the heart people get here", so they'd be able to see the problem and know how to fix it. But half an hour later my room was full of people and equipment and it was still going on and they were loading me with drugs, I took back that thought and just wanted it to end. The doctor said "Okay this drug will feel like a kick in the chest. Ready?" She administered it. I asked when the kick in the chest would happen, having felt nothing but the heart palpatations. She said "hmm" and then decided to move me to the respiratory/heart floor. So off we went. I said goodbye to my private room and was wheeled up a floor and into a very hot room with someone snoring in it. We were there about 10 minutes when the doc said she wanted me in the ICU. The nurse who'd moved all my stuff had just arrived with it when we were out the door and on our way downstairs to ICU. I'm actually surprised I didn't lose anything.

In the ICU the team who'd been trying to put IV's in me succeeded in getting additional ports in so I had a total of 6, and one was arterial. My flesh on my arms was almost completely bruises and swollen as a result. Later when Carol was there, she counted seven bags of stuff dripping into me at once. The doctor told me that my heart was beating over 200 beats per minute and I had v-fib. For my own sake just now I looked up the wikipedia definition:

Ventricular fibrillation (V-fib or VF) is a condition in which there is uncoordinated contraction of the cardiac muscle of the ventricles in the heart, making them quiver rather than contract properly. While there is activity, perhaps best described as "writhing like a can filled with worms" it is undetectable by palpation (feeling) at major pulse points of the carotid and femoral arteries especially by the lay person. Such an arrhythmia is only confirmed by ECG/EKG. Ventricular fibrillation is a medical emergency that requires prompt BLS/ACLS interventions because should the arrhythmia continue for more than a few seconds, it will likely degenerate further into asystole (a flat ECG with no rhythm- which is usually not responsive to therapy unless there is still some residual fine VF rhythm left or the patient is otherwise lucky and is treated very quickly); after this, within minutes blood circulation will cease, and sudden cardiac death (SCD) may occur in a matter of minutes and/or the patient could sustain irreversible brain damage and possibly be left brain dead (death often occurs if normal sinus rhythm is not restored within 90 seconds of the onset of VF, especially if it has degenerated further into asystole).


There was a lot of activity around me, obviously, with doctors telling me different options they were going to try to get my heart rate down and back to normal. One doctor told me she wanted to tilt the bed to a radical angle with my head down and then something else but I don't remember what, and the main doctor who was with me from the beginning said if the drugs she was giving me didn't start to work she was going to have to shock me. Defibrulate me. At this point I thought I was going to die. I was so scared and I cried, thinking of Jake and the boys and how sorry I was to have chosen to do this to myself and to them.

By the morning my heart rate had slowed down to 140 beats per minute and the v-fib was way less. No shocking had had to happen, no tilting the bed, yay the drugs worked.

Sunday I wasn't able to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes scary and gross visualizations came to my eyes immediately. I couldn't help imagining horrible things happening to my kids and to me and the lack of sleep was making me halucinate sounds. I thought I heard a song (that now I can't remember) being played over and over again, and I even asked a nurse about it. He thought I was crazy, of course. A day or so later I heard the humming noise of the machines that were making me think they were music. But back to Sunday. That night I didn't sleep either, except for maybe 1-2 hours. It was such a long night. By the next day I had banished the negative halucinations and replaced them with peaceful relaxing japanese gardens, pink blossoms, silken king-sized bed with dark wood headboard and flowing pink fabric blowing gently in the breeze. I could even hear beautiful music. All when I closed my eyes. I wasn't sleeping, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't drugs, although maybe it was the sleep deprivation and the drugs together, but when my eyes were open I wasn't halucinating. Even during blinks it was there. I could go on about my lucid fantastical waking dreams, but it would be a book.

On Monday Dr Smith sent me for a CT scan. He thought a blood clot had possibly caused all these problems. Unfortunately all the fluids they'd pumped me with caused me to be too heavy for the CT machine. The bed I was in weighed me at having gained 45 pounds of fluid since surgery. Dr Smith came and told me that since they couldn't look with the CT, he wanted to look with his laproscopic scopes. Open me up again. Of course I agreed to this third surgery. He also said he possibly wanted to keep me out for the rest of the night and wake me up on Tuesday, giving my body rest. At the time it sounded great. The surgery was scheduled for early that evening. I was told later it lasted 45 minutes or so. They found infection and abscess and icky stuff galore. They put in 2 drains.

I have to take a break. More later.