I have had a lousy summer so far on some fronts, but red letter experiences on others. We've all heard the expressions about kicking somebody when they're down and that's exactly how I feel. I get the last week of June, all of July and the first three weeks of August off. I had been looking forward to this summer break like none other. I'd been planning my Mom's 80th birthday since October! My cousin's son was getting married in Regina and Mom and I were going. I was stoked to work in my yard and to do some serious deep housecleaning. I was planning to do some paint touch ups on the trim outside. I was hoping to have my grandkids and kids over as much as possible.
But...everything ground to a halt before I ever got the chance. On the last day of work I began to have pain in my left rib cage..that was June 25. Three days later, the pain had not left and I went to the minor emergency clinic first thing...I was the first person in the huge line-up as a matter of fact. The doctor immediately x-rayed my back and he and the radiologist confirmed a compression fracture to my eighth thoracic vertebrae. "Strange," he said, "we usually only see this in women in their seventies..." He asked who in my family has osteoporosis...I said, "nobody". I cocked my head to one side and thought, "Somehow, I don't think osteoporis is it." He prescribed calcium (1,200 mg/day), Fossamax,and the hormone calcitonin as a nasal spray. The calcitonin was to help with the pain and would also hopefully help heal the bone. There was a chance the calcitonin could cause some nasal congestion, and/or irritation and stuffiness.
I doggedly headed to the pharmacy because by this point, I was ready to try just about anything for some relief. Tylenol was about the only painkiller I could take with the odd ibuprofen thrown in. I'm not supposed to take ibuprofen because I already take low dose Aspirin, so I took it, but guiltily. The combined result (synergistic effect) of these two non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications is thin, thinner and thinnest blood, so I really do have to be careful. My daughter and I had had a conversation about how acupuncture helps with pain. I mentioned it to the doctor and he agreed it would probably help. The days then between the onset of symptoms and my first acupuncture treatment became quite agonizing (about a week). From sitting up to laying down. With the ice pak and without. Switching off and on to the heating pad...My own beautiful, comfortable bed even betrayed me because I guess it was too soft. I like to lay on my side and couldn't. I couldn't even prop my leg up with a pillow in the Sims position...my favorite one. I had to sleep sitting up on the couch and then finally found the spare bed was hard enough for me to lay flat on my back. I could lay on my tummy for a short while and that did provide a bit of relief.
At the same time, my mucous membranes started to erupt...probably day two of the calcitonin. Seems calcitonin goes crazy when it encounters my system. That hormone was more irritating than I can describe and I surmise it left gaping exposed areas on an otherwise healthy mucous membrane. In it's wake it made room for all kinds of bacteria, viruses and you name it so they could set up housekeeping and take hold of my system. In fact, I developed a whopper of a sinus and throat infection complete with thick, green phlegm, cough, chills and fever night after night. I have never had anything like it. I coughed so hard I could do nothing but vomit. My other excretory functions were also out of control during some of the coughing episodes, so I really couldn't hardly leave the house. By day three my voice was almost gone and by July 1st, I lost it altogether. I could do nothing but whisper....the little kids were cute because they would whisper back to me when I spoke to them....I guess they thought it was a game.
I had a regimen of "by the minute" products to keep my throat moist that I used every hour for at least two weeks. I had a cup of honey and lemon water to sip on. I had saline nose drops. I had the humidifier running non-stop. I ran the hot shower and steamed myself. I had plain water to sip and lozenges of every shape, size and brand you can imagine to suck on. Even plain old hard candies worked to make sure my throat didn't dry out. I gargled with salty water, then I gargled with a crushed aspirin and water. Then I gargled with a green solution I had prescribed for me by a South African physician long ago "Tantum" (It had expired in 2012 :-( ,but remember, you'll use anything when you're desperate). All of these things only gave me minor relief. I decided to try gargling from the huge over-sized bottle of the Listerine Whitening solution I had bought years ago. It was over three-quarters full when I started and is now empty. (I didn't drink it!!) Gargling with it, then brushing my teeth, then repeating the steps finally gave me enough relief at bedtime so that I could actually fall asleep and stay sleeping for a short time! In the middle of the night and first thing in the morning, I repeated the procedure, because I would wake up by the hour with yet another fit of coughing.
By day four, I had had it! It was 8:00 in the morning and once again, I was the first patient in the line up for the minor emergency clinic. The doctor was kind and told me it was a virus and said we should stop the calcitonin. Yes....I like the way this guy thinks! The big news was, I was stopping it anyhow, even if he hadn't agreed. I wasn't in the mood to die from pneumonia because of a sore back. The two just don't go together in my books.
A few days later, by about day seven, I went back to the clinic and was x-rayed again....I'm starting to glow in the dark. This time, they were checking to see if I had pneumonia or bronchitis...basically they wanted proof about whether the gunk had moved into my chest or not. I could have told them, "no"..because it was all in my throat. So...I was started on Penicillin. That was a red letter day.
48 hours later, it was about 2:00 a.m. I awoke coughing on nothing and so hard I vomited, but could raise nothing more than clear mucous. You know, you get this guttural noise going on when there's nothing more to give. This time though, I felt like I was choking and couldn't breathe. My running nose and coughs were producing clear returns, so I was sure the penicillin was doing its job.
Suddenly, the coughing was so violent I hesitate to tell you what happened...but I will. It involved coughing up a perfectly formed, soft-ball sized ball of green sticky gunk. If I would have had the wherewithall, I could have sold it for glue. But suddently, I had relief from the choking. I was scared! What on earth was happening? I have never had such a thing. I started thinking that maybe I needed a stronger antibiotic, because things weren't looking good.
I got dressed and took myself straight down to the RUH Emergency Department. As usual, that place was a zoo...and not because it was really busy with people coming in. They just seem chronically short of .....physicians? or what I just don't know. Four hours later, I had another chest x-ray (now I REALLY glow in the dark) and was given a Ventolin Puffer which did seem to help. The doctor there said the green gunk was from the irritation....not bacteria. He went through all the things I should do, because I was on the right antibiotic and this he assured me was only a really bad virus. The things he told me to do were to the letter what I described to you about five paragraphs above incidentally. He was a nice guy, sympathetic and run off his feet. I felt for him, just about as much as I felt for myself.
Sitting there in my little room in a chair at a bedside table in the dark, I had a birds eye view of the interactions of the staff and people coming in. I began to get a glimpse of how Emerg runs....a place I have never worked as a nurse. A guy came in asking for help. He had cataract surgery a few days ago and was to take eye drops every few hours. He had accidentally used something poisonous in his eye when he got up in the night in the dark. All he was asking for was eyewash solution. No way. He had to register and go sit in the waiting room like everybody else. I wondered if he ever did get the eye wash. He asked at least twice if they wanted him to go blind and he had the offending poisonous bottle with him so they could read the first aid instructions. Guess they don't practice first aid in emerg?? From what I could tell there was only one doctor looking after everybody, so it really made me wonder. Given that I have acted as the first aid person at a post-secondary school and at a paper mill, I was astounded. Now, I couldn't smell the guy's breath...maybe in actual fact he was totally blitzed...but, it didn't seem like it.
Back to my summer. By this time, I have copped out on the wedding in Regina for the 7th of July, the one I was supposed to attend with my Mom. Thank goodness my brother took her half way to Dafoe and my neice from Regina drove out to pick her up so she was able to get there. Her 80th birthday party was looming for July 13 and I absolutely could not miss it. Off I went, coughing and snorting, sweating and looking like something the cat dragged in. Why is it that when I go to have family pictures....the one set we've taken in decades, I have to come off looking like a gargoyle? This is not a word of a lie....the proofs have arrived and I look like a fish... complete with eyes on the side of my head, and gills. My hair is absolutely glued to my head. No amount of curling or hairspray would have helped, except to make it worse. Believe me, I've tried. Everyone else looked fabulous by the way. There was absolutely no colour on earth I could wear that would help with my pale, ashen, and glistening, sweaty skin. Multitudes commented on how awful I looked and they hoped I would soon get better. What could I do but croak a thank you back at them.
I returned to the city to a doctor's appointment with my regular physician. This was really about my quarterly bloodwork done the first week of June. By this time, my neck was so sore, I asked to have it x-rayed because I decided it was worse pain than my T8 fracture, so it was probably broken too. Lo and behold it is NOT broken. Only full of arthritis with very narrowed spaces. She could see no evidence of osteoporosis in my neck. Hmmm....I had thought as much, but am still scheduled for a bone density test in about two months. All my life, I could rival a young calf at a milk drinking contest. I love the stuff. I can't get enough of it. I will be anxious to find out if I do indeed have osteoporosis. Personally, I think the cause of the fracture is simple wear and tear. I sit at a computer day after day. I drive a vehicle..I crochet. I have had multiple falls in my lifetime. I would lay bets that I don't have osteoporosis because I am not a small, birdlike woman...I am a big girl...but then again, I've been wrong before. If I do, the next step is to see a rheumatologist. In the meantime, I will start physiotherapy.
Currently, I am working on day twenty-three where my voice is still affected and I still have a cough. My voice is returning little by little. I sleep all night and am drinking protein drinks to help mend things. My back is good one or two days and not so good the next. I would say more good days than bad. I am resting mostly but doing more little by little, so maybe that's why. I am also overdue for an acupuncture treatment, but if you didn't know they cost $65.00 a pop. They are really quite a unique experience and I would really recommend that you try it if you have never had the chance.
So the positives out of all this? I've had two cute little brothers mowing my lawn all summer. I had four ladies come today and clean my house from top to bottom and it smells so fresh in here. Mom was thrilled with her birthday party. We were all thrilled to see the many friends and relatives who turned out. Some travelled a fairly long distance just to be there and in ill health. The biggest thrill? We finally, after all these years have a set of professionally done family photos and I think everyone couldn't be happier. And guess what, I still have 27 days before I have to go back to work officially...Surely, I will be much better by then, ya think?
But...everything ground to a halt before I ever got the chance. On the last day of work I began to have pain in my left rib cage..that was June 25. Three days later, the pain had not left and I went to the minor emergency clinic first thing...I was the first person in the huge line-up as a matter of fact. The doctor immediately x-rayed my back and he and the radiologist confirmed a compression fracture to my eighth thoracic vertebrae. "Strange," he said, "we usually only see this in women in their seventies..." He asked who in my family has osteoporosis...I said, "nobody". I cocked my head to one side and thought, "Somehow, I don't think osteoporis is it." He prescribed calcium (1,200 mg/day), Fossamax,and the hormone calcitonin as a nasal spray. The calcitonin was to help with the pain and would also hopefully help heal the bone. There was a chance the calcitonin could cause some nasal congestion, and/or irritation and stuffiness.
I doggedly headed to the pharmacy because by this point, I was ready to try just about anything for some relief. Tylenol was about the only painkiller I could take with the odd ibuprofen thrown in. I'm not supposed to take ibuprofen because I already take low dose Aspirin, so I took it, but guiltily. The combined result (synergistic effect) of these two non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications is thin, thinner and thinnest blood, so I really do have to be careful. My daughter and I had had a conversation about how acupuncture helps with pain. I mentioned it to the doctor and he agreed it would probably help. The days then between the onset of symptoms and my first acupuncture treatment became quite agonizing (about a week). From sitting up to laying down. With the ice pak and without. Switching off and on to the heating pad...My own beautiful, comfortable bed even betrayed me because I guess it was too soft. I like to lay on my side and couldn't. I couldn't even prop my leg up with a pillow in the Sims position...my favorite one. I had to sleep sitting up on the couch and then finally found the spare bed was hard enough for me to lay flat on my back. I could lay on my tummy for a short while and that did provide a bit of relief.
At the same time, my mucous membranes started to erupt...probably day two of the calcitonin. Seems calcitonin goes crazy when it encounters my system. That hormone was more irritating than I can describe and I surmise it left gaping exposed areas on an otherwise healthy mucous membrane. In it's wake it made room for all kinds of bacteria, viruses and you name it so they could set up housekeeping and take hold of my system. In fact, I developed a whopper of a sinus and throat infection complete with thick, green phlegm, cough, chills and fever night after night. I have never had anything like it. I coughed so hard I could do nothing but vomit. My other excretory functions were also out of control during some of the coughing episodes, so I really couldn't hardly leave the house. By day three my voice was almost gone and by July 1st, I lost it altogether. I could do nothing but whisper....the little kids were cute because they would whisper back to me when I spoke to them....I guess they thought it was a game.
I had a regimen of "by the minute" products to keep my throat moist that I used every hour for at least two weeks. I had a cup of honey and lemon water to sip on. I had saline nose drops. I had the humidifier running non-stop. I ran the hot shower and steamed myself. I had plain water to sip and lozenges of every shape, size and brand you can imagine to suck on. Even plain old hard candies worked to make sure my throat didn't dry out. I gargled with salty water, then I gargled with a crushed aspirin and water. Then I gargled with a green solution I had prescribed for me by a South African physician long ago "Tantum" (It had expired in 2012 :-( ,but remember, you'll use anything when you're desperate). All of these things only gave me minor relief. I decided to try gargling from the huge over-sized bottle of the Listerine Whitening solution I had bought years ago. It was over three-quarters full when I started and is now empty. (I didn't drink it!!) Gargling with it, then brushing my teeth, then repeating the steps finally gave me enough relief at bedtime so that I could actually fall asleep and stay sleeping for a short time! In the middle of the night and first thing in the morning, I repeated the procedure, because I would wake up by the hour with yet another fit of coughing.
By day four, I had had it! It was 8:00 in the morning and once again, I was the first patient in the line up for the minor emergency clinic. The doctor was kind and told me it was a virus and said we should stop the calcitonin. Yes....I like the way this guy thinks! The big news was, I was stopping it anyhow, even if he hadn't agreed. I wasn't in the mood to die from pneumonia because of a sore back. The two just don't go together in my books.
A few days later, by about day seven, I went back to the clinic and was x-rayed again....I'm starting to glow in the dark. This time, they were checking to see if I had pneumonia or bronchitis...basically they wanted proof about whether the gunk had moved into my chest or not. I could have told them, "no"..because it was all in my throat. So...I was started on Penicillin. That was a red letter day.
48 hours later, it was about 2:00 a.m. I awoke coughing on nothing and so hard I vomited, but could raise nothing more than clear mucous. You know, you get this guttural noise going on when there's nothing more to give. This time though, I felt like I was choking and couldn't breathe. My running nose and coughs were producing clear returns, so I was sure the penicillin was doing its job.
Suddenly, the coughing was so violent I hesitate to tell you what happened...but I will. It involved coughing up a perfectly formed, soft-ball sized ball of green sticky gunk. If I would have had the wherewithall, I could have sold it for glue. But suddently, I had relief from the choking. I was scared! What on earth was happening? I have never had such a thing. I started thinking that maybe I needed a stronger antibiotic, because things weren't looking good.
I got dressed and took myself straight down to the RUH Emergency Department. As usual, that place was a zoo...and not because it was really busy with people coming in. They just seem chronically short of .....physicians? or what I just don't know. Four hours later, I had another chest x-ray (now I REALLY glow in the dark) and was given a Ventolin Puffer which did seem to help. The doctor there said the green gunk was from the irritation....not bacteria. He went through all the things I should do, because I was on the right antibiotic and this he assured me was only a really bad virus. The things he told me to do were to the letter what I described to you about five paragraphs above incidentally. He was a nice guy, sympathetic and run off his feet. I felt for him, just about as much as I felt for myself.
Sitting there in my little room in a chair at a bedside table in the dark, I had a birds eye view of the interactions of the staff and people coming in. I began to get a glimpse of how Emerg runs....a place I have never worked as a nurse. A guy came in asking for help. He had cataract surgery a few days ago and was to take eye drops every few hours. He had accidentally used something poisonous in his eye when he got up in the night in the dark. All he was asking for was eyewash solution. No way. He had to register and go sit in the waiting room like everybody else. I wondered if he ever did get the eye wash. He asked at least twice if they wanted him to go blind and he had the offending poisonous bottle with him so they could read the first aid instructions. Guess they don't practice first aid in emerg?? From what I could tell there was only one doctor looking after everybody, so it really made me wonder. Given that I have acted as the first aid person at a post-secondary school and at a paper mill, I was astounded. Now, I couldn't smell the guy's breath...maybe in actual fact he was totally blitzed...but, it didn't seem like it.
Back to my summer. By this time, I have copped out on the wedding in Regina for the 7th of July, the one I was supposed to attend with my Mom. Thank goodness my brother took her half way to Dafoe and my neice from Regina drove out to pick her up so she was able to get there. Her 80th birthday party was looming for July 13 and I absolutely could not miss it. Off I went, coughing and snorting, sweating and looking like something the cat dragged in. Why is it that when I go to have family pictures....the one set we've taken in decades, I have to come off looking like a gargoyle? This is not a word of a lie....the proofs have arrived and I look like a fish... complete with eyes on the side of my head, and gills. My hair is absolutely glued to my head. No amount of curling or hairspray would have helped, except to make it worse. Believe me, I've tried. Everyone else looked fabulous by the way. There was absolutely no colour on earth I could wear that would help with my pale, ashen, and glistening, sweaty skin. Multitudes commented on how awful I looked and they hoped I would soon get better. What could I do but croak a thank you back at them.
I returned to the city to a doctor's appointment with my regular physician. This was really about my quarterly bloodwork done the first week of June. By this time, my neck was so sore, I asked to have it x-rayed because I decided it was worse pain than my T8 fracture, so it was probably broken too. Lo and behold it is NOT broken. Only full of arthritis with very narrowed spaces. She could see no evidence of osteoporosis in my neck. Hmmm....I had thought as much, but am still scheduled for a bone density test in about two months. All my life, I could rival a young calf at a milk drinking contest. I love the stuff. I can't get enough of it. I will be anxious to find out if I do indeed have osteoporosis. Personally, I think the cause of the fracture is simple wear and tear. I sit at a computer day after day. I drive a vehicle..I crochet. I have had multiple falls in my lifetime. I would lay bets that I don't have osteoporosis because I am not a small, birdlike woman...I am a big girl...but then again, I've been wrong before. If I do, the next step is to see a rheumatologist. In the meantime, I will start physiotherapy.
Currently, I am working on day twenty-three where my voice is still affected and I still have a cough. My voice is returning little by little. I sleep all night and am drinking protein drinks to help mend things. My back is good one or two days and not so good the next. I would say more good days than bad. I am resting mostly but doing more little by little, so maybe that's why. I am also overdue for an acupuncture treatment, but if you didn't know they cost $65.00 a pop. They are really quite a unique experience and I would really recommend that you try it if you have never had the chance.
So the positives out of all this? I've had two cute little brothers mowing my lawn all summer. I had four ladies come today and clean my house from top to bottom and it smells so fresh in here. Mom was thrilled with her birthday party. We were all thrilled to see the many friends and relatives who turned out. Some travelled a fairly long distance just to be there and in ill health. The biggest thrill? We finally, after all these years have a set of professionally done family photos and I think everyone couldn't be happier. And guess what, I still have 27 days before I have to go back to work officially...Surely, I will be much better by then, ya think?
