Monday, January 26, 2009

Doo-aww-deum or Dew-o-dee-num?

Either way you pronounce it, mine's fucked up.

I'm sitting in a hospital bed, blogging on their wifi connection. I got admitted Saturday afternoon and I'm hoping to go home tomorrow - but that's not a certain thing.

At first I thought I might have a drug induced hepatits because of the Bactrim and ketoconazole I started on Friday. I woke up right at midnight Saturday with right upper quadrant pain but figured it would go away on it's own.

I was wrong. It didn't go away, and it got worse so I had Urbaner take me to the ER. It took me 10 hours to decide to go; I didn't want to use it as an urgent care clinic. By the time we got there, I couldn't walk upright and was scoring my pain on a 7 out of 10 scale. My BP was 168/102 and I was tachycardic at 126bpm (take note, all you drug seekers: REAL pain produces physical symptoms).

2 mgs of dilaudid, one bag of saline and a CT scan later, the doc told me I had an inflamed duodenum consistent with peptic ulcer disease and a mild case of hepatomegaly that he thought was secondary to the duodenal inflammation.

I got admitted, and here I am 48 hours later, still in the hospital. I might get to go home tomorrow, I might not. I don't know yet. I DO know that I think it's fucked up that this happened now...in the past 5 months I have taken better care of myself with diet and exerise than I have in many years, but now I get an ulcer? Of course, the culprit is more than likely the NSAID's I've been taking since my shoulder surgeries, which leaves me in a bit of a pickle: I don't want to take narcs, but can't take NSAID's because of the ulcer, and tylenol isn't strong enough for me. I can't manage every day with NO medications at all, but don't want to be on narcotics either. So, what do I take? I'll have to ask the surgeon.

I am also facing the prospect of life without coffee. That terrifies me...

8 comments:

randompawses said...

Oh, hon, I can sympathize! I developed a "nice" little duodenal ulcer a few years ago. The doc took me off caffeine, alcohol AND chocolate (because of the caffeine) all at the same time - the same week my son's van got vandalized in our driveway. Twice. It was NOT a happy time. I publicly threatened to unload a couple of rounds of buck shot into the next person to mess with any vehicles in my driveway.
NSAIDs did it to me, too. 800mg ibuprofen and too many ASAs, thanks to a rotator cuff injury. Sucks, big time! Tramadol helps without making the ulcer worse, if that information is of any use to you.
Best of luck with the recovery process!

Epijunky said...

My partner is insisting that it's dew-aw-den-um. For whatever that's worth.

I hope you find yourself feeling better and out of the hospital soon.

Love ya girly.

Anonymous said...

*hugs*

hope you feel better soon :)

Chris said...

Hope you get out soon. You must be fed up of illness and hospitals by now!

:)

The Mad Scientist said...

My Physiology/Anatomy professor said the pronounciation in practice was regional like most medical terms. (Basically it doesn't matter as long as you say the right word) Feel better.

Anonymous said...

That's terrible.

I wish you a speedy recovery.

Evil Transport Lady said...

Eeek! I should send this post to my partner, he eats NSAIDs like candy:(

Feel better soon!

Cheating Death said...

SO how ya doin after all this?