Sweet n Salty
I Was Admitted
Woke up with an unforgiving cough a couple of mornings ago. It was dying to be productive but my guess is the mucous was too thick to really move. But it was stuck in my throat, threatening to cut off every inhale I tried to take. I hoped that I wouldn’t wake my sister, who sleeps right across the hall from me. But she was passed out cold. So I stood in the bathroom and hacked and coughed until - finally! - there was enough give in the viscous fluid that I was able to cough most of it up and spit it down the drain. I crawled back into bed only to feel the tell tale rattle at the very bottom of my throat, I still had more I needed to clear. So I began my own treatment percussions that I remember from a very early age. It helped to break the mucous up and move it around in such a way that I was able to get it up and out so that I could go back to sleep, at least for a little bit.
Today I woke up with the same cough. Except this time, when I broke through the fog and clouds of sleep and dreams, I was sitting up in a hospital bed. I felt dismay swallow me up as I blinked my eyes, adjusting to the dim light that I’d forgotten to turn off last night before I passed out. Apparently I was so tired that I fell asleep in the middle of sending my dad a text, letting him know what was going on. At some point, I must have hit the dial button because I awoke, very groggy and confused, to my dad at the other end of the phone line, and my pump screeching that my blood sugar was super low (at one point it read 38mg/dL). So then I had to stay awake and drink a bunch of different drinks because I’m on a liquid diet because the ER diagnosed me with colitis last night. It’s an inflammation of the colon and it is SO painful! So they don’t want me eating anything because it could aggravate my colon even further.
One of the joys of my case of Cystic Fibrosis is the toll it’s taken on my digestive system. So I can’t properly digest things without have digestive pills with all of my food. But even with those pills, it can be quite difficult for my body to process food (esp after my whipple surgery) so a lot of the time I get ‘backed up’ meaning I’m severely constipated. This can lead to a plethora of complications such as bloating, severe abdominal pain, colitis, even the possibility of perforating my bowel and sepsis. I have a history of getting blocked or backed up so whenever I see that I’m starting to put on weight, I get nervous because this usually does not mean that I am putting on healthy weight, but I am just getting backed up. So when they did the imaging last night, the hospitalist that wanted me admitted said that I am completely full, from top to bottom, and that that could be the cause of the colitis.
So they have me on antibiotics and they want to try and get me cleaned out before I go back home. I told them that I didn’t want to stay any longer than tomorrow but we’ll see how things go in the meantime.
I truly hate being in the hospital but sometimes it’s a necessary evil. And right now it’s necessary to get the initial doses of antibiotics in my system and have a pain management plan to keep myself comfortable while I am here. And probably necessary that I have a bowel movement so that I know that we’re headed in the right direction. But I’m hungry. And I’m tired. And my stomach hurts. And hospitals are not conducive to getting a restful night of sleep. And I’m swollen and puffy from all of the fluids they are giving me.
Honestly I could and would write more if I was in the right state of mind but I am far past exhausted and so I am lacking in details and more of a story to write.
I will say this though... when you’re in the hospital for a pain related incident, you live your life from one dose of pain medications to the next. I get my pain med every two hours. So I count down the time in between, living from dose to another. Same with the Benadryl, that significantly decreases my itchy episodes that I get between pain medication, and antibiotics. So I can only get doses of that every 6 hours. So again, it’s looking at the clock and counting down my time before my next dosage.
Today I woke up with the same cough. Except this time, when I broke through the fog and clouds of sleep and dreams, I was sitting up in a hospital bed. I felt dismay swallow me up as I blinked my eyes, adjusting to the dim light that I’d forgotten to turn off last night before I passed out. Apparently I was so tired that I fell asleep in the middle of sending my dad a text, letting him know what was going on. At some point, I must have hit the dial button because I awoke, very groggy and confused, to my dad at the other end of the phone line, and my pump screeching that my blood sugar was super low (at one point it read 38mg/dL). So then I had to stay awake and drink a bunch of different drinks because I’m on a liquid diet because the ER diagnosed me with colitis last night. It’s an inflammation of the colon and it is SO painful! So they don’t want me eating anything because it could aggravate my colon even further.
One of the joys of my case of Cystic Fibrosis is the toll it’s taken on my digestive system. So I can’t properly digest things without have digestive pills with all of my food. But even with those pills, it can be quite difficult for my body to process food (esp after my whipple surgery) so a lot of the time I get ‘backed up’ meaning I’m severely constipated. This can lead to a plethora of complications such as bloating, severe abdominal pain, colitis, even the possibility of perforating my bowel and sepsis. I have a history of getting blocked or backed up so whenever I see that I’m starting to put on weight, I get nervous because this usually does not mean that I am putting on healthy weight, but I am just getting backed up. So when they did the imaging last night, the hospitalist that wanted me admitted said that I am completely full, from top to bottom, and that that could be the cause of the colitis.
So they have me on antibiotics and they want to try and get me cleaned out before I go back home. I told them that I didn’t want to stay any longer than tomorrow but we’ll see how things go in the meantime.
I truly hate being in the hospital but sometimes it’s a necessary evil. And right now it’s necessary to get the initial doses of antibiotics in my system and have a pain management plan to keep myself comfortable while I am here. And probably necessary that I have a bowel movement so that I know that we’re headed in the right direction. But I’m hungry. And I’m tired. And my stomach hurts. And hospitals are not conducive to getting a restful night of sleep. And I’m swollen and puffy from all of the fluids they are giving me.
Honestly I could and would write more if I was in the right state of mind but I am far past exhausted and so I am lacking in details and more of a story to write.
I will say this though... when you’re in the hospital for a pain related incident, you live your life from one dose of pain medications to the next. I get my pain med every two hours. So I count down the time in between, living from dose to another. Same with the Benadryl, that significantly decreases my itchy episodes that I get between pain medication, and antibiotics. So I can only get doses of that every 6 hours. So again, it’s looking at the clock and counting down my time before my next dosage.