Trip to the ER (the stuff they don't tell you about)

The next couple of weeks were pretty uneventful. My hair still hadn't fallen out, but was constantly coming out even after I cut it really short. I was settling into a "pattern" of sorts with the chemo.

My doctor had told me to do what it takes to keep my bowels moving, so when I felt bloated and very constipated Thursday April 2nd I took a Dulcolax.

At about 3am Friday I started having cramping pain - that cramping like when you have diarrhea only nothing was coming out. The waves of cramping slowly got worse and worse and worse and by 6am I was on the living room floor sweating and reeling in pain. My husband asked if I was o.k. and I told him no and do you know what he said? He said "I gotta go" and left for work.

By 8:00 I couldn't take it anymore and I called my doctor's office and talked to a nurse that I hadn't met before. I told her what was going on and she told me that Dr. Howard wasn't in, but that they'd call me when she came in. This was unacceptable and I knew that if it was a nurse that knew me, she'd have heard in my voice the pain I was in.

I called my grandma and asked if she could come over. I told her I wasn't feeling well and couldn't handle the girls. Then I called my mom and she told me she'd take me to the ER. Shortly after Bryan called and said he was coming home. I was in so much pain I couldn't keep myself from moaning and crying. I couldn't wait to get to the ER.

Once I was in the emergency room, the nurse wanted to start and IV. She asked if I could lay back and I told her no. I was currently having a wave of pain and needed to wait until it subsided before I could move. Once I laid back, I told her that I had a mediport, but she didn't want to use it for whatever reason. She insisted on an IV and blew my vein instantly and it was very, very painful.

it's now mid-June and you can still see where this bruise was

After blowing out my vein, she decided to hook into my port. They drew blood for the lab and gave me some fluids. A doctor came in and talked to me, felt my stomach, etc. He told me they would do a rectal exam and an x-ray, possibly a CT depending what they find. They gave me a shot of morphine and after it kicked in the doctor came in to do my rectal exam. He apologized to me 1,000 times during it but I didn't care - whatever it took to stop the madness was just fine with me said the morphine.

Shortly after the morphine started to wear off and they gave me another shot of it. They didn't want to give me too much because morphine constipates and they didn't want to make things worse. After this we waited a very long time and I called the nurse in twice to find out what is going on but my nurse was either busy or on lunch and the two people I talked to were clueless.

Finally the x-ray tech came and got me and we were off to x-ray. My morphine was starting to wear off again and I had to stand for the x-ray. I managed to do it - twice, since the first x-ray didn't turn out so good. She rolled me back to my room.

The doctor came back in and told me I had ileus, which is a temporary paralyzation of the large intestine, and obstipation (severe constipation). Basically, things weren't moving thru like they should be due to the chemo and by the time I took the laxative and things started moving, things were so hard they couldn't come out, thus the severe cramping. Yes, it's o.k. to say it: I was full of shit.

They moved me to a room with it's own bathroom and gave me an enema. It didn't seem like it was going to work, and she even told me it can take more than one. It wasn't as unpleasant as the pains I was having so again, I just went with it. Finally, I had relief - oh boy did I have relief and it was sweet.

They discharged me home and recommended Miralax.

The next day I had a feeling of being full all day, painfully full and uncomfortable so I paged the on-call doctor and he told me to up my Miralax to twice a day. I fear I may sound like a commercial, but Miralax is my new best friend and I have been faithfully taking it daily to make sure I never end up with an ileus again.