RANT - Health - knives!
Going to be a long whinge and maybe kind of gross.
But also kind of a rave.
Maybe venting will feel better, but...my pregnancy has kind of sucked. Not as bad as many people! The baby is fine, but the pelvic instability has made my life increasingly painful. Its led to a need for permanent low level pain relief and physio and I've just felt generally miserable from constant shooting pain in the hips. Most people don't seem to have heard of it, and I've had ribbing at work for my shuffling gait or need to use crutches and a wheelchair and I am just over it.
I'm also kind of over complaining, because people get so disappointed when they ask you how you are and you say 'In pain' or 'not great'. No one wants someone who is constantly whinging. But I had bronchitis and laryngitis and the coughing was painful, and there wasn't any of the normal drugs I could take for relief of it according to the doctors.
Anyway, what I'm saying is, I thought I had it bad.
Then last Wednesday I dropped a knife on my foot. It was a long, heavy, very thin knife, and it felt like hitting my foot with a mallet. It hurt like hell, but didn't bleed that much. It was a tiny wound - absolutely minute. It was just that from certain angles my foot was incredibly painful and didn't seem to work quite right. The next day, my partner begged me to see a doctor at work, so I gave in and did. And the doctor panicked when he did some tests and said 'You can't move your toes properly, either you've severed a nerve or a tendon'.
A few more hours and bewildered sonographers ("But the entry wound is tiny!" "So why can't she feel her foot move?") later, including the emergency doctor at Saint Vincents saying: "I couldn't do keyhole surgery that accurately if I wanted to..."
At Friday, at midnight, I was in theatre getting the major tendon reconnected. Under a local - they normally do that particular procedure with a general since it involves exploratory surgery. They wanted to do a full spinal block and pressed for it really hard, but I didn't want to have a catheter as well as the pelvic instability. I knew enough to say 'Will you need to catheter me' and got told 'Yes, it will cause some problems with urination for a while given the pelvic problems'. Okay. I asked about other options.
"Well, we could do it under a local, but we normally sedate people because they usually panic and go into shock, you'd need to be really brave. We can't sedate you, so you're going to feel it all."
Argh. Okay, so let's try that then. They were willing to give it a shot as long as I agreed to let them spinal block me if it got too much.
So it was a pretty miserable operation for an hour - I could feel all of it, although only some pain. The feeling of them cutting and searching for the retracted tendon ends ("Where is it?" "Not here, cut further.") was nauseating. I could feel my foot sitting in a pool of blood - I could feel myself bleeding. I could hear and feel every cut and every stitch and every test on every muscle and exposed tendon.
The surgeons were brilliant and lovely people and apologised for having to leave a big scar. There were no supportive boots left so they had to make up one out of plaster and said 'You're not going to be able to walk on this, it's too heavy for your hips to support in their condition. It's going to make the instability very bad and painful, we're sorry.'
They told me that the moment I felt any tingling to tell the nurses to start drugging me and not to wait until I could feel any pain. One of the theatre nurses asked me what pain meds I took for the instability during pregnancy and I said Panadol or Panadeine depending on severity. They wrote that down and said 'Not good enough, we'll get you something else'. Once I was back in the ward, the nurses asked me what pain relief I had - Tramadol, Oxycontin etc...I had no idea by that point because I was very shakey and sweaty and the night nurse said 'They've only written down Panadol, this can't be right'.
Within twenty minutes as the locals wore off completely I had started vomiting from pain. My blood pressure was 55 over 38 and I kept blacking out, and coming to and vomiting. The nurses had tried to give me Panadol but were starting to panic and the pharmacist was telling the lead nurse to put a hot pack on the leg. I remembered hearing her yelling at him saying: "A heat pack isn't going to do anything through all that plaster, she's twenty eight weeks pregnant and in shock and vomiting you need to do something."
He said he couldn't legally administer anything, but half an hour later the brilliant RN had called several major midwifery hospitals and arranged for painkillers to be delivered and maxalon shots to stop the vomiting. I really have no idea what I would have done without her, since the pharmacist kept saying 'She'll be okay until morning, just keep her hydrated while she's throwing up and wake her up when she blacks out'. Once they drugged me up, I was okay to lie there and my blood pressure stabilised. It still all hurt, it just wasn't 'Oh God I want to die' levels.
They had to start pumping something they called 'jelly' into me by pressure into the veins rather than drip. I still don't really know what it is, it was ice cold and very thick and hurt quite a bit. The RN told me a bunch of things she probably shouldn't have about 'fucking people who don't fucking listen to me' - she seemed pretty enraged about it all, but that was actually rather nice as I felt like I had an advocate. She apologised and said I'd scared her quite a bit.
There was some TMI - it was taking me over an hour to go each time since lying in bed on a pan meant the baby was pressing down on internal organs and closing everything up. The nurses were very patient with me, and I wasn't a great patient in turn. I didn't yell, certainly, but I did beg very pathetically to have someone help me get to the proper toilet, but it just couldn't be done.
Anyway, after a few more dramas, I am now at home. The plaster is so heavy it takes me a very long time to get out of the lounge room on my crutches, the hips feel like they're broken, my back and head are constantly aching, and the pain in my foot is just nasty. I'm fairly large with the pregnancy, need to get up constantly to go to the bathroom due to it, but each journey there is an epic damn thing where I have to lean against one wall to support the hip while trying to move the massive plaster on my foot. Each step sends shooting pains up my leg from all the stitching and down it from the pelvis. Once I get there, I need to focus on not throwing up.
I woke Chaos up last night by moaning in my sleep, and then when I was awake was in absolute agony from the lack of blood flow to the heel of the damaged foot - the plaster is so heavy that as I sleep it cuts off circulation to various bits. Once the blood flow was back, I was in more pain from the injury and starting to get nauseated again.
I am utterly miserable! I am not much fun to be around, admittedly. Been holding off this morning on taking my painkillers as on them I am nauseous and can't even watch TV - Chaos says they're an oxycontin derivative, and they really do weird things to my head.
Baby is still kicking, but I have a lot of pain from hips, neck, foot...you name it. I can't even put trousers on over the massive cast!
Best things though would be the RN, the really nice plastic surgeons ("Wow, we don't ever get to do this with someone under a local, that's the ideal situation - how's that feel? Really bad? Yeah, that's good, that's the one we want! You can try to breathe deeper if you want, but really, do whatever feels okay, swear or anything."), and Chaos. He purchased me a breast feeding chair that is also a rocker with feet support, so I've been sleeping in that. He's also feeding me, cleaning the house, showering me and everything - without him there is no way I could be home, I need a carer right now. If my crutch falls too far away I can't even get to it on hands and knees. But he is brilliant, he really is.
The really weird thing was seeing myself in the mirror for the first time last night at home and realising my face was completely grey - no pink, no tan, just grey with grey eyes and deep lines around the eyes. Holy crap. I looked like a zombie.
This morning I am a bit better, I think I just need time to get over the shock of having surgery of the kind I had while fully conscious. I never want to do that again!
But also kind of a rave.
Maybe venting will feel better, but...my pregnancy has kind of sucked. Not as bad as many people! The baby is fine, but the pelvic instability has made my life increasingly painful. Its led to a need for permanent low level pain relief and physio and I've just felt generally miserable from constant shooting pain in the hips. Most people don't seem to have heard of it, and I've had ribbing at work for my shuffling gait or need to use crutches and a wheelchair and I am just over it.
I'm also kind of over complaining, because people get so disappointed when they ask you how you are and you say 'In pain' or 'not great'. No one wants someone who is constantly whinging. But I had bronchitis and laryngitis and the coughing was painful, and there wasn't any of the normal drugs I could take for relief of it according to the doctors.
Anyway, what I'm saying is, I thought I had it bad.
Then last Wednesday I dropped a knife on my foot. It was a long, heavy, very thin knife, and it felt like hitting my foot with a mallet. It hurt like hell, but didn't bleed that much. It was a tiny wound - absolutely minute. It was just that from certain angles my foot was incredibly painful and didn't seem to work quite right. The next day, my partner begged me to see a doctor at work, so I gave in and did. And the doctor panicked when he did some tests and said 'You can't move your toes properly, either you've severed a nerve or a tendon'.
A few more hours and bewildered sonographers ("But the entry wound is tiny!" "So why can't she feel her foot move?") later, including the emergency doctor at Saint Vincents saying: "I couldn't do keyhole surgery that accurately if I wanted to..."
At Friday, at midnight, I was in theatre getting the major tendon reconnected. Under a local - they normally do that particular procedure with a general since it involves exploratory surgery. They wanted to do a full spinal block and pressed for it really hard, but I didn't want to have a catheter as well as the pelvic instability. I knew enough to say 'Will you need to catheter me' and got told 'Yes, it will cause some problems with urination for a while given the pelvic problems'. Okay. I asked about other options.
"Well, we could do it under a local, but we normally sedate people because they usually panic and go into shock, you'd need to be really brave. We can't sedate you, so you're going to feel it all."
Argh. Okay, so let's try that then. They were willing to give it a shot as long as I agreed to let them spinal block me if it got too much.
So it was a pretty miserable operation for an hour - I could feel all of it, although only some pain. The feeling of them cutting and searching for the retracted tendon ends ("Where is it?" "Not here, cut further.") was nauseating. I could feel my foot sitting in a pool of blood - I could feel myself bleeding. I could hear and feel every cut and every stitch and every test on every muscle and exposed tendon.
The surgeons were brilliant and lovely people and apologised for having to leave a big scar. There were no supportive boots left so they had to make up one out of plaster and said 'You're not going to be able to walk on this, it's too heavy for your hips to support in their condition. It's going to make the instability very bad and painful, we're sorry.'
They told me that the moment I felt any tingling to tell the nurses to start drugging me and not to wait until I could feel any pain. One of the theatre nurses asked me what pain meds I took for the instability during pregnancy and I said Panadol or Panadeine depending on severity. They wrote that down and said 'Not good enough, we'll get you something else'. Once I was back in the ward, the nurses asked me what pain relief I had - Tramadol, Oxycontin etc...I had no idea by that point because I was very shakey and sweaty and the night nurse said 'They've only written down Panadol, this can't be right'.
Within twenty minutes as the locals wore off completely I had started vomiting from pain. My blood pressure was 55 over 38 and I kept blacking out, and coming to and vomiting. The nurses had tried to give me Panadol but were starting to panic and the pharmacist was telling the lead nurse to put a hot pack on the leg. I remembered hearing her yelling at him saying: "A heat pack isn't going to do anything through all that plaster, she's twenty eight weeks pregnant and in shock and vomiting you need to do something."
He said he couldn't legally administer anything, but half an hour later the brilliant RN had called several major midwifery hospitals and arranged for painkillers to be delivered and maxalon shots to stop the vomiting. I really have no idea what I would have done without her, since the pharmacist kept saying 'She'll be okay until morning, just keep her hydrated while she's throwing up and wake her up when she blacks out'. Once they drugged me up, I was okay to lie there and my blood pressure stabilised. It still all hurt, it just wasn't 'Oh God I want to die' levels.
They had to start pumping something they called 'jelly' into me by pressure into the veins rather than drip. I still don't really know what it is, it was ice cold and very thick and hurt quite a bit. The RN told me a bunch of things she probably shouldn't have about 'fucking people who don't fucking listen to me' - she seemed pretty enraged about it all, but that was actually rather nice as I felt like I had an advocate. She apologised and said I'd scared her quite a bit.
There was some TMI - it was taking me over an hour to go each time since lying in bed on a pan meant the baby was pressing down on internal organs and closing everything up. The nurses were very patient with me, and I wasn't a great patient in turn. I didn't yell, certainly, but I did beg very pathetically to have someone help me get to the proper toilet, but it just couldn't be done.
Anyway, after a few more dramas, I am now at home. The plaster is so heavy it takes me a very long time to get out of the lounge room on my crutches, the hips feel like they're broken, my back and head are constantly aching, and the pain in my foot is just nasty. I'm fairly large with the pregnancy, need to get up constantly to go to the bathroom due to it, but each journey there is an epic damn thing where I have to lean against one wall to support the hip while trying to move the massive plaster on my foot. Each step sends shooting pains up my leg from all the stitching and down it from the pelvis. Once I get there, I need to focus on not throwing up.
I woke Chaos up last night by moaning in my sleep, and then when I was awake was in absolute agony from the lack of blood flow to the heel of the damaged foot - the plaster is so heavy that as I sleep it cuts off circulation to various bits. Once the blood flow was back, I was in more pain from the injury and starting to get nauseated again.
I am utterly miserable! I am not much fun to be around, admittedly. Been holding off this morning on taking my painkillers as on them I am nauseous and can't even watch TV - Chaos says they're an oxycontin derivative, and they really do weird things to my head.
Baby is still kicking, but I have a lot of pain from hips, neck, foot...you name it. I can't even put trousers on over the massive cast!
Best things though would be the RN, the really nice plastic surgeons ("Wow, we don't ever get to do this with someone under a local, that's the ideal situation - how's that feel? Really bad? Yeah, that's good, that's the one we want! You can try to breathe deeper if you want, but really, do whatever feels okay, swear or anything."), and Chaos. He purchased me a breast feeding chair that is also a rocker with feet support, so I've been sleeping in that. He's also feeding me, cleaning the house, showering me and everything - without him there is no way I could be home, I need a carer right now. If my crutch falls too far away I can't even get to it on hands and knees. But he is brilliant, he really is.
The really weird thing was seeing myself in the mirror for the first time last night at home and realising my face was completely grey - no pink, no tan, just grey with grey eyes and deep lines around the eyes. Holy crap. I looked like a zombie.
This morning I am a bit better, I think I just need time to get over the shock of having surgery of the kind I had while fully conscious. I never want to do that again!