I went into Morton Hospital on the 20th of July.  My side hurt when I breathed, yawned, sneezed, etc.  I went into the E.R. and spent ten hours there.  They did X-rays, ultrasounds, blood tests, and everything else they could think of.  They couldn't tell what was going on.  I was in so much pain.  They pumped me full of morphine, and were about to wheel me into the O.R for an emergency appendectomy, when another doctor came into the room and said that I should get a CT Scan just to make sure that they were gonna operate on what was really wrong with me.  Boy, am I ever fucking glad they did. 

The CT Scan revealed that I had "pneumonia".  They said okay, and admitted me.  I was sent up to the Pediatrics ward.  I was there for 9 days.  I had to have more than 5 I.V's, because they all kept infiltrating.  I was being pumped full of med bag after med bag.  Over the course of these 9 days, I kept telling the doctors that my right leg hurt.  It hurt to walk.  I could barely move in the bed.  They said it was because I wasn't getting as much exercise as I would normally, and to just stretch my legs and keep walking.  I did as they said, and I still couldn't see an end to the pain.  After a few more days of endless leg pain, a doctor ordered an ultrasound of my leg.  This showed nothing.  Another day passed.  I had to be shot full of Morphine just so I could walk 5 feet to the bathroom.  Another doctor ordered another ultrasound of my leg.  Still, they didn't see anything.  Another day goes by.....And I finally call my primary care physician.  She comes to the hospital, and looks at the results of the X-Rays and the ultrasounds combined and says I should talk to the hematologist on call at Morton.

The long and short of it? I had to be rushed to Boston Children's Hospital in an ambulance because what the people at Morton had diagnosed as pneumonia was in all actuality a blood clot in my lung.  And as for the leg pain...yeah...you guessed it...a blood clot in my right calf. 

I recuperated and was out of the hospital by early August 2003.

 

In early September of 2003, I was having a hard time in school, physically, like I couldn't walk up the stairs and I had trouble getting to class on time because I was so out of breath from walking down the hallway.  This was way more than I had ever experienced before.  I was feeling like shit. 

About a week after school started I was in the hospital again.  I immediately went to Children's Hospital in Boston, because I did and still do doubt the mental capacity of the doctors at Morton Hospital in Taunton.  I went because I was always out of breath and on that particular morning my sides felt like they were gonna collapse and I was having real trouble walking. 

I went into the hospital in early September and I did not see the sunshine or breathe fresh air until I got out of the hospital in Mid-November. Two and a half months.  Do you realize how crazy someone can go being in a hospital for two and a half months?  I went bonkers.  I was having anxiety attacks, hallucinating, and even worse, I started doing crafts!  I was on so many medications.

What ultimately came of that was that I had to have two lung surgeries.  The first one was called a "Tap".  It was because I had so much fluid around my lung that the lung was starting to collapse.  They stuck a needle in and just sucked out a whole bunch of fluid.  Three quarts to be exact.  They thought after they got all of that out, I would be okay.  Nope.  My life can never be cut and dry, never simple.  The fluid refilled the space around my lung and collapsed it.  The second surgery they had to do was more complicated.  They put a line in to get the fluid out and left it there.......for two weeks.  I was walking around with a long lung tube about the thickness of a jumbo highlighter sticking out of my side from inside my lung attached to a suction box that I had to wheel around. 

Imagine trying to get out of a hospital bed to get to the bathroom and having to hold up a tube that you know reaches inside of you, and if the tube accidently comes out, then air will rush in through the hole, go to your lung and automatically kill you.  Now imagine you have to piss so so bad.  Now what the hell are you supposed to do?  I did all that.  And I survived, and yes, I did manage to get to the bathroom.... 

 

 

Update: I am off of Coumadin, and I am now free to do what I like....yes....mwahahahaa