intestinal blockage

Fatboy, Stop Your Bellyaching or Get Enteroclysis

July 30, 2010

I’d love to, but my belly still hurts. When I eat or drink, when I’m not occupied with other activities, or other activities put my abdomen to use, nearly a third of the pain of Wednesday returns. Aside from little updates on how I feel, I promise this will be the last you hear of this blockage for a while, ‘mkay? Before you keep on wondering as you read on, missing my good writing material while wondering, yes, those are my intestines a few days after my December blockage (December 29th, to be exact). I got it in just before our insurance would have made me pay a huge deducible (unbeknownst to us, but I wasn’t willing to risk it and pushed for a 2009 test date).

Let’s be positive for a second, since I am an eternal optimist, according to the resident expert on Fatboy: Beautiful. On a super awesome note, I kept track of my weight through the ordeal, and I must say, Fatboy responds well to being fat. Here’s what happened. Pre-blockage: 134/135. Post blockage: 125. Last night: 129. This morning: 131. It was clearly sweated weight loss due to the combination of using a heating pad whilst lying on a leather sofa all afternoon and night long. I forgot to weigh myself tonight, but I’m certain it’s at least 133, just 2 days after going hours consuming little to no calories.

Trouble continues

I can tell you exactly where the trouble continues: right at my bottleneck spot. The continual cramping and straining against the mass that had me blocked makes for a very tender area of gut. I don’t know if the mass needs to be big and is continually stretching and straining the smooth muscle with the peristalic action.

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Surviving a 21-hour Blockage Without Pain Meds

July 29, 2010

At least she has an epidural!

A lot can happen in 24 hours. It’s been said by several people already: I jinxed myself blogging about my last blockage that I had in December (Part 1 and Part 2). Yesterday was a day and night of utter misery with yet another blockage. Yay, right?

Why the photo of the pregnant woman? I’ve had a family friend who experiences occasional IBS tell me that she’d rather give birth again than have another round of IBS and she is sure that the pain I go through with my blockages is worse than her IBS. Nothing against women; that came from a woman with 3 kids. That’s the kind of day I have when I have a blockage. So, I should have something like 20 kids by now…

It wasn’t my fault again

At about 7am, I noticed I still wasn’t quite feeling well from the late night before. I felt like I’d eaten greasy hamburgers, but I’d had a very healthy meal. Something just didn’t feel right. I checked my travel enzyme bottle and confirmed I’d taken my Zenpep. I had a normal breakfast and lunch and was sure to take enzymes with my cheese and crackers.

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A Night and a Morning in the Hospital

July 27, 2010

We left off with Part One with an inconclusive contrast CT scan, a super slow staff, and a previously unmentioned multitude of requests that they call my CF doctor, who is on staff in the building, to let him know I’m in the ER that has gone unattended to for over 12 hours. We now know to call the on-call doctor on the way to the ER or call the coordinator if it’s during the day. I’m not messing around with blockages any more – I may even opt for corrective surgery the next time, because I really can’t describe the pain and suffering that goes on during a 24-52 hour blockage.

The only good thing that comes from a blockage is the relief afterward. However, even that was taken from me this time.

Oh, now you’ll listen to me anyway?

After hours of hammering them with my requested treatment method using reason, history, rage, and anything else I had available in my condition, they finally sent me down to radiology to get my enema. Long story short, I waited in the hall long enough for my morphine to wear off so I could experience the full torment of radiological hell without pain relief, but the treatment worked and I was sitting happily on the gurney waiting to be wheeled back to Beautiful when I gave them the “all clear” sign that I was “all clear.”

It didn’t take long back in the ER for me to realize that I wasn’t completely clear, though. I was very, very tender, along with an abnormal mass where I have my bottleneck. I was thinking that it only cleared out some of my problem, but that I’d had so much to eat at Outback that it just got re-plugged with that partially-digested food. Things still weren’t right.
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For Your 31st Birthday, I Give You a Blockage

July 24, 2010

I definitely had a birthday to remember last year for my 31st birthday. I got the spend the next while in the hospital, but all of the misery began on my birthday. Let’s rewind a bit and start from the beginning, just for those who haven’t read everything about my history up until now.

I was born with meconium ileus and had about 25% of my small intestines removed in my first few days of life to repair the damage. Subsequently, I have a bottleneck of scarring that has always presented itself as a problem with various foods throughout my life. At first, it was whole kernel corn. For whatever reason, probably just because I became a better chewer of my food or my body grew big enough to let corn get through, I only have a problem with melted cheese when I haven’t taken enough (if any) enzymes. To keep this a little shorter, here is what happens and what normally solves my intestinal blockages.

My birthday is December 18th – one week before Christmas and two weeks before New Years. It’s been our tradition since we started dating to go out to a nice dinner (or as nice as I could afford when her birthday rolled around) to have a memory of the day. I can remember quite a few of my birthday dinners with Beautiful, and maybe even all of them… so you can imagine my horror when I started to feel cramps in the mid-morning on my birthday.
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