First of all, I must apologize for skipping my blog posting last week, but I have what I feel is a pretty good excuse…I nearly died.
Seriously.
Last Friday began as a normal day. I woke up and went out for my daily two-mile walk. Birds were singing, the sun was shining, the sky was blue. Definitely a good day.
After doing my usual chores, running a few errands and then answering phone calls and messages, I grabbed a cup of tea and settled down to relax for the evening. By 9:00 PM, I felt hungry, so I decided to heat up some soup.
But when I stood up, a pain suddenly struck me right above my navel. I figured it was just a gas pain and that a good belch (or the equivalent from the opposite end) would get rid of it, but no gaseousness seemed to be involved.
I tried to ignore the pain, but it continued to intensify with each passing hour, no matter how much I swore at it or threatened it to go away. About midnight, as if taunting me, the pain zapped its way straight through to my back and then spread out in both directions across it. This forced me to walk around with the same posture as Quasimodo. I honestly couldn’t stand up straight.
By the time 3:00 AM rolled around, I was curled up in a fetal position on my bed and groaning into my pillow. No position was comfortable, and believe me, I tried them all – on my side, my back, my stomach, and even with the top half of my body hanging over the edge of the mattress.
Finally, as morning dawned after what felt like the longest night in the history of the world, I convinced myself to do something even more frightening than running nude through a field of thorns…I called 911. Immediately afterwards, as panic set in, I wanted to cancel that call. But, as I quickly learned, the second anyone calls 911, there is no turning back. Even if you say, “Everything is fine now, never mind,” they won’t believe you. So essentially, you are doomed.
Two police officers and two EMTs arrived within minutes. The latter two set to work taking my vitals and asking questions about the location and intensity of my pain. To my surprise, they said my vitals all were fine, and judging from their faces, I got the distinct impression they also thought I might need nothing more than a good window-rattling belch or two. When they asked if I wanted to go to the hospital, I was tempted to say no. But as if on cue, my stomach chose that precise moment to jab me with a pain that made me feel as if I’d just been impaled by a shishkebab skewer.
So I said yes, I still wanted to go to the hospital, even though it pained me to do so. With only my purse and the clothes on my back, I was loaded onto a stretcher and wheeled out to the ambulance. I overheard the two EMTs discussing the route and whether they should use the lights or siren. They decided they wouldn’t use either one.
Their words made me think I was making way too much of a big deal over nothing more than an old-fashioned stomachache, and I probably would end up having to pay $3,000 for the ambulance, only to be told to go home and take a few swigs of Pepto Bismol.
The ambulance ride was more like a casual drive through the country – except for all of the bumps and pot-holes. Each time we hit one of the approximately 12,000 of them, it caused me to cry out…and made the attendant sitting in back with me ask, “Are you in pain?”
Wonder whatever gave him that idea?
When we finally pulled into the hospital’s lot, I breathed a sigh of relief because I figured my past 12 hours of torture nearly were over.
Little did I know they were only the beginning…
The first hint that my pain might not be immediately resolved, however, was when one of the EMTs contacted the hospital personnel to inform them we had arrived and asked for instructions about what to do with me. I could hear the responder instruct them to take me to the emergency room’s waiting area and leave me there for triage. Oh, and to transfer me into a wheelchair because they no longer allowed stretchers in the waiting area.
Lying on a stretcher had been nearly bearable for me. But sitting up in a wheelchair was nothing short of agony. I had my vitals taken and was asked to describe my pain and rate it on a scale of one to 10 (about 150). After that, I promptly was wheeled to my sitting spot in the waiting area, where I was wedged between a woman with a possible broken toe and a man with a gash on his finger…for the next two hours.
During those two hours, I mentally made amends with everyone I’d ever known, prayed for a swift and easy death, and asked to be absolved of all of my sins. As the pain continued to increase, I was pretty sure I would see the Grim Reaper walk in at any moment and whisk me away.
Finally I was wheeled down the hall for a CT scan and then wheeled right back to the waiting area. This time my chair was parked next to another woman in a wheelchair. She was carrying on a full conversation with the palm of her hand, as if she had a phone in it. At that point, I was worried she actually did have a phone and I was going blind from pain.
Then, at long last, I was brought to a room in the emergency area where I was helped into a bed, hooked up to a bunch of monitors, had my blood drawn and an IV inserted into my arm. All that was left to do after that was wait for the verdict.
I didn’t have to wait long. A doctor who introduced himself as a surgeon entered 15 minutes later. The fact he was a surgeon immediately caught my attention...and pretty much ruled out my Pepto Bismol theory.
He was looking down at my info the entire time, but when he finally looked up at me, his eyebrows shot up in surprise. He then blurted out, “Wow, you look much better than your CT scan!”
To me, his statement was a double-edged sword. I mean, it was great to know I looked better than he’d expected, but not so great to know my CT scan had revealed something so heinous it had made him think I'd probably look as if I’d already been embalmed...or needed to be.
“You have a 100-percent blockage in your small bowel,” he said, before I could respond. “In less than another hour you'd probably be vomiting fecal material…or worse.”
Worse? Let me say right here that I have heard plenty of disgusting things in my life, but all of them paled in comparison to that statement. Had I been forced to sit out in the waiting room any longer, I could only imagine what those other poor, unsuspecting patients would have had the misfortune of witnessing.
I figured the doctor’s next words would be about surgery, so I wasn’t at all prepared for what he actually did say.
“I think we might be able to unblock you by essentially starving you,” he said. “First we’ll insert a nasogastric tube through your nose and into your stomach, where we’ll remove all of the backed-up material. After the first three liters or so are emptied, your pain should begin to subside.”
Three liters? I knew a gallon was 3.7 liters. And he’d said the first three liters were going to make me feel better? How many liters were backed up in there anyway? Enough to warrant a visit from Roto-Rooter or maybe Bob’s Septic Service?
Suddenly the Grim Reaper didn’t seem quite so scary to me anymore. In fact, I was kind of hoping I'd see his nose peeking around the corner at that precise moment.
“Once the NG tube is in,” Dr. Bad News continued, “we’ll keep it in there for a few days so your bowel can have complete rest. That means no food or water…nothing whatsoever by mouth.”
No food? No water? And a tube shoved into my nose, down my throat and into my stomach, pumping out the aforementioned fecal material?
Talk about a great way to kill a perfectly good weekend.
It took a lot of courage, but I dared to ask the surgeon exactly what was causing the blockage. I honestly expected him to describe it as something really disgusting again, like the carcass of a giant Madagascar cockroach.
“You’ve had major surgery in the past,” he said (which had been one of the questions I’d been asked in triage). “It caused scar tissue. That tissue thickened over time and now it’s causing an adhesion, meaning the two sides of your bowel are sticking together. Sometimes we can get them to unstick without surgery. If not, I’m sorry to say there will be no other option but to operate. Still, I’m trying to avoid that because another surgical procedure might lead to forming even more scar tissue.”
So, I thought, I could be facing a week of torture worse than being held in some foreign prison (at least the convicts get bread and water) all for nothing? And then still have to face surgery?
“But my previous surgery was nearly 40 years ago,” I said. “Why would I get an adhesion now?”
“Sometimes they develop quickly, sometimes they take years to form,” he said.
“And how do I prevent them?”
“You can’t.”
That wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear. The thought of being on a tropical cruise and having this happen out of the blue again, made me seriously consider becoming a recluse for the rest of my life.
At that moment, a nurse holding some tubing and what resembled a big Tupperware container entered. She looked at me, smiled tightly and said, “You’re probably going to end up hating me by the time we’re done.”
I was pretty sure she was right.
(I will continue this saga next week, as I’m feeling really tired. I promise I’ll let you know then whether I lived or died).
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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
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