Blogging Through the Pain

Well, it's been exactly a week since the last episode of intense pain in my back, which resulted in the late-night emergency room adventure. Dr. Joe must have sensed I am starting to feel better and decided he wanted to remind me of the pain one last time. It's 2:42 AM (nevermind the blog time stamp I still have yet to correct), and I imagine he is sitting in his office, stabbing the voo-doo doll in the back and saying out loud "she needs to feel this pain one more time!"

Meanwhile, I sit here on the first floor of my house with the laptop, blogging through the intense pain that has become all too familiar. This is Episode #5, and I'm not sure how many more of these moments I have in me at this point, as they are unbelievably painful, exhausting, and draining. I've described it to all of my doctors and to LA as an excrutiating, intense pain likened to a knife stabbing me in the back. It all starts with a burning sensation in my esophagus, serving as a forewarning signal to hunker down and prepare for the worst because the stabbing sensation is about to set in and I will need to fight through it hard for hours.

When the pain hits, I will do just about anything to make it go away. Since no one determined what this pain is, there is no relief protocol, no prescribed drugs to make it go away. During the worst moments of it (which were about an hour ago), tonight's please-make-it-stop routine went a little something like this:

1. I wake up screaming in pain. The dog jumps out of bed, panicked, and stares at me with a look that is half concerned, half annoyed. The Mr. casually rolls over and sleepily says "huh?" (yeah, it takes him a minute to focus when this happens).

2. I hunch over in bed, curling up in a ball to make it stop. That doesn't work. I lay out straight. Still there. I get up and walk around the room. The pain is crippling. I wonder why I even bother to try...after four episodes of this, I should know by now that nothing makes it go away; I just have to fight through it.

3. I demand that The Mr. grab me something- anything- remotely close to a pain reliever. He brings me two ibuprofen, one of which I drop in the sheets. I scream again. He turns on the light and searches for it as I writhe around in pain, cursing like a sailor.

4. Even after taking the ibuprofen, I consider calling my neighbor (and very close friend of mine) to see if she has any vicodin. I should state that my neighbor is not a prescription drug addict or the neighborhood drug dealer, and that I have no idea why the thought that she might have some popped into my head. But in the desperation of the moment, it seemed like an excellent plan. I decide, however, to allow her her beauty rest and put down the phone.

5. Chocolate milk! Milk neutralizes acid, right?! I must go drink a glass of chocolate milk...that has got to be the surefire remedy I have been missing all along...I head downstairs to the refrigerator.

6. Xanax! We have some from when The Mr. experienced anxiety during graduate school. I shake him violently to wake him up and demand to know where the Xanax is. Maybe if I take down some kind of vicodin-Xanax cocktail I will just pass out and wake up in the morning in a pain-free oblivion. He calls me crazy and offers me the heating pad instead.

(I should mention at this point that I hate drugs of any kind and rarely even take ibuprofen...so you can see how much pain I'm in if I'm demanding vicodin and Xanax, and how insane this pain makes me to think that combining them might be the answer.)

7. The heating pad is now on the full-throttle setting and placed underneath my back. I'm guzzling water from a giant Nalgene bottle.

8. I suddenly stop guzzling water from a Nalgene bottle, remembering from Episodes #2 and #3 that drinking water during this pain led me to vomit unintentionally. I panic. I don't want to vomit. This irony of this thought distracts me for a moment, as I am confused. Didn't I used to induce vomiting on a regular basis on my own free will? What on earth was I thinking? Weird. Back to the pain...

9. I want Hot Doctor from last week's ER visit to stop by and handle this for me. Then I remember that I just woke up, it's 2:30 AM, I am without makeup, wearing my Vanderbilt track and field t-shirt and capri pajama bottoms, and that I only used dry shampoo on my hair earlier today. And I'm not attractive when I'm a raging bitch in excrutiating pain. And, oh yeah, I'm married.

10. I hear my friend L's voice in mind head: "Just go blog". One of the few people I had confided in early on about my eating disorder treatment, I went to her once when eating lunch at work brought me to tears. She told me to go write while I ate to distract myself, and it had worked. I grab my laptop and head down to the first floor of our house to write through the pain.

So far, it is working. So here I am. It is now 3:21 AM, and I am on the sofa with the heating pad. I just wrote all of the above and didn't really think about the pain; I just let it subside gradually. I did not wake up my neighbor demanding drugs she probably does not have. I did not pop a Xanax in a moment of pain-induced loss of common sense. I allowed The Mr. and the dog to go back to sleep. Hot Doctor is still working at the ER where he belongs, instead of on his way to my house (bummer on that, though).

It could be that I worked through the pain like the tough chick I am. Or it could also be that Dr. Joe just simply fell asleep and finally let the voo-doo doll fall to the floor. Who knows. Either way, the worst of tonight's episode is over- hopefully.

I was going to post about the results of the scope later today, but  since I'm up and still need distraction from the lingering discomfort, I'll just include that in this post too.

Honestly, I don't remember a thing from the procedure. The biggest mistake GI Guy made with me was showing me the "educational" (read: "scare-the-hell-out-of-the-innocent-patient") video last week, as my previous ignorance of endoscopies was probably a good thing. The video had made me very, very scared and nervous about what I was about to endure, when in reality, they could have done just about anything to me and I wouldn't have known the difference. I was out cold.

While I'm still waiting on biopsy results (that will take about a week), I did get some immediate feedback from the scope. GI Guy did not see signs of any significant damage to the esophagus (he said there probably was at one point given the burning I was feeling, but it may have healed over the last week). This is, obviously, good news. However, the scope revealed I do have several ulcers. The ulcers combined with the severe acid reflux (not uncommon among people who have engaged in self-induced vomiting over a period of time) are probably combining to create the extreme pain and discomfort I sometimes feel.

This still doesn't explain the back pain, but I'll chat with Dr. K about that on Thursday. She will have my scope results and will probably go over them with me again anyhow since GI Guy did so while I was coming out of a drug-induced state (why do they bother to talk to you at that moment anyhow?).

I was not permitted to eat all day in preparation for the scope, so when it was over, I was famished. LA saw me this morning and got a kick out of the fact that I desperately wanted to eat (she rarely hears the words "I'm starving!" come out of my mouth). I was, of course, craving my stand-by peanut-butter-banana smoothie, so I had The Mr. head to Robeks to get me one and downed it in about thirty seconds. We came home and I went straight to bed, where I was for the majority of the evening to let the anesthesia wear off.

Given the pain I was in about an hour ago, I am once again glad I started this blog as an outlet for the pain (physical and emotional) I've endured while fighting this battle. Writing tonight helped me forget about the imaginary knife stabbing me in the back, providing a much needed distraction. And with that, I'm going to go have another glass of acid-neutralizing chocolate milk (am I making that up?) and return to bed, hoping the worst of this Episode #5 is behind me.

Night everyone...although I'm probably the only one not in bed at the moment!