My Most Recent Trip ~~ So NOT planned! !!

Okay so this last week life has been going really great!! Up until I was leaving the Temple Wednesday evening ( the 27th) as I was walking to my vehicle at the bottom of the hill just inside the fence around the Provo Temple, I started feeling some major pain in my navel area. Almost felt like I had a very bad case of needing to do a #2 in the bathroom. So I got to my car and the pain struck hard again, so I held out until I got home, and ran straight for the bathroom, I in fact did need to go, but afterwards the pain was still strong and didn't go away. I finished up in the bathroom came out to the livingroom and laid on the floor with my knees tucked into my chest -- as much as they can be.



I didn't sleep well that night and when I awoke the next morning, I just wanted to stay in bed. I had nausea along with the pain, and when I would push in and then let go of the navel area it hurt extremely bad too!!! I tried to lift my little boy Ethan out of his crib and screamed because it hurt so BAD!!! Katherine came running in and grabbed the baby, and I hunched to the floor!! I managed to gather myself in a calm fashion again and attempted to drive my children to school Thursday morning. I wanted to scream in pain, whenever I went over bumps in the road !!



I was able to get them to school and when I came back home, I started talking to people that I knew had appendicitis in the past, and asked what the symptoms they had were like, so after hearing their stories and then looking up appendicitis on the web, I thought I could be suffering from it also!! I called the doctors office to make an appointment and the soonest that I could get one was 6:30pm that night. So Chris would be home and I wouldn't have to take all the kids and try and do this, so I managed to drive myself to the appointment and after doing some "test" mainly poking and prodding and getting an oral history of the incident the doctor was convinced that I should go to the ER!! Now I really started FREAKING OUT!!! I called Chris on the phone to let him know what was happening and said that the doctor thought it would be best to have him come and get me and take me to the ER. So now I have the whole matter of kids to worrry about too, so I thought!!! Chris had already called his parents and were willing to come up from Santaquin to stay with our kids for the night if needed, so they came up and my father in law dropped Chris off to get me, so we wouldn't have two cars to worry about!!



We got to the ER around 8:25 or so and went through getting stuck with a needle to draw some blood and found out that my White blood cell count was fine -- so there wasn't any sign of a known infection yet. They also had done a hematacrit count when I first got there as well. They had me leave them a lovely sample of urine to rule out UTI ( urinary tract infection) that came back negative. So then the next step after giving them the timeline and other facts regarding my pain, they decided that I should have a catscan or CTScan done to investigate some more.

So they had me lay down on the bed shown here, and I had to raise my arms up above my head, this now felt very painful to have my arms up so high, and my abdomen extended. They did inject a dye solution of some kind that was described like this: it may give you a warming sensation and then it will go to your bladder and you'll feel a cooling sensation that makes will make you feel like you are wetting yourself!! I did of course feel the "wetting myself" sensation and couldn't tell if I really was wet or not. Kind of FREAKY and GROSS if you ask me !!! When the scanning was done about 15 minutes later, I needed help to move my arms back down because they were completely NUMB!!! My hands were stuck in a position almost like a closed fist but the index finger was more open and the thumb was not all the way in a fist position either. They looked rather purple to me at the time also!! I was so COLD that I was chattering my teeth for the longest time, it was so NUTS!!!

After doing this scan they discovered that I didn't have anything wrong with my appendix or the gallbladder or even my kidneys, they did however notice extra fluid in the pelvic region that made them think I had a cyst on one of my ovaries that had ruptured!! So then they wanted to do an ultrasound to see if that was the case and to see if the "extra fluid" they saw was blood. I did in fact have a cyst on my left ovary and the cyst had ruptured. Once the ultrasound was finished they said that they needed to take a blood draw again and see how much blood I was loosing. So the count started at 39 and now it was at 33!! Significant loss, now I'm bleeding internally!

They decided that my OBGYN needed to get involved and let him know the situation and after hearing about the signicant blood loss said that I should stay in the hospital for several more hours for monitoring and to do another blood draw 4 hours later. Mind you I was starving and felt like throwing up all at the same time, and was told not food or water just in case they needed to do a surgery.

So around 2:00am Friday morning they had me admitted to the hospital and I had my husband go home, and try to get some sleep. Around 4am they came and checked my vitals and my blood pressure had dropped!! So they almost thought about doing the blood draw then and check the count. But the supervising nurse said that since my pulse stayed they same that I was okay to wait until 5am like planned!!

After getting a blessing from my husband and father in law -- I felt very much at peace and the news came back hours later that the bleeding at stabilized and that I wouldn't need a surgery and she had a tray of food when she told me this!! I was THRILLED!! YEAH NO SURGERY!!!

They had given me some dalotted (major narcotic) I instantly got really dizzy, and very nauseous and started dry-heaving. I had two doses several hours apart and it made me very sleepy!!! So it is a lot like morphine, and I don't like the effects of either one.

So they discharged me to go home around 2:30pm on Friday the 29th of February. I'm glad to be home and more glad that I didn't need a surgery to stop the bleeding.

My family brought me some nice pink/purple colored roses and my sister in law sent them home with some lilies!! That made me cheer up some more!!

I did get plenty scared when they said that I was bleeding inside -- and to think that pioneers and lots of women prior to modern medicine would bleed to death internally from this same kind of thing. I'm grateful that it wasn't more serious, and needed a surgery to help stop the bleeding. I don't wish this on anyone -- it really does HURT!!! So now I'm feeling dizzy and need to go lay down while the baby is sleeping and everyone else is not home. What peace and QUIET!!! I couldn't ask for more. ---- well yeah I could but I'll hold off on that for now.