Monday, January 17, 2005

Journal Entry – January 17, 2005 – My gizzards want out, or the alien that exploded in my stomach!

Author: Scott

Wow, what an amazing experience these past ten days have been! Just ten days ago we were out on a day sail in Bandaras Bay with Mike, Randy, and Patti who were all visiting PV, and I was climbing the mast like a monkey and hanging upside-down from the wind steering gear like a bat, and then wham just a day and a half later I ended up flat on my ass in a foreign hospital with a ruptured appendix, peritonitis, and a liver infection!

After sailing on Saturday December 15 we all went to dinner at Fajita Republic and feasted on fajitas and mango margaritas. When the meal was finished I noted that I felt unusually filled to the brim, but I just chalked this up to my voracious appetite, since I can often eat like a hog. As we headed back to the condo this sensation of a full stomach increased to a bursting point and I started to feel a little off, so I was looking forward to finding my bed for a long night’s sleep.

I woke around four in the morning feeling quite ill, with a terrible stomach ache. As I lay there wondering if I had come down with some kind of travelers flu I was hit out of nowhere with a terrible chill. I started to shake uncontrollably and then I broke out in a cold sweat. A few minutes later I became violently sick to my stomach and yet I still thought that I had flu. Eventually the chills subsided and I fell back into a fitful sleep.

All the next day I laid around in bed sure that my flu would pass, I was certain it was the twenty-four hour variety, and that soon I would be back to my frisky old self. I was also trying to get my energy back so that I could be part of Pam’s birthday celebration. We had decided to celebrate on Sunday since Mike, Randy, and Patti were in town and Dwayne was flying in and would arrive in tine for the birthday bash. Imagine that, here we are in Puerto Vallarta and we had four friends visiting simultaneously and they could all help Pam celebrate her birthday.

Well, I made it to the party, though I did leave early from the disco just as the evening was heating up (Pam’s birthday night will be covered in another journal entry). Once I was back at the condo I feel into a deep sleep until the party animals arrived home sometime after 3:00 in the morning. I got a few of the details and everyone settled in for the remainder of the night. My sleep was restless until I woke at around five with a piercing pain in my stomach. I continued to be optimistic and believe it would pass, but eventually I hit the point where there was no putting it off any longer, this old dog needed the hospital ASAP.

I roused Pam and Patti who were a little freaked out to find me agonizing in pain and asking for pain medicine and to be taken to the hospital. I was insisting to take some pain medicine prior to going to the hospital (I was not thinking too clearly). They dodged my requests for pain meds and helped me down to the lobby to catch a taxi.

I remember feeling every bump in my stomach during our ride over to the hospital. By chance we were taken to San Javier Marian Hospital, which I would later learn was a stroke of luck. When the taxi arrived I didn’t stop to pay or wait for my friends. I just walked in, slumped over holding my stomach. When the medical staff saw me come through the doors they pointed to a bed in an adjacent room, and the medical wheels started to turn without even a hint of bureaucracy. Within minutes I was changed into a sexy hospital gown, had blood drawn, and an IV inserted. Still there was no pain medication! I guess they needed to determine my problem prior to giving me any relief from the pain, something I was not thinking about back at the condo when I was insisting to take some Vicodin. Time seemed to slow down while I waited to find out what was going on with me, but thankfully a medic came in and told me that I probably had a ruptured appendix and that I would need immediate surgery, but the good news was that they could finally give me something for the pain. I was thinking who cares what’s wrong as long as I could get a fix! Thankfully the next few minutes brought a dulling of the pain in my stomach, but in no way was it completely effective. I was then asked to sign a stack of forms in Spanish, and told that I would be going to surgery in the next hour. My hospital outfit was enhanced with big blue surgical booties and a white surgical hat that reminded me of the shower cap my mom would wear when I was a kid. I’m sure I looked marvelous. Soon I was off to surgery feeling a little woozy, and I was starting to think about the fact that I was about to be dissected in Mexico.

Surgery was so weird. I should mention that I had never been put to sleep with anesthesia or spent the night in any hospital. One of my last memories before being rolled into surgery was that I could hear a manual typewriter off in the distance busily filling out forms. I was about to have surgery in a hospital that uses typewriters instead of computers, yikes! Once in the operating room I remember trying to count the number of medical staff and then a voice said “I am the anesthesiologist”, and poof – out went the lights!

I woke up and I had the feeling that someone was scrubbing the inside of my stomach on the other side of a sheet that hung vertically shielding me from all the action taking place on the lower half of Scott’s body. I wasn’t in pain though I had the feeling that people were playing around with my intestines, I found the whole thing a little strange and funny. I remember asking if my appendix had burst, but I did not get a clear answer. They closed up shop and soon I was wheeled in the hallway to await the bed buggy up to my room. I was surprised at how completely awake I felt. I always heard that you were groggy after surgery and I was wide awake. When they came to take me up to my room, I had my first clue that this was not going to be a few days of relaxing recuperation, the nurse pointed at the other bed and motioned for me to move my post-surgery behind onto the other bed. Once I arrived in my hospital room I got to replay my gurney to hospital bed slither for Pam and the other nurses. These guys were serious about physical therapy, or they simply had a tendency for torture.

That wasn’t so bad I thought, anesthesia no problem, surgery no sweat. Soon the doctor came in and confirmed in broken English that my appendix had ruptured and that I had additional infections. As the day wore on and the pain meds wore off I realized that my recovery was not going to be quite the walk in the park I was planning for. I learned that just about every movement involves the use of your stomach and I felt like I had that creature from the alien movies trying to claw its way out of my stomach. There was also a conflict in opinions on my readiness to have a drink of water, I would ask for water and the nurses would say later. It turned out that later meant fourteen hours later, when the risk of causing vomiting had past. So, my first day was spent laying in bed staring at the ceiling, thirsty, understanding about twenty percent of the information the nurses were trying to communicate to me. However, I did have Pam, Abe, Amy and our friends from San Francisco to keep my spirits up and they would not for a second let me sink into feeling down.

Tuesday brought many exciting things. Dr. Lujan, my doctor and the surgeon who fixed me up, came to visit with another doctor who spoke English. I learned that my appendix had indeed ruptured, I had peritonitis, and my liver enzymes were irregular indicating that I had a liver infection. I was told that I would need to stay at the hospital until all of the infection was cleansed from my system and my white blood cell count returned to normal levels. The news wasn’t great, but at least I knew where things stood, and I had a growing comfort in the skill of my doctor and the quality level of care I was receiving, even if they still used typewriters… Tuesday also brought my first food after surgery and I am here to tell you that Jell-O is seriously underrated. I feasted on grape Jell-o, juice and apple (manzana) tea, it doesn’t sound like much but I was in heaven. My ever supportive friends took videos of me trying to eat my Jell-o with my left hand (in the video section of the website), since my right hand was tied to the IV drip. Another key event on Tuesday was the directive from my doctor to get up and start walking around to jumpstart my digestive system. This is when it really hit home just how quickly anyone can go from hanging on the mast like a monkey to hanging on the hallway rails thinking about each new step while dragging my friend the IV pole. Just who’s body was I living in anyway? My other memory of Tuesday came late in the evening after all of my visitors had left and I needed to get out of bed. Once on my feet I was mostly okay, but getting vertical was the hard part. I had wiggled down the bed and managed to get my feet on the floor, but I was struggling with sitting up. Just then the nurse walked in to find me floundering on my back, I told her in broken Spanish that I was like a tortuga (turtle) stock on my back, she just smiled and left, boy these folks are tough. I managed to get to my feet over the next half hour, but I will always remember my time as a turtle in the hospital.

Wednesday came with my first solid food, and it was not well received. I was in no way hungry and the thought of solid food made my stomach turn. With encouragement from Pam I managed to eat and I am sure this helped speed my recover. On Wednesday night Abe, Amy and Dwayne came by for a visit and got me laughing so hard that I had to plead with them to stop because it was killing my stomach. They got it in their head that I needed a better story to explain my hospital stay because a ruptured appendix just wasn’t interesting enough. The fact Abe and I were going to the bullfights after my recovery (see separate journal entry) came up and the story for my “real” injuries was born. They decided I should state in the journal I was injured in Mexico when I attended the bullfights and jumped into the ring replacing the Matador, and although my skill was magnificent, I managed to get a slight goring from the bull. But know this was not a solid story because who would believe that a visually impaired person could fend off a gigantic bull for very long, so they decided I would have to face only a “baby bull”. As they continued to weave the details of my imaginary accident in Mexico, they acted out the events in my hospital room, complete with demonstrations of me fighting baby bulls in my hospital gown while someone else acted out the part of the baby bull. The final injury scene was dramatized when the person acting as me turned their back on the baby bull (because they could not see the bull) and got gored in the butt. We made so much noise laughing and carrying on I was sure we were all (including me) going to be asked to leave the hospital

Thursday – day four in the hospital was a real turn around. It was Pam’s birthday and I had got her a day at the spa for a birthday present, so Dwayne came over to visit. I had asked Dwayne the day before if he would cut my hair since I was in serious need of a cut and all the fever in hospital left me feeling like a clammy sweaty mess. Dwayne brought along the clippers and buzzed me in the bathroom, and it felt great! My new military hairdo combined with a little pain medicine left me feeling ready to take on the world. We walked the hospital floor at least twelve times and when lunch came I was ready to eat, I actually had a bit of an appetite. I think Thursday was my first real turn around towards recovery and my eventual release from the hospital.

On Friday morning Dr. Lujan came to visit and he explained my white blood cells were still elevated and although I was showing good progress, I would most likely be staying in the hospital until Monday. The thought of spending the entire weekend in the hospital was a real let down. Pam spent most of the day at the hospital and I made my first field trip out of my hospital room, we played cribbage in the cafeteria. I also turned my television on for the first time on Friday and I was reminded of just how little good programming there is on the old tube these days, even the news seemed to just spiral around and around back to the same tired stories. After a few up close and personal interviews with famous celebrities, I reverted back to my no television seclusion. Dwayne was leaving on Saturday so Pam, Abe and Amy took Dwayne out on the town and I eagerly awaited all the details.

The rest of the weekend crawled by. I got all the details of Dwayne’s last night out, apparently they all went to a heavy metal bar and engaged in some lively people watching… On Saturday night I got a delivery of pizza and ice cream! I will always remember how good that ice cream tasted after days of being on a bland diet!

At last Monday morning came. First thing in the morning the vampire came to draw blood, and then I was wheeled downstairs to get a final ultrasound. I had an audience of medical students watching as I was given the ultrasound while Dr. Lujan pointed out my guts in Spanish. They spent a lot of time on one area of my stomach and I had a strange premonition something was up or they discovered that I was pregnant. Back in my room Dr. Lujan explained I was fit to go home, but also while giving me the ultrasound they had noticed my gallbladder had a large stone in its neck and that this would eventually be an issue, and could be a big potential problem at sea. “Take it out and take out any other non-essential things you can find in there” I said. I couldn’t believe it, eight days in the hospital after never spending even a single night in a hospital, and here they were booking my next reservation, “Mr. Duncan we have reserved your favorite bed, will you be having the grape Jell-O today?”. Dr. Lujan wanted me to have some recovery time, so my next operation was scheduled for the following Monday. At least I was free! I could not sail for another four to five weeks, but I was free!

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