(no subject)
I thought I'd have all sorts of time to post when I was healing up, but I didn't want to talk about what happened exactly till it looked like I was going to survive.
About seven weeks ago, I was at a BBQ with some friends from the internship this summer, and as I tend to do at parties or work, or where ever, I began inviting people to hit or kick me... sort of medium at first, and harder little by little to toughen my torso. So it went well for a while, friendly fighting and wresting and whatever- until one really nice kick that missed my ribs and tucked itself in the tender area just above my hip. Immediately it hurt, but not too bad. After a few minutes I felt like I had a sort of bad stomach ache and an odd pain behind my left shoulder blade. The pain kept growing little by little, and I decided I was done playing for awhile. I think maybe falling twelve or fifteen feet off a cliff a couple weeks earlier might have softened me up a little since I didn't do anything that day that I hadn't done hundreds of times before over the last ten years. I didn't realize what had happened so I didn't leave the bbq for another few hours, and even though the pain was bad enough that I couldn't breath or move well, I figured I'd see how things played out before assuming I should go to the hospital.
When I got home I took some chinese curing pills (it's actually what they are called, and they will generally help with any weird digestive things), and began addressing it as possible food poisoning or stomach flu. After an hour or so with no positive change, I caught a side veiw of my belly in the bathroom mirror and saw it was distended about as it would stretch and was also could only take little shallow breaths so I figured I'd try a new round of treatments. I took golden seal, and decided to begin applying arnica oil externally as it's good for bruising, inflamation, and congestion. I couldn't really take much water so sipped as I was able before falling asleep. I woke feeling slightly better, and took another golden seal and water, and fell asleep again.
In the morning I was feeling considerably better, though I couldn't really sit up or move so I decided to rest, and since I have one of those emergency service/trauma clinic maybe two hundred feet from my porch on broadway, I figured I could just walk over when I rested a little longer and psyched myself up. Turns out it took about seven hours to get the hang of walking well enough to make it, but since they were closing I decided to go to my doctor in the morning (I'd realized by this point that I was probably bleeding internally since nothing else made any sense). I'd settled on taking goldenseal at twice or a third the normal dose... not sure why, it sort of felt like it was helping. By the next morning I took a cab to the doctor and after seeing me for a couple minutes he told me to go to the emergency room.
(I learned doing research later that goldenseal is really good for treating internal bleeding, and the arnica worked out really well for helping to remove the blood pooling in my intra-abdominal cavity.)
I found out at Swedish Medical Center that I'd torn four or so gashes in my spleen, but he said that since most people die the first first 48 hours of that type of thing if they're the type to die from that sort of thing. If after 48 hours they still have a safe red blood cell count they get sent home. I usually have more red blood cells in by blood stream than most people, and also twice as much iron as I should so am somewhat adept at losing a lot of blood safely, so since I was still just barely at a safe level, I didn't even need a blood transfusion. They said as long as the pain in my shoulder didn't get worse (I guess there's a nerve there that travels past the spleen and freaks out if you bleed on it) and my belly didn't swell again I might be ok. They also gave me a prescription for strong pain killers (which seems odd if pain is your warning that you are in trouble so I didn't fill it).
A couple days later I checked in with my doctor (for a doctor's note to take to work) he surprised me by asking why I still had my spleen, and I shrugged and said they didn't ask for it so thought I got to keep it. He shook his head and said he hadn't realized they did that sort of thing. I'd done some research on spleen injuries... mostly case studies and standards of care at different hospitals around the country, so I mentioned some of what I'd been reading about non surgical healing. He looked skeptical and told me it was a dangerous situation, and I could bleed out quite unexpectedly so to be careful. This became his regular advice over the next couple weeks. By three and a half weeks he shrugged and said since I'd climbed back up to red blood cell counts at fifty percent of total blood volume, i maybe was healing normally. By four weeks he used the spleen injury in the past tense and said I didn't need to see him anymore.
-no worries
About seven weeks ago, I was at a BBQ with some friends from the internship this summer, and as I tend to do at parties or work, or where ever, I began inviting people to hit or kick me... sort of medium at first, and harder little by little to toughen my torso. So it went well for a while, friendly fighting and wresting and whatever- until one really nice kick that missed my ribs and tucked itself in the tender area just above my hip. Immediately it hurt, but not too bad. After a few minutes I felt like I had a sort of bad stomach ache and an odd pain behind my left shoulder blade. The pain kept growing little by little, and I decided I was done playing for awhile. I think maybe falling twelve or fifteen feet off a cliff a couple weeks earlier might have softened me up a little since I didn't do anything that day that I hadn't done hundreds of times before over the last ten years. I didn't realize what had happened so I didn't leave the bbq for another few hours, and even though the pain was bad enough that I couldn't breath or move well, I figured I'd see how things played out before assuming I should go to the hospital.
When I got home I took some chinese curing pills (it's actually what they are called, and they will generally help with any weird digestive things), and began addressing it as possible food poisoning or stomach flu. After an hour or so with no positive change, I caught a side veiw of my belly in the bathroom mirror and saw it was distended about as it would stretch and was also could only take little shallow breaths so I figured I'd try a new round of treatments. I took golden seal, and decided to begin applying arnica oil externally as it's good for bruising, inflamation, and congestion. I couldn't really take much water so sipped as I was able before falling asleep. I woke feeling slightly better, and took another golden seal and water, and fell asleep again.
In the morning I was feeling considerably better, though I couldn't really sit up or move so I decided to rest, and since I have one of those emergency service/trauma clinic maybe two hundred feet from my porch on broadway, I figured I could just walk over when I rested a little longer and psyched myself up. Turns out it took about seven hours to get the hang of walking well enough to make it, but since they were closing I decided to go to my doctor in the morning (I'd realized by this point that I was probably bleeding internally since nothing else made any sense). I'd settled on taking goldenseal at twice or a third the normal dose... not sure why, it sort of felt like it was helping. By the next morning I took a cab to the doctor and after seeing me for a couple minutes he told me to go to the emergency room.
(I learned doing research later that goldenseal is really good for treating internal bleeding, and the arnica worked out really well for helping to remove the blood pooling in my intra-abdominal cavity.)
I found out at Swedish Medical Center that I'd torn four or so gashes in my spleen, but he said that since most people die the first first 48 hours of that type of thing if they're the type to die from that sort of thing. If after 48 hours they still have a safe red blood cell count they get sent home. I usually have more red blood cells in by blood stream than most people, and also twice as much iron as I should so am somewhat adept at losing a lot of blood safely, so since I was still just barely at a safe level, I didn't even need a blood transfusion. They said as long as the pain in my shoulder didn't get worse (I guess there's a nerve there that travels past the spleen and freaks out if you bleed on it) and my belly didn't swell again I might be ok. They also gave me a prescription for strong pain killers (which seems odd if pain is your warning that you are in trouble so I didn't fill it).
A couple days later I checked in with my doctor (for a doctor's note to take to work) he surprised me by asking why I still had my spleen, and I shrugged and said they didn't ask for it so thought I got to keep it. He shook his head and said he hadn't realized they did that sort of thing. I'd done some research on spleen injuries... mostly case studies and standards of care at different hospitals around the country, so I mentioned some of what I'd been reading about non surgical healing. He looked skeptical and told me it was a dangerous situation, and I could bleed out quite unexpectedly so to be careful. This became his regular advice over the next couple weeks. By three and a half weeks he shrugged and said since I'd climbed back up to red blood cell counts at fifty percent of total blood volume, i maybe was healing normally. By four weeks he used the spleen injury in the past tense and said I didn't need to see him anymore.
-no worries