CassieGermsheid.com

If you follow me on Twitter or read this blog or my work at home blog, you might know that I’ve been taking pain medication due to chronic pain since I’m pretty open and I often let my mouth run away with me.

I had my appendix out over four months ago, and my body replaced the space where my appendix was with a seroma. According to the research I’ve done, this is rare but when it does happen, it almost always occurs right after surgery. I’ve always been a weirdo so it’s no surprise that I would develop this problem.

I’m thoroughly disappointed with the way things have been dealt with so far. Many people who have a seroma are diagnosed and treated within days or weeks of the first sign of pain. It’s been over four months for me and it’s still not taken care of.

I blame myself in the beginning because I dismissed the early pain as gas pain from the appendectomy. When it was apparent that appendectomy pain was not the case, I finally went back to my doctor. He wrote up a requisition for some blood work, then proceeded to prescribe me at least 5 different medications. I was under the impression that you were supposed to diagnose the patient, and then treat them, not the other way around. I guess I was wrong.

He asked me to come back the following week for the blood results, and to see how the plethora of pills he made me take worked. I was not surprised at all to find that the blood test came back normal. I was even less surprised that all the medications he gave me did absolutely nothing for my problem.

My body is a bit of an enigma I believe. Test results rarely come back showing an actual problem, even if there is one. Over two years ago I was having immense pain in my stomach so they did a blood test at the emergency room. It came back completely normal, even though I had a gallstone stuck in my bile duct. Thank you, body, for being a total dumbass.

Anyhoo, my doctor has repeatedly asked me to come back to his office every week since that first visit. When I tell him the random medications he prescribed me aren’t working, he prescribes something else. I can’t even count how many different prescriptions I’ve tried in the last four months. I’m not the type of person who likes to take pills for anything. When I have a cold, flu, or headache, I let them take their course. Only when I have a bad migraine will I take Tylenol.

Over the past month however, I’ve been taking painkillers like there’s no tomorrow.

I got fed up with my doctor and the inability of him and my local hospital, so I went straight to the emergency room in Saskatoon. I had to wait about two hours to get in, and by that time I was hurting so bad I was bawling my eyes out, (my mom was even crying for me), but when they did finally come see me, they were amazing.

After four tries, they finally got an IV in my crappy veins, then proceeded to pump me full of Toradol, Buscopan, Morphine, Demerol, and Gravol. The Toradol, Morphine, and Demerol are for pain, the Buscopan is to control abdominal cramps, and the Gravol is to control the extreme nauseau I get while on Morphine and Demerol. I received all these drugs within about a 15 minute time frame. Did it knock the pain out? You bet your ass it did NOT! It helped to the point where I could breathe, move, and talk again, but it didn’t take it away completely.

They did a blood test, urine test, and since they couldn’t control the pain 100%, an ultrasound. Blood tests were normal, fancy that. Urine test was normal, even though they said it looked “funny”. Ultrasound, not normal! This is when they finally discovered the seroma. Halle-frickin’-lujah! Take that, doctors who thought I was faking it.

I had an ultrasound done two months ago and the seroma did not show up then. Either the machine is a piece of junk, the technician didn’t know what the hell she was doing, or it simply wasn’t there. Because of this, the ER doctor I saw wanted to have another ultrasound done in two weeks to see if the seroma changed in size. If it got smaller, we could assume that it would eventually go away on its own, which seromas often do. If it got bigger, then they’d need to get rid of it surgically.

So they sent me home from Saskatoon hospital with some kick-ass drugs and gave me a prescription for some hydromorphone for chronic pain. The doctor gave me an extra shot of Morphine “for the road” so when I stumbled into the drug store with my prescription I got a few funny looks. I was told by the pharmacist that it’s best to take hydromorphone every four hours to keep the pain under control. Do I listen though? No I don’t.

I hate taking pills and being dopey 24/7. I always wait until the pain is too bad but of course by then it’s past the point of getting rid of. My family and friends give me shit for this, but what would you do if you were a single mom of two kids? I can’t take care of them properly while on drugs. Then again, I can’t take care of them properly when I’m in so much pain that I can’t walk or move.

So I made an appointment to see my regular doctor the next week. I explained everything and he had a copy of the ultrasound results with him. I told him the ER doctor wanted me to have another ultrasound in two weeks, so he said, “Ok, call this doctor and do that then. Let’s get this taken care of.”

Uhhh, isn’t that my regular doctor’s job? Now I’m being bounced back and forth between doctors because nobody wants to take responsibility for me? That makes me feel great. I love it when I have doctors who care looking after me. They care enough NOT to make a simple phone call to book an ultrasound. They care enough NOT to prescribe me some pain meds that actually control the pain. They care enough NOT to take out this motherf&#%ing seroma!

Well, screw those two doctors. Today I went to see a specialist. He’s a gynecologist. I was referred to him during my second visit with my general practitioner which was over three months ago. Initially, my doctor thought I may have had an ovarian cyst. After having the first ultrasound, that was ruled out. His next guess was endometriosis. That was ruled out after a visit to the local emergency room, which was a horrible experience by the way. That’s why I went straight to Saskatoon the second time. My doc still thought it was a gynecological problem however so he referred me.

I’ve been waiting for months to see this gyno so I was pretty disappointed today when I didn’t get very many answers. I was examined, I explained the whole story, and I was booked for exploratory surgery. This should make me happy, but I know I’ll be waiting a long time for this surgery.

In the meantime, I’ll still be doped up and in pain since these pills do next to nothing for me. He also didn’t rule out endometriosis which means I need to start taking the birth control pills for at least 2-4 months. I’m fairly certain that’s not what this is, but then, I’m not a doctor.

Either way, I’m not happy. I was hoping that this seroma would be taken care of since I’m sure that’s where the pain is coming from. This gynecologist disagrees. He says my “womb” is sore therefor it’s a gynecological problem. We’ll see who wins in the end I suppose. I hope I win, because if he goes in for this exploratory surgery and finds something wrong, I have to be prepared that things might need to be taken out. He already asked me my position of having more kids. I’m thinking he was asking in case he needed to take out an ovary or two, or maybe my whole uterus. That would certainly be the shits.

I think I would be completely and utterly devastated if I were never able to have more children. I have, however, been blessed with two wonderful buttheads already so I need to be thankful for that. If they’re all I ever have, then I’ll die a happy woman. I would just like to have the choice of having another one if I ever discover someone who is worthy of having one with me.

In the meantime, posting on all my blogs has been rather slow lately because I haven’t felt the mental clarity I need to write anything worthwhile. While these pain meds don’t do a good job at controlling the pain, they’re doing a great job of turning my brain into a useless sack of gray matter.

So I’m going to leave you now. This post has gone on long enough. I’d be amazed to find out anybody actually read the entire thing! I just felt the need to explain things, and to rant a bit. Buh bye for now

I'm such a complainer | RSS 2.0 | comment | trackback > posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008.