Duncan 1, Hospital 0
Thursday, January 7 2010
This post is a bit graphic; if you’re squeamish, all you need to know is that I was in rough shape last night, but managed to avert an ER visit with some brilliant MacGyver-like improvisation. I wouldn’t even share the details, except that I feel so awesome about myself that I have to brag about my total awesomeness.
Now that I am speaking to a totally empty Internet (pin drop drop rop op p), the gory details: around 6pm I developed cramping in my gut, the result of (as far as I can tell) being massively constipated. By 9 pm, the cramps were pretty bad, and I started to wonder if I was in trouble.
By 11pm, I knew I was in trouble: the cramps were alien-ready-to-pop bad. The first time I had cramping this bad, I landed in the hospital. The ER docs got a surgical consult, and the surgeon wanted to open me up like a grouper right there. I talked him out of it: the deal we made was that if cramping turned to vomiting, I’d get the surgery. I hung on for a year or so, and ultimately had a short stricture (narrowing of the intestine due to scar tissue) removed from my small bowel. That was seven years ago, the last time I had cramping this bad – and not coincidentally, also the last time I could stand to eat sun-dried tomatoes. By 11pm, I had begun to wonder whether this really was just constipation, or perhaps another stricture.
A sane person would have gone to the hospital, but not me. I have a terrible fear of being trapped in a hospital – a fear justified because I have in fact been trapped in a hospital. When you enter a hospital through the ER, you are entirely at the mercy of the hospital and its staff. I knew that if I went to the ER, the best-case scenario was that I’d spend a a miserable hour or two waiting to see a doctor, get a couple of invasive tests done backt-to-back, and come home sometime this morning totally exhausted and spent. Not so bad for me – I don’t actually have a job, and can afford to lose a day recuperating – but my ambulance driver/hospital attendant would end up missing a night’s sleep and probably a day of work.
So it became a question of determining, on my own, what the problem was. I reasoned that if it was constipation, I could just flush it out with an enema. In fact, a lot of folks with ostomies “irrigate” their bowels regularly as a way to control their output – but I don’t, so I don’t have the right equipment. I joked with my attendant that I could use her turkey baster; she said only if I promised to buy her one that looked nothing like it, so there was no question as to whether it was the same one.
Unfortunately, turkey basters all look pretty much the same. Instead, I found an empty bottle of contact-lens solution. It was a bit small and the top was hard to fill, but once prepared it was a half-decent enema delivery system. I cut the top off a pouch for a makeshift irrigation sleeve, and sure enough: shortly after a thorough injection of warm tap water into my bowel, (ahem) things started (cough, cough) happening. Copiously. By 2:30 am, I knew I had avoided a pointless trip to the ER : they would have done the essentially the same thing, but would have thrown in a bunch of expensive tests to come to the same conclusion: that I had a bad case of what’s called, in medical terminology, the “bricked shits”.
Still, I don’t suggest you try this at home – on the infinitesmal oddds that you have a stoma and bad cramping and a phobia of hospitals. I felt comfortable doing it because I have a solid understanding of my disease and how my body reacts, and – oh yeah – that crippling fear of hospitals. Of course, if I had proper irrigation equipment, it would have been not the least bit controversial; the only problem last night was that I had to improvise with materials on hand. You can bet I will soon acquire the right tools for the job.
And, of course, I might be wrong. The relief might be entirely coincidental, and the problem might in fact still be a stricture. That’s something I definitely have to follow up with my gastroenterologist about, which I will do soon but on my own terms. But until he tells me otherwise, I am pretty sure it was constipation.
Meanwhile, even though I got four hours of sleep last night and my gut feels like I passed a pineapple whole, I am feeling pretty awesome this morning. In fact, it would almost be worth going to the ER now after all – just so I could have somebody to trash-talk about how awesome I am.
I think you’re totally awesome, Duncan.
Good for you for avoiding the ER. Wish I’d been that smart — I ended up spending 7-8 hours in the ER on Wednesday night. Ugh.