Sunday, August 18, 2013

Surgery is a sure bet and so was an ER visit

Saw the surgeon the other day - was told surgery is in the cards for me.

Upon examination he indicated that due to the fact that the fistula is anterior and goes towards my vagina, that he has to go for the seton - a piece of material that essentially cuts out the tunnel and it fills in with scar tissue - we'll see how painful THAT one is!!!

I've been generally pain free for a about 2 weeks - but I have flare ups, especially if I'm too active. Bites me in the ass unexpectadly.

Home care discharged me from their services wed, said my wound was completely healed.

Thurs was a different story. Went for BM about 2200hrs and was a bit painful (sorry if TMI) and felt like I was getting another abcess or if the previous abcess was recurring and figured that I would just contact the surgeon in the AM to see if something could be done about it. Well by about 0400hrs, my pain became a 8/10 and I was crying. Off hubby and I go to the ER where I wait FIVE hours to be seen. Ugh it was rough! I sent hubby home at about 0600hrs figuring it was going to be quite some time before I saw a surgeon. Found a couple of sheets in the ER and laid on the waiting room floor - one sheet under me (protection against all the icky things on the floor that I would rather not have thought about) and one on top cuz I was cold! Plus a pillow out of my purse and my sweater and tried to not vomit everywhere from the amount of pain that I was in.

Finally saw the physician who kept interrupting me while I was giving him the background info (had he NOT ever heard of SBAR??!!) and told him why I was there. He asked a couple of questions, did a rectal exam and said he couldn't feel anything... UGH, just like the LAST ER doc who examined me almost 2 months ago and then gave me a surgeon consult who said that I DID have an abcess. This time around though, this doc ordered a CT scan which indicated that my abcess IS heal(ing)ed but that I have TWO fistulas and that CT scans are not good enough to visualize and that I should have an MRI scan done.

Doc explained that my pain was likely due to infection of the fistula(s) and gave me a loading dose of 2g Ancef IV at 1100hrs and ordered home care for the next 5 days for the antibiotic. Well home care couldn't get arranged in time so they gave me another loading dose of 2g of Ancef at 1700hrs hoping that I would get my AM dose on time. I didn't BTW, my supplies arrived at 1700hrs TODAY and so I hung my home dose by myself. I already had my SL in as the ER left it in for this purpose and I had no idea when the nurse was supposed to be by and so I did it all myself. When the nurse DID finally come around (I believe it was around 1900hrs) I just explained that I did it myself and her services wouldn't be required again unless the site went interstitial or the 5 days was up and she had to collect her stuff.

I have to contact the surgeon on monday and find out if this changes anything. Surgery is set for Sept. 04 but he said that he wants to do a sigmoidoscopy before hand. WE'll see how that changes now that we have the CT done.






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