Oh Crap

Warning; This post contains lots of urine and poop. Which is kinda nasty. So if you don't want to read about it, then I suggest you skip this one. I have to post, though, just to, erm, get it out of my system. And I suppose one could learn something from it. 


So much for getting some R&R. So much for getting better. I was hospitalized yesterday.


Around 1 on Sunday morning, I decided that enough was enough. I had been in discomfort for days. I hadn't gone to the bathroom in a week (well, at least number two). I was feeling really...well...shitty. I had tried laxatives. I had tried prunes. I had tried sitting in warm water, squatting, stool softeners. I had reached the end of my rope, gone to my last resorts and still was stuck. I went to the emergency room. 


Things only got worse when I got there. I needed to give them a urine sample. Okay. That should have been a simple, painfully easy task. It wasn't. I could barely get a dribble out, and what came out couldn't be captured. I put it down to nerves and pressure pain, and in a little while it would be fixed. 


Wrong. Four hours later and three more tries, nothing. By that time, they'd given me an x-ray and told me they'd be taking a look. By that time, NOTHING was coming out, and my bladder felt painfully full. The doctor came in and poked my belly a bit (the parts on my belly that WEREN'T swollen and tender were extremely ticklish, and I went from hissing in pain to choking on giggles in seconds), then set me up for a CT scan. Which meant more liquid. 


I had to drink what seemed like an ocean of barium sulfate suspension. I finished the crap around 7:30 am. I started at quarter to six. It was a miracle that I managed to hold it all down. They had me wait two hours so the suspension could get into my system. As I'd been drinking, though, the pain was getting worse. By the time 9:30 came around, I was kicking around on my stretcher, whimpering, and crying. My belly was swollen to the point where I thought I'd soon pop. My bladder was screaming, and my bowels were flaring in agony. I could barely move from the stretcher to the wheelchair when the radiologist came to take me away. Moving was excruciating, even if it was a simple kick of my leg. 


When I returned, Mom had just woken in the chair in my hospital room, and she was talking to my little brother (there was nobody home, so he came with us) who had slept on a stretcher. I hadn't slept all night. The nurse left, and I turned to my mother. I practically rounded on her. I demanded to know how long it was going to take before they did something. By then I was constantly in tears, and definitely couldn't pee at all, despite the fact that my bladder was full to bursting. She told me that there was procedure that needed to be followed and I'd just have to wait, and that the weren't going to give me anything for the pain.

My face when I was told I'd have to wait for help with no painkillers.

I swear I wanted to kill her. 


Around 11, she took Simon home. Because at that point, I'd started whispering out loud that I wish they'd just get it over with. I didn't say "And kill me," but that was what I'd been thinking, because I was in too much pain to think. Her timing couldn't have been more perfect. The doctor came in and told me that my scan showed that nothing was wrong, but they had to catheterize me due to the fact that my bladder had filled to three times its normal size. Because it had done this, the muscles couldn't move on their own. 


With this news, I began to shake. I had only heard about catheters in books. Books like Sybil. Books like Suffer the Child. Books where the mother was exceptionally cruel and had filled her daughter's bladder with ice water, where catheters were only used to provide painful punishments and insane tortures. Needless to say, I was terrified. What kind of agony awaited me? Fortunately, I was so very wrong on the images, and found myself sighing with relief when it was all over. I had been harboring the equivalent of a 20 oz bottle of Pepsi in my bladder. Ouch. 


I dozed off. Blissfully dozed off for half an hour. Then my nurse came in and told me of my next procedure. The enema.


Same deal as the catheter, I'd only really heard of these in terms of cruelty and sadistic maliciousness. But when she showed me the bottle and explained it, I wasn't even fazed. I had been wrong about the catheter. I certainly was wrong about this, too. No details necessary, except that it certainly worked. And it certainly helped. I felt like a deflated balloon by the time they discharged me. I was only slightly nauseous when I got home, and ended up sleeping that off. Since then, I've eaten a bowl of chicken-flavoured rice. That's all I think I can handle right now.

My face when I left the hospital. Ew. Yeah.

In short, I feel fantastic. But blue holy hell, what a procedure that was! I think I should have listened to my horoscope that Friday, though, and eaten some tuna-flavoured pudding. I'm positive I could have solved my bowel problem with that. That horoscope can be found in my former post, "Written In The Stars", for anyone who cares to read it. 


I think some lifestyle changes are in order. Yes indeed. I NEVER want to go through that again. NEVER.