Well. Things were going as planned. Then they decided not to, cause nothing involving me can ever be simple, can it?
I was responding fairly well to the medications, and after a completely silent weekend thanks to the pain from the tonsillectomy, I was finally able to speak a bit by Monday. I took that as a good sign and thought it meant I could go home, because I was feeling really bad about watching my Mom sleep on the stupid pull-out chair/bed thingie. Not only was the bed uncomfortable, she was getting woken up at all hours by nurses and techs coming in to give me meds and take my vitals in the middle of the night. She looked tired and bored, and I figured since I was doing better, I could go home and tough out the rest of the pain, cause hey, it didn’t seem like it was that bad.
Tuesday came around and by about three in the afternoon, all the paperwork had been processed and I was out the door. When I got back home I tried to eat, but couldn’t really get anything down because of the swelling in my throat. So I opened up some ebay purchases that had arrived while I was away, I watched a show with my brother, and my Mom finally got to take a nap. Everything seemed to be going fine.
Halfway through the show we were watching, I fell asleep. Not surprising, and not really a bad thing, but waking up didn’t feel so good. An hour after I fell asleep, I was jolted awake with a fit of coughing, which hurt *really* bad. Within two hours of returning home, the pain had returned to such a degree that it was as if I had lost two full days of recovery.
I went upstairs to get some ice cream to try and soothe my throat, as well as a bag of ice to put on the outside of my neck, then off I went to my bedroom to lay down. After fifteen minutes, things only seemed to be getting worse and I didn’t know what to do. Finally I decided that maybe some humidity for my throat would help, so I went straight to the bathroom, turned on the shower as cold as I could stand it, and just sat down in the tub for I don’t know how long. But after a while, things were still getting worse: not only was it hurting like hell, I was starting to wheeze.
After I got out of the shower I got some more ice cream, but this time I couldn’t swallow any of it. My throat was so swollen and so painful I couldn’t even swallow my own saliva. Needless to say, I was getting kind of worried, and I was starting to seriously regret leaving the hospital. I sat there for a while, trying to drink water, letting the ice cream just sit in my mouth hoping the cold would help coax my throat to open up a little bit. After only five more minutes, I couldn’t take deep breaths, and I was starting to look ridiculously pale. I was mad at this point, mad at myself for being so stupid and leaving the hospital. I wanted things to go so well, I wanted my Mom to be happy and be able to sleep in her own bed, so I pushed it.
So there I was, sitting on my bed, watching each minute pass by as I felt my throat get tighter and tighter. I hated it because I knew in the back of my mind what was going to happen next, what was going to have to happen to the evening that was supposed to be spent relaxing in my own house.
I dragged myself to my Mom’s room and begrudgingly woke her up. She helped me try a few last-ditch attempts to open up my throat, involving lots of motrin, the narcotics I’d been prescribed, and even more ice cream. I can’t even begin to describe the hell that is trying to swallow pill after pill when your throat is so stubbornly refusing to swallow that your own body is making you drool rather than having to swallow saliva for the pain of it.
We sat on my bed for a while, trying to make things better, trying to help me fall asleep so at least I could sleep through the pain. But it didn’t work; it never would have worked. We both knew at that point that I’d come home too early and I was paying the price for it.
I started to cry, but had to work to hold it back: if swallowing hurt like hell, crying was only going to feel worse. Finally, my Mom – my poor, exhausted, over-worked Mom – looked me in the eyes and asked if I wanted to go to the Emergency Room and end up back in the hospital. Ultimately I didn’t really have a choice, because I was starting to get a bit of a blue tinge to my pale skin. My Mom called an ambulance, I pulled my things back together, and that was that.
The paramedics came. I was back to the silence of only communicating through hastily written notes. Then off I went in the ambulance, lights and sirens going the whole way. We even got to drive off-road a little bit to get around traffic – I don’t think I’ve ever had that happen before. Oh, I’ve had the lights, I’ve even had sirens on a couple of times, but all of that as well as fast evasive driving, now that’s an accomplishment.
We got to the ER about four hours or so after I’d been discharged, and we sat there until three in the morning. Twenty-four hours after leaving the hospital with the best of intentions, I was back where I started. Except this time, the pain had gotten ahead of me, I’d put my Mom through a major hassle, and I had to deal with over six painful attempts to access the stupid port in my chest. Because as if all of this didn’t suck enough already, my mediport is acting up. It’s a little catheter that’s underneath my skin on the left side of my upper chest, and it has this little silicon reservoir that connects to a long tube that goes straight into a major artery. I got the port because I have absolutely no vein access anywhere else anymore, because I’ve had far too many IVs over the years. Ports are supposed to be easier to access, more reliable than a typical IV. But of course, nothing could be that simple for me.
To access the port, a nurse with specialized training has to poke around the massive scar from where they inserted the port, find the reservoir hiding underneath my skin, and then take a needle that’s an inch long and jam it into my chest. As you can probably imagine, that doesn’t feel too great. And it’s even worse when the port decides to be finicky. I had to get stuck six times before they finally got everything to work properly.
*sigh* I’ve run out of words to describe my overall exhaustion with this whole process, with being sick, with life as it has been dealt to me as a whole. Why can’t anything ever be simple? I’m twenty-two, I shouldn’t be this much of a burden. I should be healthy, I should be out there doing things, moving on with my life. And what am I stuck with? Over a week in a hospital over a stupid tonsillectomy. And now it’s past four in the morning, I’m crying, I’m mad, I hurt, and I’m just so tired.
I don’t think I really have much more to say. I don’t even know why I blogged, I just had to get this off my chest. I’ve been holding it, trying so hard to be pleasant and nice and chipper, because crying only makes things hurt. But holding it in isn’t so much fun either. So I’m letting it out, I’m venting, I’m sitting in a dark hospital room, crying as quietly as I can so I don’t wake up my Mom. And I’m lonely. And I really, really, really want my body to stop behaving the way it is. I’ve done everything I know how to do, but there’s only so much a person can do with a body made from spare parts.
I’m going to eat some ice cream now.