Mysterious Pains!

I'd been getting really bad abdominal pains for ages and had no idea what they were. When I say really bad I mean rolling around on the floor in agony clutching my stomach kind of bad. The last time they went haywire I got my big sister to take me to the hospital feeling like I was about to die. They did some tests on me and didn't know what it was so they sent me home with a bucket-full of painkillers and told it was probably IBS.

This time the pains started over the weekend of 12th/13th Sept and my hubby gave off telling me that it was all down to eating crap and drinking - and given the diagnosis of the last doctor I'd seen I thought he was probably right. On the Monday morning I was driving from Belfast to Newcastle for work and when I was passing through Ballynahinch I felt the pains starting - kind of a stabbing pain in my lower right stomach area, right where your appendix is supposed to be. I thought it was probably due to the chilli I'd had for dinner the night before though! As I carried on down the road the pain got worse & worse and I just about managed to make it in the door of my folks' place before keeling over.

I found the painkillers I'd been given the last time and managed one before I started feeling really violently ill and started throwing up. My parents got on the blower to our local GP's where they were told to get me in the car and to the nearest A&E in Downpatrick so they did. That was not a fun journey...

When I was seen in triage in the A&E they seemed to take me slightly more seriously than they had in the City as I was taken straight through and put in a little side ward on my own. They dosed me with morphine to ease the pain - since I'd been admitted with abdominal pain I was allowed no food or drink so it was injections in the bum thank you very much! They poked and prodded me for a bit and managed to x-ray my chest (not quite sure why...) I had to have a pregnancy test before they could x-ray my abdomen so that was more waiting around in pain. The morphine helped dull the pain but it never fully went away. Eventually they decided that they wanted to send me to the Ulster for the surgeons to have a look at me as they figured there was definitely something wrong but they didn't know what.

When I got to the Ulster I was seen by some doctors who told me they thought it may be early symptoms of appendicitis but they were unsure. My blood work came back as if nothing was wrong with me and there were no obvious give away signs of what was wrong so they decided to keep me under observation until they could scan me.

On the Tuesday I woke up with a massively distended stomach - I looked about 6 months pregnant and felt like I could barely move. They took me for an abdominal x-ray which showed fluid somewhere it shouldn't have been like outside my bowels or stomach - I can't remember exactly what was wrong as I was still tanked on painkillers. I wasn't able to have an ultrasound scan until the Wednesday as there were no spaces available so I was left for another night.

On Wednesday I woke in the most pain I've ever felt in my life. No matter what painkiller they pumped into me I was still in agony. I hadn't had food for the enitre time I'd been in hospital but I'd been allowed some water. For the ultrasound they wanted my bladder to be as full as possible which was unfortunate because just before I went for the scan I threw up pretty much everything I'd drank that morning. The scan showed feck all except that my bowels were seriously blocked, the doctor doing the scanning could barely pick out my ovaries/womb or anything else in the pelvic area. When I came back from the scan some doctors came in to see me. They were worried because something had finally started to show in my blood work but I'll be buggered if I have any idea at all about what they were talking about.

I was asked to move from my chair to the bed so they could examine my stomach properly - fat chance. As soon as I started to climb onto the bed I started throwing up even more when there was nothing to throw up so they decided the best thing to do would be to put a tube into my stomach to clear the contents. That was gross. The tube had to be covered in lube and put up my nose and down the back of my throat into my stomach. The first 2 tubes they tried were too big and when they finally found one that fit I couldn't stop choking on the blasted thing they had to take it out and re-do it.

I am a bit lost at how things proceeded from here. It was decided that I was going to be operated on pretty much there and then. An anaesthetist came up and talked to me and explained what was going to happen. Some nurses appeared with a gown that I had to change into and these giant anti-clot stockings that had to be pulled onto me then I was carted off in the bed I was in and taken to theatre. I had about 20 minutes maybe from being told they had to operate on me until I was in the room where I was put under. It was pretty scary - I had no-one there with me and I had no idea what was happening. The doctors didn't know exactly what was wrong with me so it was explained that they would be making an incision from the bellybutton down to see what was wrong. The incision might be a tiny one or it might be right down to my pubic bone depending on what they found and how far in they needed to go - all very lovely thoughts.

The last thing I remember is lying on a table with an oxygen mask on and I'd just been given an injection. Then I was a bit groggy and there were loads of doctors around and I didn't think I was in the same room as before. I was given a little button thing to push and was told it was morphine and I could push it once every 5 minutes for pain relief - that was possibly my most favourite thing of the whole experience :-D I remember people talking to me but I've honestly no idea what they said until the consultant who'd been dealing with me came over. He asked did I know what had happend and I said no - I wasn't even sure the surgery had been finished at that point!

Anyway... it turns out that my right ovary had been twisting and when it twisted it would cut off the blood supply to it. It would untwist and the pain would go away again. This could have been going on for years, there was no way to tell but I do remember getting the pains as far back as my 1st year in Uni. This time it twisted and it didn't twist back. The blood supply to my ovary was completely cut off and it died. When they removed it from me it was about 9 times the size of a normal healthy ovary and had gone black. The black meant it had gone necrotic - the dead tissue would start to eat away at the healthy tissue around it and kill it too. They took out the fallopian tube connecting that ovary to my womb as it was a bit redundant now - I'm not 100% sure if it had gone bad or not, I assume it would have been a bit dead too. They also removed my appendix which I gather is more a matter of proceedure just in case of future appendicitis I suppose.

I had more tubes sticking out of me than anyone really has any right to when I came out of the surgery. 1 in my nose, 2 in my right arm with multiple taps and a catheter (ick...) I was also had an oxygen mask just to keep me fresh. They sliced me from bellybutton to pubic bone and I managed to have an impressive 20 staples holding me togther. So the mysterious pains have stopped and there is no more mystery - hurrah! I just have to finish recovering now!!!