PIlls, Pills, and More Pills

While I was in the hospital, I had this picture of me setting up this fabulous blog that would follow my journey to a healthier me.  I would share the weight loss tricks I was going to learn, post healthy, delicious recipes - with gorgeous pictures, of course, share new tips for simplifying life, and so on.  As you can see, that dream is not yet a reality.  Somehow, life, and recuperating from a brain hemorrhage, and learning to deal with diabetes, just got in the way. 

I spent 11 days in the hospital, most of it in the Neuro Critical Care Unit.  I had an IV going constantly, and they had me taking all kinds of medications.  The nurses would come in and say, "It's time for medicine."  Most of them told me exactly what I was taking and what it was for, and I got to where I recognized them, but I don't remember now everything I was taking.  I had a pain killer for the headache, which was constant, and since I am very sensitive to most medications and any heavy duty pain killer makes me sick, I also had an anti-nausea pill so I could tolerate the pain killer.  I had several medications to prevent seizures and stuff like that. 

The first time they brought out one of those seizure pills I took one look and knew I wouldn't be able to swallow it.  It was a gel coated liquid capsule, an inch or so long and proportionately wide - about the length of a Mike and Ike candy, but much fatter.  I had to take two of them each time.  I told the nurse I would try it, but probably would not be able to swallow it.  She said, that's okay.  If you can't swallow it we just puncture it and squeeze the liquid into your mouth.  I remember thinking, if you do that I must not be the only one who can't swallow them.  Why don't they just make it as a liquid dose?  I couldn't swallow the pill, so the nurse punctured one end and squeezed the liquid into my mouth.  I was supposed to hold it under my tongue as long as I could before swallowing, since it was supposed to absorb into the tongue and mouth.  I took lots of those pills over the course of that 11 days.  Some of the nurses would squeeze the liquid straight into my mouth, some would squeeze it out into a cup then suck it up in a syringe (non-needle kind) and use that to squeeze it into my mouth.  After a few days they were just poking the capsules then handing them to me for me to squeeze the liquid out into my mouth.  The liquid had a slight minty taste, and kind of reminded me of flouride treatments at the dentist.  I remember thinking, if they are making it mint flavored, they must know that lots of people can't swallow that pill, otherwise they wouldn't worry about how the liquid tastes.

The nurses would tell me to let them know when I needed pain killers.  I was taking oxycodone and tylenol.  I couldn't always remember what time I took which one, and would lose track of when I could take the next dose, so one of the nurses started a chart on the whiteboard, listing when I could take the next dose.  He was also the nurse who helped me come to the conclusion that it was better to take the medicines on a regular schedule and not let the headache get out of hand instead of waiting until my head started hurting badly before asking for pain medicine.

They brought me medicines about every 3 hours, since everything was on different schedules.  We joked about my pill "meals", since some of them looked like a meal, with 6 or 7 or more different pills, plus shots, sometimes in my skin, sometimes in my IV.  Thankfully I didn't take quite that many medications home with me, and got to taper off most of them. 

Perfection and Procrastination

I have been wanting to start blogging again for a while, but I couldn't decide what topic to blog about, or how best to have a blog that could cover pretty much everything I might want to write about.  Then I ended up in the hospital, and decided I would start blogging about my experiences and my journey toward a healthier me.  I didn't have access to a computer while in the hospital, and my head wasn't up to trying to work from my phone, so I just started composing some posts in my head.

Then I got home from the hospital, and I started setting up my blog.  I even wrote a couple of posts.  I didn't have everything set up just exactly how I wanted it though, so I didn't start talking about my blog.  I found that I had very low energy levels as I recuperated, so I didn't spend as much time working on my blog as I had anticipated.  Then I started back to work, first part-time, then full time, and used most of my energy for work and keeping up with those basics of dinner, laundry, and trying not to let the house get too out of hand.

So I'm now ready to try again, and even though my blog and website are not perfectly how I want them yet, I am going to go ahead and get started and perfect it as I go.

Restful nights - NOT!

My first night in the hospital was not very restful.  Somehow, when someone is coming in every hour and waking you up for something or other, then it takes a while to get back to sleep, you don't get much rest.

The nurses came in each hour, and even though they were as pleasant as they could be about it, sleeping just a few minutes at a time is not very restful.

Each time the nurse came in, she would ask, What's your name?  What day is it?  Where are we?  Why are you here?  Then she would have me follow her finger with my eyes, squeeze her hands, smile, stick my tongue out, push my feet against her hands, etc.  By about the 3rd round of these questions, I began wondering why they were asking me stroke questions. After all, I was coherent and aware of what was going on around me.  It wasn't until I read through my "Homework" the next day - a packet of information on my condition - that I realized that a subarachnoid hemorrhage is considered a type of stroke, and I began to realize how blessed I was to be alive and coherent.

I didn't get online and look things up until today, but as I read through some of the information you find online, I realized why my family was so concerned.  You definitely find the worst case scenarios if you go online.  I discovered that less than half the people who suffer a subarachnoid hemorrhage even make it to the hospital to get treated, and of those who do make it, most lose at least some function.  The nurses at the hospital had already confirmed this information, so it isn't really a big surprise.  It just makes me realize once again how blessed I am, and how much all those prayers of my family and friends had an impact in my life. 

Although the nights at the hospital were not restful, that second morning started one of my favorite parts of my stay - the Trans Cranial Doppler treatment.  Each morning someone would come in with a machine.  They squirt ultrasound goo on a sensor, which they position at various places on your head and listen to the blood flowing through your veins.  Something about the speed of flow approaching and then leaving that particular spot helps them keep track of how you are doing.  Sometimes they had to move the sensor around to find exactly the right spot, and for some reason, that really relaxed me.  It was like getting a head massage, and then the sound of the blood flow was kind of like waves.  The best rest I had each day at the hospital was during and after the Doppler treatment.  The treatment took about 30-45 minutes, and then I was so relaxed I usually took a nap, and once I woke up after the Doppler treatment/nap, I always felt quite rested. It helped make up for all those night-time wake up calls.