You know how in “What About Bob” Bob takes a vacation from his problems? Well, I’m sort of taking a vacation with my problems. An unplanned one. And it includes room service and all. I’m at the hospital. I’ve been here since Wednesday and I’m not sure when they’ll let me go home.

It all started on – wait, if you are squeamish you might want to stop here cuz I will not be sparing you the gory details. If you are not squeamish, have a seat. This is gonna be a long one.

It all started on Tuesday when I woke up at 3 am with severe abdominal pain.  It was the kind of severe that had me doubled over, although I could still walk a little. I debated in my head whether I should go to the emergency room, but after some time decided to take a mega Motrin and try to get some sleep before calling the doctor in the morning. I was able to fall asleep and the pain seemed to subside quite a bit, so I got up and went to work at the usual 7:30 am. I’m not real familiar with the location of all my organs so I wasn’t quite sure what kind of doctor I needed to call, but I’ve always had a quick response from my obstetrician’s office, so I called them. I talked to a nurse and explained the pain I was having and also mentioned that I had been having trouble emptying my bladder lately so I thought maybe I had a bladder infection. She took down some notes and agreed to talk to the doctor and give me a call back. The nurse called me back a few hours later and told me the doctor wanted to see me that afternoon and get a urine sample. Good. We’re gonna get to the bottom of this.

I started drinking lots of water for the urine sample, but I was worried because I had only been able to “go” (the docs call it voiding) once that day. When I arrived at the doctor’s office, I was not able to void into a cup. However, because I had just started my first period post-partum, I was able to pass a golf ball sized blood clot. They were happy to keep it. Since I couldn’t void on my own and they needed a sample the only option was to catheterize me. When they did that they discovered that my bladder was quite full. I had a feeling but I had no idea how full it was. The doc said a normal person would feel a serious urge to “void” at 250 cc. I had 350 in my bladder and I only just barely felt an urge. Since it was late in the day and I wasn’t feeling crippling pain (yet) the doctor planned to send me home with the catheter in and a pee bag strapped to my leg (he said otherwise I would end up in the emergency room that night with an over-full bladder). I would come back the next morning to have it removed and they would teach me how to self-cath at that time. By then they would have test results back from the urine sample.

I went home feeling humiliated, dejected, discouraged, you name it. Having to go home wearing a catheter at age 31 is just not my idea of a good time. And being on my period doesn’t help because, you know, interference. Just too much going on there. When I got home that Tuesday night (after balling my eyes out the whole way) my son ran right to me and gave me a big hug and kiss. Then he looked at my tear-stained face and asked, “Mommy, you feeling sad?” Oh it just broke my heart. I told him “yes, I’m feeling sad, but I’ll be okay. Now Mommy needs to go to the bathroom.” And then he proceeded to hold out his hand to offer me help walking to the bathroom. Isn’t he the sweetest?

That was Tuesday. Tuesday I was in pain but I was functioning. By Wednesday morning that pain had exploded. I told Mike he needed to take me to the doctor and we made arrangements for Grandpa to come and watch the kids. We made it to the doctor and they did all as planned, plus an ultrasound to see what was going on in that abdominal region. They even let Mike sit in on the self-cath lesson so he could help me do it the first couple of times. Actually it was more like insisting than letting, but Mike was more than willing to do what needed to be done. The ultrasound showed nothing but they suspected appendicitis so they made a call to the emergency room so they would be prepared for my arrival.

I didn’t have to wait very long to get into the emergency room. They take appendicitis pretty seriously. The first thing they wanted once I got into a room was a urine sample. I tried and tried but still could not give one. They had to put another catheter in. Yay. Once they got the catheter in they hooked me to an IV, got some blood, gave me some painkillers, and started running tests. Wednesday was such a whirlwind. I had doctor after doctor coming in to push on my belly and ask me questions about the pain. It was excruciating. On a scale of 1 to 10, my pain level was at a 10. They had to try several painkillers to give me any sense of relief. With morphine I was still at a 10. With dilaudid I couldn’t even count to 10. It made me crazy. I was dizzy and heavy and paranoid. At one point I asked Mike if I was terminal. I thought I was dying. I was sobbing. I sort of remember they had taken the catheter out for some reason and I tried to void on a bedside commode but it just wasn’t working and I was freaking out. The pain was so intense I couldn’t move my own body, Mike had to lift me to help me to the commode. He wins husband of the century for all that he has been through with me this week. They did finally try a pain med called fentanyl and that helped. It brought the pain level down to an 8. Not much of an improvement but it did help and my head at least felt clear again. Fentanyl is my friend.

After a CT scan, blood tests, and another ultrasound they still couldn’t figure out what the problem was. They expected to see a high white blood cell count if it was appendicitis or some infection but mine was normal. It turns out that is because the interferon I take for MS lowers my white blood cell count, so an infection would bring it back up to “normal”. By that evening my fever spiked to 103.1 and my heart rate was up to 156, so there was no denying I had some sort of serious infection. Mike could see all the doctors congregated outside our door and they seemed to be intensely arguing over what the proper course of action was. It was seriously like an episode of House. By 11:30 pm they finally agreed that I needed surgery so they could see firsthand what was going on. Within two hours I was under the knife and within three and a half I was waking up from anesthesia and feeling almost human again.

Since the surgery it’s been a slow progression of earning back my privileges. I was on a liquid diet until yesterday at lunch time. I was on IV fluids for quite awhile. They finally took out the catheter (cuz they put that back in after the commode trouble) to see if I could void on my own. I was probably most excited about the catheter removal. Wouldn’t you be? The main problem with it was that I’m still on my damn period and pads just don’t fit well with big ole foley catheters. I counted – 7 times I needed to have nurses come and help clean me up. I’m all practiced up for life in a nursing home, let me tell ya. Modesty was out the window days ago. I just thank God I’m voiding on my own now. It turns out the bladder voiding issue is a common symptom of MS, and the infection my body was trying to fight just made that symptom worsen. It makes sense to me, at least.

What they found was an abscess near my ovaries and attached to it was my appendix. This is just one explanation, however. The doctors still don’t seem to agree on what actually was going on in my abdomen. Oh well, I just know I’m feeling better. They drained whatever was in there and removed my appendix. Now I just get to sit and wait for the cultures to grow so they can figure out which antibiotic to send me home with. For now I have to be on an intravenous antibiotic. As we say with our son after we put the toast in the toaster: “Now, we wait.”

I would rather be waiting for toast, obviously.