Health Update

Health update, the long and detailed picture:

As many of you know, Tea Sweets is closed for the remainder of the year. I’ve already written and discarded a few posts about this, but I think it’s now a good time to make an announcement since some questions have been coming in but I haven’t had the energy to address them fully.

I have been having IBS-C type symptoms for maybe two years now. I thought it was all diet and weight related, so I have been working on that. I saw some improvement when I started taking Prilosec after a scary ambulance ride to the hospital last year due to chest pain. The ER doctor thought I had GERD, which I had back over ten years ago. Thinking it was a relapse, I buckled down on my diet to get my weight and cholesterol under control. I’ve managed to lose around 25-30 lbs (unreliable scale). I postponed going to see the gastroenterologist because my pelvic pain issues became more bothersome and I don’t like St. Mary Corwin Hospital where I was referred. I put the whole GI thing on the back-burner while consulting a specialist about my endometriosis. That discussion led to a full hysterectomy (leaving only my left ovary) on September 9th.

I’ve had a few ER and PCP visits that lead to a few X-rays that showed nothing serious except some pretty bad trapped gas and constipation. I was given directions from my PCP to use Miralax every day and track all the bathroom stuff- yay . I’ve now been trying all that for about two weeks.

Last week, the fibrous papule on my nose began to bleed every time I washed my face. I also was getting dark, large bruises with no memory of how as well as a minor petechiae rash on my arms, face, and chest. Being in remission from ITP (a bleeding disorder where the immune system destroys the clotting part, platelets, of the blood), my doctor had advised to contact him if I had 3 or more symptoms at a time that the disease was back. I scheduled some lab work with Rocky Mountain Cancer Center and simultaneously scheduled an appointment with my dermatologist to make sure the nose bleeding was an ITP thing and not cancer/worrisome. Unfortunately, the bump was worrisome and I was surprised that she wanted to remove it right away while I was still there and send it off to be tested.

Meanwhile, I was called by Rocky Mountain Cancer Center (hematologists, aka blood specialists, are also very often cancer specialists) to schedule a follow up right away. I spent the last few days wondering what was wrong because they didn’t rush to see me that day, my labs hadn’t come back from a few days before, and the next available appointment was five days away.

Fast-forward to yesterday: I get a notification that my skin biopsy results were posted online while I was in the waiting room at my hematologist’s office waiting to repeat labs. I didn’t have access to the previous bloodwork, which was odd because usually Labcorp has them posted the day after a draw and it was around 7 days later. I check the skin biopsy results just in time to see the bump was benign/not cancer just as my name was called to get another blood draw.

I then meet with the hematologist’s nurse practitioner, someone I wasn’t expecting or had met before, my hematologist must have been off fighting cancer for someone. She is just as confused as I am as to why I’m there because my labs last week were 94 (normal is 200 and up, but my numbers rarely are over 70 with my unique blood disorder called May-Hegglin’s Anomaly) and today they were 60. I catch her up with the bleeding symptoms, including slow healing from the surgery, and my benign result from my formerly bleeding nose bump. We agree a 30-point drop in my platelets is worthwhile, given my other symptoms, to check again next week.

Around 20 minutes after dinner, I went to get up off the couch. I felt a twisting, pop, then sharp pain in my right lower abdomen. It knocks the wind out of me for several minutes while I lie still waiting for it to pass. It finally does, but the sharp pain dulls to a persistent ache and cramp. When I went to the restroom maybe another 20 minutes later, I have bright red stool. Panicked, my husband and I ask Joyce to come watch Haley and we go to the Parkview ER.

I’m taken back immediately when I describe what happened, which unfortunately caused a panic attack in knowing how triage works by now. Thankfully, as three nurses figure out how to help me, one taking their time with my IV calms me down long enough to have a normal-ish blood pressure again, although still high.

Hours later and an abdominal CT scan later show symptoms of healing from surgery but that my colon wall has thickened. Assuming it was a virus and knowing I’m already in queue to see a GI specialist at Parkview in December, I’m sent home with advice to up the Miralax and fiber. Apparently many viruses can cause scary stool like that and I’ll get fully checked out later.

Incidentally, the CT scan showed my bladder wall was also thickening and that my lungs have minor dependent atelectasis, all symptoms of healing from surgery. However, seeing that minor dependent atelectasis means my lungs aren’t inflating completely when I breathe, it explains my fatigue and slow healing. The ER didn’t mention it, I just read every report after any hospital visit in hopes to understanding better what’s going on. I’ll ask my PCP in my follow up after the holiday what it all means. At the moment, this incidental find is only my own understanding of the ER’s notes. The CT also showed two cysts on my left ovary, so that little left over from the hysterectomy is causing some chaos still- great… and I also have a periumbilical hernia from surgery that’s thankfully only a sac of fat and not intestine…

Anyways, I’m in a lot of pain, refusing to take pain killers much to the shock of the ER, and waiting for the GI specialist to weigh in on this two-year saga of discomfort. Labs all pretty much look normal besides the platelets…which are still going to be rechecked next week.

So, now the internet is up to date. I have no idea right now how I’ll feel each morning. My energy is high then it’ll crash fast when I start on something on my to-do list. Insomnia has always been a thing for me since college, so sleeping doesn’t help. I’m thankfully in taking enough oxygen to not need any help there, but working out besides walking or yoga won’t happen until my lungs heal. Hopefully they’ll heal on their own since the internet has informed me it’s a pretty normal thing after major surgery. With a hernia, it’s no surprise to me that I’m feeling twisting pains when I get up too fast. Thankfully, besides moments of panic while actually deciding on going to the hospital and actually being there waiting to see what’s wrong, I’m emotionally doing just fine.

We got home after midnight last night and I spent quite a while trying to understand all the medical terminology in the ER report before getting some sleep. I thankfully woke up in manageable pain and got to work at 7am to fix up our Thanksgiving feast we’d been planning for weeks. With a turkey in the oven and enough veggies to leave my doctors satisfied that I really mean it when I say I eat enough fiber, I’m finally showered, rested (resting..?), and avoiding texts and messages for now. I’ll slowly get to them but the point is if it was really bad, I wouldn’t have been able to make a feast or even leave the hospital, so Mom, when you read this please don’t panic. Worry doesn’t change a thing except our internal experience. God is in control.

Anyhootles- it may be some time before I’m back to baking. I had a plan to be back before Halloween and that didn’t happen, so I decided just to focus on one day at a time. With GI not happening for a few weeks, I have no idea if it’ll lead to another endoscopy/colonoscopy like the last time I had GERD in 2014. Thanks for reading and please pray all this heals and is simply just a buggar of a virus that got my colon really good like the ER doctor suggested last night.

Here’s a cute photo of me snuggling Haley’s kitty she threw at me when she saw my tears before going to the hospital last night. Bless her heart! Thank you, Grammie, for coming to her/our rescue last night so she didn’t get to witness my panic.

Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for reading