The Near Belly Blow Out, Or How I Survived My First Obstruction

Oh, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant. -William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616)

I just love that quote, so I decided to put it here just because it's true, and it's Willie.

The other housekeeping I need to get out of the way is to post this URL for a marvelous article from the NYT on the intrinsic value of friendship. I sincerely believe that if I didn't have the great circle of friends I currently maintain, I'd have been a dead old badger last week when my colon nearly blew up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/health/21well.html

Now, to the task at hand--the tale of my terrible intestines.
For the last two weeks I've been feeling bloated and constipated, and yet somehow fiber didn't seem to be having it's usual laxative effect on me. So I tempted fate and decided to try eating things like oatmeal, raisins, dates, figs, red pepper hummus, broccoli and caffeinated teas, things I usually avoid because they tether me to the toilet.
Not so, though, for the last 10 days, so I grew bold and didn't worry when I wasn't going to the bathroom at all...and my belly bloated out like I was 7 months pregnant.
I did have some pain Monday and Tuesday, and noticed that I had lots of acid reflux at night, but I figured that some OTC Pepcid would take care of that.
Wednesday I felt awful all day...pain, bloating, burping and nausea dogged me. By nightfall, I felt horrible, with stomach cramps, a burning throat, lots of gas that wasn't going anywhere and nausea that had me dry heaving into the night, and even after taking a percoset, the pain just continued to get worse. I started throwing up in earnest in the wee hours of the morning, and by 7 a.m. the pain was intolerable. I went in to wake up the huz and tell him I needed to get to a hospital.
I was hoping that he'd just let me ride in the car to the ER, but instead he called the EMTs who insisted on taking me to the nearest hospital (one that my gastroenterologist has no privileges at, unfortunately) in Auburn, while I was sobbing and screaming in pain by the time I arrived. They gave me tons of pain meds and then admitted me, stuck an NG (naso-gastric) tube down my nose to my stomach, and started pumping out all the food and liquid that had backed up from my intestines all week.

It seems that the stricture that I have in my terminal illeum, right where my colon, or large intestine, meets my small intestine, had gotten fed up with all the fiber and irritation and it swelled shut, along with the inflamed intestinal tissue around it, causing a partial obstruction that wouldn't allow waste material to pass through to my colon. I was in so much pain, I felt as if my intestines would rupture. There were waves of excruciation that begger the imagination to properly describe.

There is a special level of purgatory for having your guts sump-pumped over a 30 hour period. The tubes are clear so you get to watch all this grotesque green and brown stuff empty into a container on the wall, and the pump itself sounds like Darth Vader's respirator. The tube was pressed against a nerve in my nose that made my sinuses and teeth ache, and my 92-year-old room mate snored like a buzz saw most of the night, so I got little sleep.

Still, after pumping me full of solumedrol (cortisone that is put through an IV) to get the swelling down enough so I could defecate, even a little, they allowed me to go home after three days with a promise of taking another weeks worth of steroids and eating only baby food, clear liquids and no meat. Unfortunately, in my weakened state, I didn't ask the admitting doc if I could have delicate fish, like Dover sole, or very tender bits of chicken breast meat.

So I've been living on chicken broth and soda crackers, applesauce and rice cereal with soymilk and today I decided to live dangerously and have elbow pasta with babyfood turkey and squash over it, to make it look like mac and cheese when there wasn't any dairy anywhere near it. Yesterday I pushed the envelope by consuming a mini-baguette with dairy-free margerine and jam with a cup of herbal tea. I think it was too much, though, because during the fabulous new NIA class at WIO, I started to have gut pain again, and had to take half a percoset when I got home.

I hate taking steroids, as they always make me hyper and ravenous, and I have all the unwanted side effects that come with this 'miracle' anti-inflammatory. I need to get all the swelling down in my guts, though, because the surgeon at Auburn said they won't do any stricture-removal until the inflammation is all gone, and my gut is calm, not in flare mode. Sigh. Hopefully I won't gain more than 4-5 pounds from this, so I won't have to spend months trying to get it back off again once my body is back to normal, or normal for me, anyway.

I have learned something through all this, though. About myself and my appetites, about my wonderful and supportive circle of friends, and my best beloved family, Jim and Nick, Mom, Dad, Lloyd and, amazingly enough, my brother Kevin.

You all ROCK. And I could not have made it through this health crisis without you.
I know, from the CCFA Patient Education Conference and my own research, that 75 percent of Crohns patients have surgery in the first 10-12 years after diagnosis. So I guess I was due. I just wasn't ready for the debilitaing pain, and the aftermath of my favorite deadly sin, gluttony.