Fischer Price's My First Panic Attack
Oct. 19th, 2022 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsToday, I had a major breakdown, a kind of panic attack. I awake for the first time in ages after 7am, and I was feeling pretty good. The stomach has an orientation; sleeping on your right side elevates the esophageal valve and submerges the pyloric valve; this is the correct posture you want if you want food (and medicine) to be processed as quickly as possible into your intestines. I’d been a lifelong right-side sleeper for just this reason, but when I blew out my rotator cuff last October, and especially after the surgery in May, I was unable to sleep on that side anymore.
Last night, I slept on my right side anyway, using a lidocaine patch to suppress the pain response. It made a huge difference; I processed much of the vile rather than having to have it pumped out of my gut, and I slept much, much better.
Or so I thought.
About three hours after I awoke, Omaha arrived to find me in absolute meltdown, tears running down my cheeks. I don’t know how my body interpreted that sleep, but suddenly the initial stages of bile reflux disease vomiting were manifesting hard– uncontrollable drooling, massive phlegm production, nausea, anything my body could do to convince me to throw up the mass that couldn’t possibly be in my stomach with all the pumping going on. The tubes in my throat were so sore it was like I was being stabbed in the neck, and it hurt, oh it hurt. I couldn’t stop crying. They gave me a large dose of pain relievers and Ativan and I fell back asleep. Omaha, goddess keep her, stayed until I was out, then went to get lunch.
When I came to around 3pm, Omaha was still there. We talked and caught up, and then played a few rounds of card games before she headed out.
Around 5, a nurse came in with a small medicine cup with pills in it. “It’s your vitamins,” she said. She crushed them– poorly– with the back of a syringe, and then tried to force the mix through my feeding tube. Which ended up being completely blocked. And then she tried to blame me for “kinking the tube” with all my flailing about during the panic attack. No, you either get it in liquid form, or you put it in the stomach pump tube, flush it down, and let me right-side present for 20 minutes to get as much of it as I can past the duodenal damage.
So my nutritional needs have been “reassessed” and I’m being fed intravenously again. This utterly, utterly sucketh the bong water of the most diseased. In the meantime, I’m going to be scheduled for Interventional Radiology again tomorrow, where I get to make more Bugs Bunny sounds, again.
I’m stable enough again to write this, at any rate. Mad as hell. Forced to take more of it. But stable. Tired again, too. Tired of everything.
Last night, I slept on my right side anyway, using a lidocaine patch to suppress the pain response. It made a huge difference; I processed much of the vile rather than having to have it pumped out of my gut, and I slept much, much better.
Or so I thought.
About three hours after I awoke, Omaha arrived to find me in absolute meltdown, tears running down my cheeks. I don’t know how my body interpreted that sleep, but suddenly the initial stages of bile reflux disease vomiting were manifesting hard– uncontrollable drooling, massive phlegm production, nausea, anything my body could do to convince me to throw up the mass that couldn’t possibly be in my stomach with all the pumping going on. The tubes in my throat were so sore it was like I was being stabbed in the neck, and it hurt, oh it hurt. I couldn’t stop crying. They gave me a large dose of pain relievers and Ativan and I fell back asleep. Omaha, goddess keep her, stayed until I was out, then went to get lunch.
When I came to around 3pm, Omaha was still there. We talked and caught up, and then played a few rounds of card games before she headed out.
Around 5, a nurse came in with a small medicine cup with pills in it. “It’s your vitamins,” she said. She crushed them– poorly– with the back of a syringe, and then tried to force the mix through my feeding tube. Which ended up being completely blocked. And then she tried to blame me for “kinking the tube” with all my flailing about during the panic attack. No, you either get it in liquid form, or you put it in the stomach pump tube, flush it down, and let me right-side present for 20 minutes to get as much of it as I can past the duodenal damage.
So my nutritional needs have been “reassessed” and I’m being fed intravenously again. This utterly, utterly sucketh the bong water of the most diseased. In the meantime, I’m going to be scheduled for Interventional Radiology again tomorrow, where I get to make more Bugs Bunny sounds, again.
I’m stable enough again to write this, at any rate. Mad as hell. Forced to take more of it. But stable. Tired again, too. Tired of everything.
