Another trip to the emergency room

It wasn't an "emergency", it's just the only place that will see you at 1am!

I've been in pain the last few days, and Sunday night it was horrible. I was in agony when I was getting ready for bed, so took 4 Ibuprofen and 2 Percocet (ie. lots of painkillers) and my sleeping tablets, and managed to sleep for about 1 1/2 when I woke up again in excruciating pain. Probably about the worst pain I can remember feeling. My incision area was hurting as was my shoulders and back.

I didn't want to have to go back to hospital because it's yucky there (Stanford is nice, but not high on my list of places I like to go) and I didn't want poor Andrew having to hang around especially when he had work the next day. It was too much pain to bear though, and given that the painkillers did absolutely nothing, I didn't really have a choice.

So in we went, and had a battery of tests done. At about 5am they said they were going to admit me to the "Clinical Diagnosis Area" which is where they monitor ER patients while they decide if they need to admit you to an actual ward. So Andrew went home to get some sleep, and I waited for my cardiologist to come see me and get the rest of the tests back.

We were most worried it was staph again as I was in a lot of pain, my incision looked a bit worse, and I was feeling pretty off. All my blood tests showed no sign of infection though, and the x-rays and CT scan were clear. They gave me IV painkillers which worked almost immediately, but unfortunately made me very nauseous and had me throwing up 4 separate times over the next 6 hours. And the painkilling effects only lasted about an hour or so which was annoying.

So the diagnosis is that it's just muscular. For some reason my muscles are having a very late reaction to everything that's happened and punishing me. I now have 2 more prescriptions - anti-nausea drugs and Valium which is amongst other things a muscle relaxant which will also knock me out completely at night time.

So each day I now take, 4 Metoprolol (beta blocker to keep my heart rate/blood pressure low), 12 Ibuprofen (for pain), 1 baby Aspirin (blood thinner just in case), 2 Ambien CR (sleeping tablet), Valium as needed (muscle relaxant), 2 Percocet (painkiller) as needed which isn't often, and a vitamin. I think that's it. :)

I'm still getting pain around the incision, and pain in my shoulder, but it's definitely not as bad as Sunday. I also feel a million times better knowing it's not staph. The cardiologist is actually wondering if it WAS actually staph last time given that I had no fever. Staph is on your skin, so it could have just picked up that. The wound cleared up within 48 hours of taking the antibiotics after weeping for close to 2 weeks, so who knows. This is what I get for being so smug about my initial recovery after surgery!

Anyway, so it's still a bit of an ongoing saga, but we're having gorgeous weather (21 degrees and blue skies and we're still in winter!), our friends here have been as awesome as usual (thanks again Shona, Bri and Lisa!!) and cheered me right back up, and I'm smiling again.

I have a massage booked tomorrow so hopefully that will be able to help with the muscular pain.