Adventures in Emergency Surgery

The first few years after my diagnosis I was told that my case wasn’t surgical. At first, my doctors discuss removing my colon because it was basically garbage, but the disease was also affecting my small intestines as well and they decided there was no point. Putting me through a major surgery was not worth it if I was still going to be suffering afterward. Made sense. I didn’t understand that this could change, because it did, drastically.

About 7 years after being diagnosed I had graduated from my pediatrician and now had a new doctor at the adult hospital. Lame. I’m 31 and would still go to the children’s hospital if they let me, which they don’t. I had a new doctor that I barely knew and it was a bit of a shock how different it was. I was surrounded by sick adults and that was scary.

During this transition, I started to have bad days that consisted of constant sharp pains, but the pain would subside the following day. Since the pain didn’t last I didn’t think much of it, clearly it’s not a lingering problem if the pain goes away, right? The title of the post is a spoiler, so you know where this story is going. Everything was fine and world peace was also declared.

After a few months, those painful days become more frequent. Then one day everything changed. I was visiting with family that was in town and I was fine, slowly the pain started to take over. I ended up curled into a ball on the floor. I asked my brother to take me home, I couldn’t drive. I got home and ran to the shower. A hot shower, ginger ale, and bed would take care of everything.

My mother stepped in when she saw that I was curled in the fetal position. She called 911 and I finally caved and started crying. Yes, this is the worst pain ever, do something, call in the national guard, just make it STOP!

The ER doctor was not nice, he pressed down on my stomach, which I get he needs to do, however, it made me scream out in pain, so he did it again. His bedside manner was lousy, I was scared and he could have been more empathetic and calming, he honestly didn’t seem to care.

I was in and out of it but remember waking up again in pain and seeing my mother at the foot of the stretcher, with her head down, barely asleep, worried sick. I hated that sight. The not so caring ER doctor finally came to talk to us. He explained that I had an abscess and was probably going to need surgery. He seemed happy to get us out of his hair, we were now the surgical team’s problem.

I barely remember being admitted, they loaded me up on all the drugs. The surgeon came in to talk to us and tried to explain that I needed immediate surgery, but he didn’t have a lot of answers. I wasn’t used to doctors not having all the answers. I was scared. The surgeon didn’t know if I would end up with a colostomy, didn’t know how much intestines he would need to remove, all he knew was that I needed surgery and I needed it right away.

I wanted someone to tell me that everything was going to be fine, this happens all the time. No one could tell me that, there were too many unknowns.

Pre-op was scary. I don’t know if the pain or the fear was more overwhelming. I was still curled in the fetal position when the nurses asked me for another urine sample (did one the night before in the ER). My mother stepped in and said that I could barely move, they decided the pregnancy test from 12 hours before would suffice. I was in so much pain I couldn’t grasp the pen to sign the consent form. I think my mother signed it for me, I honestly can’t remember.

My brother came to see me in pre-op and he managed to help me calm down somehow. It wasn’t long before I was taken in and put under the anesthesia. I woke up in recovery for a brief second, I knew that I had made it through surgery, but didn’t know all the gory details. My mother filled me in when I woke up back in my room. I had a drain, no colostomy, put the abscess had burst and perforated my colon.

The doctors told us that a patient is discharged after about 5 days post-op. They warned me that I wasn’t going to be discharged if I was having fevers, which I was. I was barely able to get up, I was so lethargic. I asked them for TPN and a PICC line. My veins are so crappy that a PICC line is necessary. TPN is great because I’m basically being fed through my veins and I was not eating a thing.

I ended up staying in the hospital 9 weeks, which is insane. It was a total shit show and nightmare. I’ll get into that in another post, it’s a long story. Emergency surgeries are not fun and basically a living hell. Thankfully every surgery since then has been planned (well, almost).

This is one of those worst case scenarios and I don’t want to alarm or scare anyone reading this. I have a severe case of Crohn’s Disease and several things contributed to everything going wrong. I ignored symptoms for a long period of time if you take anything away from this please see your doctor when you are in pain. Pain is a signal from your body that something is wrong! Learn from my mistakes.