One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

I’ve been going through a lot of body transformation over the last few months. Most of them I’ve loved.

Well, this most recent picture here doesn’t show a health transformation that I intended to have happen. Yet it did happen, so lemme tell you what’s going on…

Here’s what I’ve been experiencing in the most recent picture: June 30, 2009

• Blisters on my lips
• Ulcers on my tongue
• Rawness on the roof of my mouth
• Ulcers on my gums
• Ulcers inside my lips
• Ulcers inside my cheeks
• Terrible bad breath (Can you imagine with all those sores in there?)
• Ulcers on the punching bag thing in the back of my throat that I keep forgetting the name of.
• Seriously painful swallowing
• Red, itchy eyelids
• Red, itchy sores on both of my upper arms (And a few individual ones scattered around my legs)

It all started late Friday night when I thought, “Hmmm. Maybe I had too much acidic salad dressing tonight.” It was the first sign of having a little bump inside my lower lip. But it wasn’t anything alarming at that point.

When I woke up Saturday morning there were pronounced pus-filled bubble blisters around the inside of my lips in several places. It was slightly difficult to swallow.

I was bummed. And scared.

See, back in late Sept/ early Oct. 07, I was in the hospital for almost 3 weeks with a freak outbreak of Crohn’s like symptoms. I had the mouth ulcers, I had the painful swallowing, I had diarreaha, (wow, I spelled that right the first time. I think I’m ready for the spelling bee.) And I was vomiting. I wasn’t able to eat. And I was only getting in very limited liquids.

But in that situation I didn’t go to the hospital right away because I didn’t know that there was something terribly wrong going on inside my body. I just thought I had a weird flu and that it was going to pass soon enough.

It wasn’t getting anywhere near better though, so I finally went to the ER for the first time in my life by choice. (Only other time was in 4th grade w/a broken wrist and 7th grade w/a broken collar bone.) But I’d never been to the ER as an adult and certainly not because I was so sick that I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I was admitted that night and didn’t come out for almost 3 weeks. Turns out my intestines were seriously bleeding and had ulcers scattered all throughout them. My stomach didn’t have any ulcers. Just everything else did. They were even talking about taking out a portion of my colon in surgery because it was so decrepit and gnarly with ulcers.

There’s a lot from the hospital stay that I don’t remember because I was so fatigued and was receiving serious drugs to help me with the pain my body was in. Perhaps I’ll recall some of those memories here to share with you when I’m feeling particularly brave. But for now I just wanted to give you the back story of why the mouth sores this weekend caused me to be scared and bummed. I didn’t want to go through that again and I was worried that it might be the onset of something similar, ya know?

So after waking up with the sores in my mouth on Saturday morning, and kinda toughing it out through the day with worry and rest…I went to the ER at 6pm. I wasn’t going to take any chances of this situation getting like it was in 2007.

The was crazy busy. My Sweet Bee even saw someone in there on a gurney with their leg chopped off waiting for them to sew it closed. Good thing I had my head focused on the nurse in front of me. I was intent on making it to my little curtain room repeating my Ho’oponopono mantra as peacefully as I could. There was a lot of suffering going on in that emergency room, that’s for sure.

We pulled the curtains tight and I got into my little back-opening nightie they gave me. I was glad I wore my cheetah print panties from Victoria’s Secret because, Hello!? Who says you have to wear granny panties if you’re in the hospital? It was really for my scared inner child that I wore them anyway because it made it more like we were going to a party.

Dr. Hunt, my ER doc ordered a cat scan done of my belly because I had felt a bit of cramping in that area. Not a good sign since I’d had a history of Crohn’s. So I drank some grape-flavored drink that had a bunch of iodine in it. Had to sign a waiver before I could drink it. Apparently some people are seriously allergic to it.

Then when I was wheeled into the Cat Scan room by this young guy Orlando, I received more iodine directly through my IV. It was warm and made me feel like I was peeing on myself. Good thing I really wasn’t. I didn’t bring a change of cheetah print panties with me.

The iodine was for contrast so that they could see what was going on in the belly area. Results came back that there was nothing inflamed in there.  Hooray! That was really good news.

I also swished some Viscous Lidocaine – terribly nasty flavored goo that numbed my mouth sores and my throat so I could be in less pain. Helped with the mouth sores. Made my throat feel even more closed up and I started getting scared about not being able to breathe, but I kept being able to anyway.

Had .5 mg of a pain drug called Dilauded. Wow. This stuff is powerful. From having like no food in my body for a couple of days to having that pumped into my body was like a tidal wave of feeling flooding my body. Fortunately it felt good instead of terrible. And it definitely calmed my anxiety. I was able to relax and doze off with my eye mask on a little bit.

End result of ER trip:

• Abdominal pain – Uncertain Cause
• Rx for Gross Goo to numb oral area.
• Super cute young nurse with long eye lashes and stylish glasses who made me smile
• Got an IV of saline to help hydrate me
• No inflammation in belly area Yay!

So now it’s Wednesday morning…what’s happened since then?

• It’s gotten more difficult to swallow.
• My body ached from head to toe like I had a terrible flu.
• I sobbed for like 20 minutes straight, slobbering into a towel.
• I went to my GI doc (all about the guts) and he wasn’t so encouraged.
• Received Rx for Prednisone, a heavy steroid that will relieve the swelling in my mouth, and probably make my face swell up instead as one of the side effects. Puffy Predinsone face. It happens. And since it’s not painful, it’s way better than puffy lips and inside of the mouth.

Yadda yadda…This is all the stuff on the outside. The physical stuff.

What’s really fascinating (and what I’m choosing to put my attention on as much as I can) is the emotional internal stuff. The stuff going on with my feelings, my subconscious, and my relationship with myself that are making this physical stuff have a fertile place to come and freak out.

Maybe I can share some of that with you later. This is plenty for now. I just took my 2 a.m Prednisone pills with a couple of sips of water and my mouth is burning. It’s really uncomfortable to drink, swallow, talk. So I’ll be mostly quiet today. Writing when I feel up to it. Open to receiving your love in whatever form it may show up.

My Sweet Bee and my 2 lovely neighbors are taking excellent care of me and I am so loved.