Day 6

Uuuuuhhhh (insert shudder here) Day 6.... The evening of Day 6 was rock bottom. On the pain and discomfort scale of 1 to 10 it was a definite 10! You know the scale I'm talking about.

Last night around 4:30 I started to feel nauseous. About an hour later I finally threw up. The third time really isn't the charm because this was the absolute worst vomiting episode to date. I had just taken my pain meds and those always burn going down so you can imagine how bad it was when they came up. The other two times that I've vomited I've usually felt better right away. Not this time. I continued to feel more and more nauseous and to add to that I felt like I was going to pass out. I had hit rock bottom. I had Trevor call the doctor and when he described everything the doctor told him to take me to the ER. He said that I was at the absolute worst part of the recovery and that some people just need a little extra help to get through it. That someone was me!

So, off we went to the ER. It was the usual test of patience. Waiting, waiting and more waiting. We got there around 8pm and didn't get home until 2am. We knew that basically all I needed was a couple of bags of fluids and some pain killers. Sure enough, that's what it amounted to. After pointing out the bruises on the tops of my hands from where they couldn't get an IV started for the surgery they agreed to use the "usual" vein in my arm. First they had to do some blood work, talk to the doctor etc... When they finally hooked up the fluids and I got those first few drips I almost immediately felt better! I was severely dehydrated. The also gave me some morphine and some anti nausea meds. Ahhhhh!! Finally some relief! They also did a CT scan of the soft tissue in my neck to make sure that everything was healing properly. After one more bag of fluids I was able to go home.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize exactly how cold it would be at 2am when we left for the hospital the previous evening. I was fighting off a fever when we left so the cold air felt good. Well, the cold air didn't feel so good at 2am. As soon as I walked outside in my short sleeves, capris and Crocs I started shivering violently. I very quickly realized that shivering when you already have severe jaw pain, throat pain and ear pain is not a good thing. It was uncontrollable and I felt like I was undoing all of the good that was done in the hospital just moments before. It took a good 5-8 minutes for my body to stop shivering.

Once we got home and settled I was able to sleep fairly well. Poor Trevor was exhausted as well. He's been such an enormous help and support and so have my parents! It was a relief to be able to just pick up and leave last night knowing that we didn't have to worry about childcare.

I'm hoping and praying that the help that I got at the hospital last night will be enough to get me through the last days of recovery. I really hope that I've turned a corner and that things will get better from here.