Sunday (Day 3)

February 28, 2010.
Sunday...Day 3.

THE NIGHT...THE A.M...THE CONFUSION...

Because Ace had worked all day Saturday, he didn't get to the hospital till later Saturday evening; so he was exhausted. I told him just to spend the night with me and then he wouldn't have to drive home. Well this a.m. woke up at 4:00 a.m. crying with stomach pain. I rang the call bell for my nurse while Ace rubbed my back and assured me I would be fine. The nurse came in, prepared my pain shot, and injected the medication into my iv slowly as my pain started to dissipate. The next part is blurry: I sawl the nurse escort Ace out o' the room, he waved by to me, and bam, he was gone!

So in the morning as I opened my li'l peepers to the world, Ace was nowhere in site. I asked my roomie (who at the time had a pain shot) and she said she thought she sawl Ace leaving with the nurse as well. As the story concludes, the nurse had told him that he couldn't stay in the room with me (we still weren't sure exactly why...), so the took him to the lounge where he spent the night with his feet dangling off the end o' a smaller than normal couch. He said he seemed to sleep ok though. So that's good. Adam and I snuggled most o' the morning while we waited for one o' the medical doctors/physician's assistants to come to visit me.

Blankets, etc...from sleeping in the lounge.

Enjoying our time together!

I'm the luckiest gal on earth!! (:
Ace...not so lucky.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

MY CROHN'S UPDATE:

Saturday no doctors stopped by, no PA's stopped by, so that was very confusing! So finally around noon I had Marsha (PA) and Dr. Assaf (M.D.) both stopped by to discuss what our plans were going to be. We asked them why no one stopped to see me on Saturday, they explained that the emergency room was to call them to tell them a for sure "yes, she is admitted." and "she is in room 514b." So b/c the ER never called them, they didn't know the needed to come to my room to see me.

Here are my doctors from Blair Gastroenterology that came to see me.

Tim Williamson, P.A.-C.

Marsha the P.A.-C.

Edmond Bou Assaf, M.D.

The PA-C's and the doctor went over all my lab work that was drawn:

• ESR (SED Rate) -- [normal=below 25][mine=44]
  ~ high...ESR is considered the "marker for inflammtion" indicating a lot o' inflammation in my body. B/c mine is almost double normal it is obvious to deduct that my Crohn's Disease is flaired up.

• RBC (part o' CBC) --[normal=4-5.5 million/mm3][mine=3300]
  ~ low...Red blood cells carry oxygen from the longs to the rest o' the body. So because my RBC are low, my body isn't getting the oxygen that it needs. Thus causing anemia,(which is what I have), which causes fatigue and tiredness.

• IRON -- [normal=10-30 mol/L][mine=7]
  ~ low...The most common cause o' anemia is not having enough iron. Low Iron/anemia (which go hand in hand as you are seeing), causes fatigue, over all tiredness, and exhaustion.
  

• Vitamin B12 -- [normal=200-600][mine=70]
  ~ low...This indicates that I have a vitamin B12 deficiency. Because my surgery removed portions of my intestines (which is where your body absorbs and digests food/vitamins/nutrients) my body has trouble getting the vitamins and nutrients it needs. Having a B12 deficiency causes weakness, tiredness, overall exhastion. Doctors want me to continue to take my vitamin B12 shots.
  
  
• Hematocrit & Hemoglobin -- [normal=12-14/28-32][mine=8/15]
  ~ low...indicates nutritional deficiency, also that anemia is present, caused by blood loss. Most likely this is caused by my bleeding ulcers from my Crohn's Disease.

• I am hypocalcemic,which means that my body isn't getting enough calcium in my body. Hypocalcemia can be caused by poor diet and/or lack o' vitamin D. My doctor recommends I take calcium supplements along with vitamin D supplement together because that will help my body absorb and utilize the calcium.

So to sum it all up, I'm in a Crohn's flair. There is a lot o' inflammation caused by the flair. The doctors are giving me Solumedrol thru my IV. Solumedrol is a fast acting, very powerful, anti-inflammatory medication. Hopefully this medication will decrease the inflammation, caused by the Crohn's flair. They also increased my pain medicine (Dilaudid thru the iv) from every 4 hours to every 3 hours. It seems to be doing the trick. I'm still noticing that when the 3 hours is up, I'm ready for them to bring it cause I'm in pain. We are now just waiting to see if the ESR will go down and that my pain can get under control so I can go home. Also, my IV was right in the elbow part o' my arm. Every single time I would move my arm so it wasn't perfectly straight my machine would start beeping like a mad man. I'd have to press buttons to make it stop beeping, reset it, turn the nob two clicks to the right, then back to the middle, or turn it all the way off, and then turn it back on. Literally it was every minute. A guy from the IV team stopped by to redo my IV, but he said, "Wow! You have awful veins. I doubt I'll be able to get anything!" That's all I needed to hear, he wasn't doing my IV. So I had to leave it in and listen to it beep for real EVERY minutes. Ask my roomie, or ask Ace. So here is me with my arm "straight", but if you look at the machine it is blinking "occlusion"..."occlusion"..."occlusion"...oh, and it's beeping too!! Ugh...we are going to leave the IV in my arm till my arm gets puffy!! (:

Me with my "beeping"..."blinking" IV.

As far as the fistula... My doctor in Pittsburgh indicated she had no clue what to do with my case. She had "never seen anything like this" in her life. She wanted to bring my case to this big conference where all the greatest minds and big wigs that know everything about fistulas and everything else will be there. So I won't know any news about the fistula and what they plan to do about it till this Friday. And I think that my friend, is all the news. I hope I got everything.

The day was done, and
Ace left a VERY tired boy.

THE END !!!