I know, I know. All this blogging stuff takes time, and well life gets busy. I was trucking right along, doing my school things, my music librarian things, my life things, my music things, and well….life has just abruptly stopped for me this week.
I have been fighting an infection of some sort since October, kidney/UTI/Uterine etc. I was getting the pass around with many specialists. I had also started the University of Cincinnati Weight Loss Program in September, and I was being extremely successful with it, having lost about 75 lbs before it all went down this week, I was looking and feeling great.
Last Wednesday evening (1/12/22) after dinner, I started getting some intense truly bad back pain, right around my belly button level. It got so bad overnight, radiated around to my abdomen, puked from the pain a couple of times. I actually drove to school, puked on the way in a random lot, and called out from the parking lot. I knew the ER’s were jammed due to covid (YAY!) so I went to an ER closer to my parents house because I knew I wouldn’t be waiting for 20 hours there.
Thursday, 1/13 I spent the morning at the ED for pain meds, scans and tests. They saw I had lots of ovarian cysts going on, and thought that might be the problem, but no overt kidney stones or things of that sort, though my urine was crummy like usual. Basically treat/street and told me to rest and follow up with OB. By some miracle I was able to get an emergent appointment for Friday 1/14.
Now here is the part of my story that literally makes me hella mad. I am still processing it. I got gaslighted by OB. Got in there, so much pain, I have had some infection problems with everything down there, I was finishing up a course of antibiotics for that. The doctor does the exam, declares it normal, when I am literally shaking in pain, and pain radiating down my legs, and sends me home with “it’s not an OB problem.” This doc did say that my CT did show some degenerative back changes that “could” be causing this and to follow up with my primary ASAP. I was shaking, hella mad and pissed and crying. But the doc did say if over the weekend my pain continued, or I started to be incontinent, or lose feeling to call and get in to the ED right away, they did acknowledge at the very least that something was potentially going very wrong, so lots of mixed feelings about this.
So I went home, and over the weekend my legs got gradually weaker and weaker. I was still in intense pain in my back. Pain and electric shocks were radiating down my legs and they were going numb. It was scary, weird and very concerning. Saturday 1/15 I was netflixing and suddenly I was wet. I had no urges to go. Just poof. I ignored it as a one time thing. Probably shouldn’t have but let’s just say I’m stubborn. Sunday I just kinda languished, knitted, ignored pain and tried to figure out what the hell was going on.
Monday, 1/17. I wet the bed overnight. I realized I had a problem when it was basically impossible to GET out of bed and the 10 or so steps to my bathroom, numbness was nearly complete from the waist down. I called my primary but due to the holiday they weren’t seeing patients so I got the service. They said I had to get to the ED right away and called ahead and told them I was coming. Monday turned out to be a busy day for my parents and sister- so I ended up taking an Uber from my house to UC West Chester- which is my hospital system of choice. I barely walked in, and they got me in a wheelchair. All things considered it was “not” crazy busy and I went back in 15 minutes. Things happened fast from there. They put me on spine protocol, they were evaluating me for cauda equina which is a serious back emergency that could have resulted in emergency back surgery. I needed to go to UC Medical Center downtown, so they packed me up in a bus and about 2pm and sent me downtown.
Now, I have a pacemaker, meaning that MRI’s are tricky to say the least. I had to have a CT Myelogram, which is where they inject dye into your spine and then take the CT. It showed some degenerative changes, but nothing that would cause me having to have emergency surgery. I definitely needed to be admitted, and figure out just WHAT the frick was going on with me. Due to the fact the neurology is backed up I then spent what might go down as 30 ish of the most traumatic hours of my life in a level 1 trauma center waiting on a neurology bed.
They started treating me and I saw OT/PT on early in the AM on 1/18 and I was NOT ready for it. I had not slept, docs were evaluating me at 1am to see if I needed surgery, they had me out of bed though, and there was literally almost zero feeling belly button down. Felt like I was walking on two lead peg legs. I got my first steroid round, and they were saying they are going with a investigation of Transverse Myelitis- where the immune system attacks the spinal cord.
I am going to end things here, this has gotten long and I will get more of my journey the past week or so tomorrow.
Bratschetech Baroque 