Girl, you have no faith in medicine...
Hi, all.
First I want to thank everyone for their concern and prayers over this past week as it's meant so much to me. It's been a very scary, very long week. I owe Maggie a lot for not only keeping everyone updated, but for moving me out of my suite at school and doing everything that had to be done but that I was unable to do or that my parents were unable to do because they were looking after me.
I'll apologize for not putting this in an lj cut, but I've forgotten how to do that. Don't by any means feel obligated to read it, it's just for those who might feel better knowing exactly what's been happening. The details aren't important, but as a friend of mine pointed out the other day, whenever someone has a medical problem and you don't hear the information straight from the horse's mouth, it always tends to become a sort of telephone game. So I'll just give a Reader's Digest version (and even *that* is long) of my past week:
After waking up from a perfectly good night's sleep with a rather persistant headache behind my left eye Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, my father insisted that I go to the ER. I guess whenever they are assessing you and you tell them it's the worst headache you've ever had, they must automatically take steps to rule out the possibility that it's an aneurism. (sp?) So I had a CT (catscan), which catches like 99% of them and a spinal tap, which tells absolutely whether there is bleeding in the brain or not. While I was there, I was instructed not to eat anything and they administered some pain medication through IV.
The results of both tests were negative and I was basically told that I just had a headache. To stimulate the replenishment of the spinal fluid they had drained, they told me to drink caffeine. So the first thing I had since 5 AM that morning was coffee on an empty stomach, then a moderate lunch, and continued drinking caffeinated beverages, following the advice of the doctor. But to put it plainly, this made me feel BAD. It led to my becoming dehydrated and being completely unable to sleep, despite how tired I had become. That evening I was overcome by nausea and continued to be until 1 AM the next morning, I asked to be brought back to the hospital. I was so dehydrated, the nurse had a hard time getting the IV in. The headache, due to the vomitting and inability to take any oral medication, had only worsened and I'd developed sensitivity to light and sound. At that time they began calling it migraine.
I spent several hours in the hospital where they gave me something for the nausea and the pain as well as some saline to rehydrate. They released me with a prescription for a migraine medication to be taken every two hours. I was sick one or two more times that morning, but from 11 AM that day (Thursday) until about 9 yesterday morning, I felt ok and was able to take the prescription. But beginning yesterday morning, I was violently sick again, probably due to the fact that I hadn't been waking up every two hours during the night to take the pill. Again unable to keep anything down, I decided to wait it out until my 12:30 appointment with the neurologist. But by the time we arrived, I felt so miserable I told my dad that if he wasn't going to see us right away, we should just go back to the ER. I didn't see him until 1:30 and he said he didn't see the need to go back to the hospital. He prescribed me demerol, a tylenol with caffeine and an anti-nausea medication, as well as a low-dose anti-ceisure medication that he wants me on as a preventative for the next 6 months. We returned home and filled the prescriptions.
However, at 3 or so, I was still sick and unable to keep any of it in my system. It was a torturous spiral of my headache causing the nausea which not only worsened my headache, but prevented me from treating it and led to dehydration, which again increased my headache. I couldn't do it anymore and we headed back to the hospital. The nurse and doctor who saw me last night were extremely nice and sympathetic. They gave me some fluid, some sort of lovely cocktail of pain killers and ant-nausea medications and I left at 8 after a nice sleep, feeling much better.
Since then, I've continued on the pain medication prescribed to me by the neurologist with the idea that if we can stay ahead of the pain, the nausea won't return. So far, so good. I was able to eat something last night for the first time in about 56 hours. It was the first time even the thought of food didn't make my stomach turn over on itself. I can still feel the headache lurking behind the medication, but I'm just thankful at this point to be feeling as good as I'm feeling. And it looks I may be able to walk tomorrow, which I would have thought impossible yesterday when I was in the throws of whatever this is.
The party at the Weathervane was cancelled. It just takes the pressure off and maybe we can reschedule it for a time when more of my family members can attend.
Again, thank you SOO much for your prayers, I really needed them. Keep them up, if I can impose upon you further, until this thing is really gone for sure. I love you guys. *hugs*
First I want to thank everyone for their concern and prayers over this past week as it's meant so much to me. It's been a very scary, very long week. I owe Maggie a lot for not only keeping everyone updated, but for moving me out of my suite at school and doing everything that had to be done but that I was unable to do or that my parents were unable to do because they were looking after me.
I'll apologize for not putting this in an lj cut, but I've forgotten how to do that. Don't by any means feel obligated to read it, it's just for those who might feel better knowing exactly what's been happening. The details aren't important, but as a friend of mine pointed out the other day, whenever someone has a medical problem and you don't hear the information straight from the horse's mouth, it always tends to become a sort of telephone game. So I'll just give a Reader's Digest version (and even *that* is long) of my past week:
After waking up from a perfectly good night's sleep with a rather persistant headache behind my left eye Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, my father insisted that I go to the ER. I guess whenever they are assessing you and you tell them it's the worst headache you've ever had, they must automatically take steps to rule out the possibility that it's an aneurism. (sp?) So I had a CT (catscan), which catches like 99% of them and a spinal tap, which tells absolutely whether there is bleeding in the brain or not. While I was there, I was instructed not to eat anything and they administered some pain medication through IV.
The results of both tests were negative and I was basically told that I just had a headache. To stimulate the replenishment of the spinal fluid they had drained, they told me to drink caffeine. So the first thing I had since 5 AM that morning was coffee on an empty stomach, then a moderate lunch, and continued drinking caffeinated beverages, following the advice of the doctor. But to put it plainly, this made me feel BAD. It led to my becoming dehydrated and being completely unable to sleep, despite how tired I had become. That evening I was overcome by nausea and continued to be until 1 AM the next morning, I asked to be brought back to the hospital. I was so dehydrated, the nurse had a hard time getting the IV in. The headache, due to the vomitting and inability to take any oral medication, had only worsened and I'd developed sensitivity to light and sound. At that time they began calling it migraine.
I spent several hours in the hospital where they gave me something for the nausea and the pain as well as some saline to rehydrate. They released me with a prescription for a migraine medication to be taken every two hours. I was sick one or two more times that morning, but from 11 AM that day (Thursday) until about 9 yesterday morning, I felt ok and was able to take the prescription. But beginning yesterday morning, I was violently sick again, probably due to the fact that I hadn't been waking up every two hours during the night to take the pill. Again unable to keep anything down, I decided to wait it out until my 12:30 appointment with the neurologist. But by the time we arrived, I felt so miserable I told my dad that if he wasn't going to see us right away, we should just go back to the ER. I didn't see him until 1:30 and he said he didn't see the need to go back to the hospital. He prescribed me demerol, a tylenol with caffeine and an anti-nausea medication, as well as a low-dose anti-ceisure medication that he wants me on as a preventative for the next 6 months. We returned home and filled the prescriptions.
However, at 3 or so, I was still sick and unable to keep any of it in my system. It was a torturous spiral of my headache causing the nausea which not only worsened my headache, but prevented me from treating it and led to dehydration, which again increased my headache. I couldn't do it anymore and we headed back to the hospital. The nurse and doctor who saw me last night were extremely nice and sympathetic. They gave me some fluid, some sort of lovely cocktail of pain killers and ant-nausea medications and I left at 8 after a nice sleep, feeling much better.
Since then, I've continued on the pain medication prescribed to me by the neurologist with the idea that if we can stay ahead of the pain, the nausea won't return. So far, so good. I was able to eat something last night for the first time in about 56 hours. It was the first time even the thought of food didn't make my stomach turn over on itself. I can still feel the headache lurking behind the medication, but I'm just thankful at this point to be feeling as good as I'm feeling. And it looks I may be able to walk tomorrow, which I would have thought impossible yesterday when I was in the throws of whatever this is.
The party at the Weathervane was cancelled. It just takes the pressure off and maybe we can reschedule it for a time when more of my family members can attend.
Again, thank you SOO much for your prayers, I really needed them. Keep them up, if I can impose upon you further, until this thing is really gone for sure. I love you guys. *hugs*