my hospital story

sorry mamas but i'm just xposting this from lj and myspace.

yup thats right. i'm home.

at times there are no ways to describe how much you long to be at home, in your bed. when i got home from TX i went straight to the ER for 6+ hours. i got maybe 4 hours of sleep in my bed. the next day at my doctors appointment i was rushed straight to the hospital so i hadnt gotten a good nights sleep in my bed in way to long.

i guess i should start at the begining huh? like about 4 weeks ago i started to feel numbness in my toes. i let it go for about a week but just had a bad feeling about it. i changed my shoes thinking my high heeled pointy shoes were to blame. no changes so i went to the urgent care like 3 weeks ago. they ran some blood work and found nothing. she told me to follow up with my primary in 2.5 weeks and then to schedule an appointment with a neurologist.

when i left for austin i was still having the numbness. earlier that week i had hurt my back and was now getting numbness in my fingers. i saw a chiropractor and they attributed my numbness in my hands to my muscles swelling and pinching nerves. while in austin i had a really hard time doing stairs which isn't like me at all. my friends lived on the third floor of their apt building and i was killing myself making it up there every time. i had no idea what was wrong but just that something was really wrong. eventually by sunday i was having trouble walking. i remember going out on saturday night with julie, jim, jesse and carleen and thinking as we walked to the bar how i was going to make it back since i was struggling to walk there. when we left for home i was still having problems. jim and i sat in the airport and drank until our flight left which i am sure didn't make things much better. our flight was delayed and we had only five minutes to make our connecting flight. jim literally dragged me through the airport. in the middle of houston international bush airport and in front of the statue of the elder bush i broke down and told him i couldn't walk anymore. jim pushed me to make it to the plane so we wouldn't get stuck there. when we got home my friend mike met me at jim's house (i had driven to the airport and so jim drove my car home) and followed me home. we went from my house to the er where we sat for 6+ hours. the er doctor was a dick and basically told me he didn't know why i was there if i had a doctors appointment the next day. he gave me two shots and sent me home.

the next day mike took me to my doctors appointment. as i talked to the doctor you could tell he was getting nervous. my insurance kicked in only two weeks before so i had never seen the doctor before. he called in a neurologist to see me. as i talked to her she got more and more freaked out. the more i told her the more upset you could see she got. finally she told me i needed a ct scan, a spinal tap and would be transported to horton via ambulance. when i told her i had trouble breathing that morning it was my ticket to the hospital straight to ICU. i had the ct scan done. the spinal tap was the worst thing ever. i had bite marks on my arm from bitting my arm to keep still. i was so dehydrated that she tapped me six times before she got a sample. even then it was tinged with blood and she didn't know how well it would work. i was diagnosed with Guillain Barre Syndrome ( see http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/gbs/gbs.htm ). I was told that years ago this would have killed me. It slowly causes paralysis until it reaches your respitory system and kills you. She kept saying "this could kill you," "you might need to be on a ventalator," "your going to be in the hospital for awhile," and i kept it together. when she told me i couldn't see xander i broke down and cried.

i went via ambulance to horton where i was admitted to the ICU. By that time my parents had arrived as well as bill and mike had been there the whole time (can we say hes a godsend? he kept me calm through all of this!). my parents left once i was admitted and comfortable (somewhat) in ICU. Bill stayed the night with me. I spent most of the night crying from the horrific headache that the spinal tap had given me. (OMG and the guy across from me died that night!)

The next day was decent. Bill left and my parents got there. I felt okay minus the numbness and the pain in my back. The next day the doctor got there early and told me she needed to do another spinal tap. I so didn't want to go through it again so I told her she had one shot and if she didn't get it I was done. She poked me twice before I told her I couldn't do it anymore. As she pulled the needle out you could feel the spinal fluid leaking down my back. I laid down and didn't get up for 2.5 days. I laid in the fetal position with a towel over my head and the worst migrane immaginable for 2.5 days.

I got moved to a step down unit. I still was on IV fluids and meds and a heart monitor. i kept getting up and trying to move around because i didn't want to fall into the place of becoming even worse off then i was. (sorry to all who had to listen to me pee!) I got the okay to leave from my neuro doctor on monday (6 days after i was admitted) but my liver enzymes were high and so they kept me another two days (I yelled at the doctor every day and so I'm sure he was glad to see me go!).

After 8 days in the hospital, not seeing Xander very much and not getting a shower (only sponge baths!) I got to come home. I still can't walk far without assistance (but getting better every day!) and still have very bad numbness in my hands and feet. The GBS just needs to run its course and hopefully i will regain all feeling in my hands and feet again. I started physical therapy yesterday and I'm hoping it will go quickly so i can start back to work. (after working like 60 hrs a week for the last few months I really am going nuts not working!)

Thanks to everyone who called, left me messages, sent flowers, cards or food, offered to babysit or came to visit. It really means a lot.