My body, like many bodies, tends to manifest stress. There is always something (shingles, autoimmune responses like the Scleritis of 2017), and this past week was yet another adventure.
This school year is particularly stressful. There were a handful of really difficult situations that cropped up after we got back from break, and I felt ragged and worn down -- both physically and emotionally.
I woke up Saturday morning with a migraine, and had breakfast then pretty much went back to bed, in the dark(ish). Later I had lunch with Bryce, and then my stomach started acting weird.
My stomach is not a calm entity on a good day. Celiac disease makes my GI tract feel like an always-ticking time bomb, and I have suspected for a while that there could be something else going on because of flare-ups of severe gastrointestinal distress that seem to come out of nowhere.
Well, I thought I had experienced severe gastrointestinal distress before, but Saturday evening was a whole new level. I had cramping. I had diarrhea. I felt like I was prepping for a colonoscopy. But then, there was blood. Not a little. A LOT.
I have never experienced this before. And nope, didn't eat any beets in my lunch salad. It was not negligible. It was clearly, unmistakably bright red blood, as if I'd gotten my period in a deluge.
It freaked me out.
So, we arrived at the Emergency Department at 11:00 pm, and I was a mess. They put me on an IV. They gave me a small dose of morphine for the pain. And they did a CT scan with contrast dye. If you've never had that experience, when the dye goes in it is the WEIRDEST experience. You feel a heat run down your torso and pool in your pelvis, and it almost feels like you are going to pee yourself.
It was colitis, unspecified type, possibly food poisoning (although I doubt it because I ate EXACTLY the same meals as Bryce 3x in a row and he was fine), but I had significant inflammation in a section of my colon and my blood markers for inflammation were elevated. I was super dehydrated, and felt completely wrung out. They sent us home at 4 am, and said to set up a colonoscopy so they can figure out what the heck is going on.
Ooof. I felt like absolute hot garbage for the next several days. I called in for Monday, which was good because the gastroenterology department called and could see me Monday afternoon for a follow-up. They were amazing! I have a colonoscopy set for February 18th, and they put me on the waiting list to see if they can get me in sooner. No stress there, not knowing if I'll need to take two days in a row off at short notice and hope for a good sub. (Those of you not in teaching/never been in teaching, the worst part of being out as a teacher is sub plans. It is often far easier to just go in feeling crappy, unless obviously you are contagious. When I worked in industry, I never had to write up an account of every minute of my day so someone else could do it in my stead, and hope I didn't get a weirdo in who would traumatize my kids.)
February 18th is right in the middle of February break. So, I guess good thing we were behind in making our plans for a short getaway to our favorite place in Vermont, because that's clearly off the table.
Monday night I had severe cramping again and had to call in, in tears, for a second day. There was no way I was going to be in some kind of bathroom disaster at school if I could help it (because I have not been able to help it before, and it is THE WORST). For the first time in a long, long time one of my sub plans was "watch a movie, any movie, preferably PIXAR." Oh, the shame!
I did go to school Wednesday with my lunch box full of beige food (plain rotisserie chicken, GF crackers, a banana) and apparently I didn't look awesome because people kept saying "um, should you be here?" to which I said, "I give myself a B-, so yeah?" The truth was Wednesday was the dreaded NWEA testing, which had me running a session (hard to have a sub do) and we have over 2 hours scheduled for a test that on average takes my students 12-30 minutes, so to have a sub have so much unstructured time would be torture. We also had the Special Ed Department meeting that is the Annual Review season kick-off (all things IEP writing and meetings). Aaaand, I missed my kids, obviously, and didn't want to miss more time. One of the best things in teaching is when you come back after an absence and your kids surround you and yell "THANK GOD YOU'RE BACK! WE MISSED YOU!" which, no joke, happens. Except for the one time a student abjectly hated my guts and told me once, "remember when you were sick for a week? That was THE BEST WEEK OF MY LIFE" and then followed it up with some choice vocabulary that even I wouldn't use. Sigh, can't win them all.
Then Wednesday afternoon our Winter Weather Advisory turned into a Winter Storm Warning, and everyone was abuzz with the glorious possibility of a snow day. We never get one unless it's a Winter Storm Warning, and it is rare that we have one of those that says travel will be treacherous and we DON'T get a snow day. We've had years with no snow days, but the weather patterns have been favorable lately!
Lo and behold, at 10:00 at night, we got the call! (It was during the Verizon outage, so actually I got the email, not the call, and was doing the old-school look at the news website to see the school closings list, feverishly refreshing every minute or so). Snow days are another wonderful part of teaching -- an unexpected day to rest with ABSOLUTELY NO SUB PLANS.
So I soaked up a free day to recuperate further, but then had a different GI problem. I was supposed to let the doctor know when I had a bowel movement, but since Sunday early morning... nothing. I sent a message asking when THAT became an issue given all the inflammation, and they said to get myself a super gross 10 oz bottle of magnesium citrate and down it. That stuff is supposed to liquefy your bowels a la colonoscopy prep, and you're supposed to be very near a toilet after taking it, because according to the label blast off should be within 30 minutes to 6 hours from guzzling.
Can you guess what happened next?
NOTHING. Absolutely no movement. Some upper abdominal cramping, but no being chained to the bathroom. Which is bad. Very bad.
Ugh. I had to call in on Friday so I could, yet again, go to the Emergency Department for repeat imaging, to make sure I didn't have a blockage or obstruction of some sort.
Good news: I was not nearly in as much pain or distress as last time.
Bad news: they were surprisingly WAY busier during the day than the Saturday overnight, with tons of flu, a waiting-room-puker, multiple strokes, and ambulance arrivals. I was there for 8 hours. And, like over the weekend, I was masked up and threw all my clothes in the wash when I got home, and showered. NO FLU NO THANK YOU.
Good news: My friend and Pilates instructor, who deals with inflammatory bowel disease, joined me for a few hours to help with asking questions.
The CT scan showed that the inflammation from the previous weekend had resolved, which was good. My bloodwork was back to normal. They were concerned because, as the Nurse Practitioner said, "you've had a lot of abdominal surgeries," and that can breed scar tissue in your abdomen. I never really considered all the gynecological stuff abdominal surgeries, so that was interesting to know. But, everything showed up normal; I was just stopped up.
Apparently, after a scary and super traumatic GI event like the first ED visit, your nervous system can take over and say NOPE, WE ARE NOT DOING ANY OF THAT NONSENSE FOR A WHILE. There can be no physical blockage, but your system is just...stalled.
So they sent me home with an enema. They actually wanted me to do it there, in an ED room, but the room had no bathroom. So either I was going to a) do it in a commode which is humiliating, gross, and smelly (it's amazing what toilet water does to combat stench), or b) run to one of two PUBLIC bathrooms on either end of the ED. Both of which were occupied the last time I'd gone to pee. So, um, nope.
It worked. I will not share details of that experience, but I'm glad it worked because they said if it didn't, I could come to the Emergency Department AGAIN and they could do an intense warm milk and molasses enema. Everything about that sounded terrible (and weirdly delicious for a hot half second). So grateful I didn't end up with an ass that smelled like snickerdoodles.
I am on the mend, and slowly introducing non-beige foods into my diet. The doctors were glad my imaging was improved, but we still don't know WHY or WHAT was truly going on. I did share my horrible colonoscopy experience I had last time, because I definitely want to be out for the count, and this new practice was horrified. So I can rest assured that I will be loopy loo and not aware this time around.
Several people said, "you need to figure out your stress management." I don't disagree, but I'm really not sure what I can do right now. I am working hard to leave at a somewhat reasonable time (I give myself one day a week to stay late), and I am doing my Pilates and my walking (when not in GI distress clearly), I'm taking time to read and do NYT games and puzzle, so I'm not really sure what else I could do. I guess I could take advantage of the treadmill that lives in the garage utility room (it's cozier than it sounds, I've avoided it because....spiders, but Bryce actually has it tricked out nicely) more. When it's cold and dark the walking tends to go by the wayside.
As stressful as it is, I love my job, warts and all. So I guess I better figure out a way to have more balance, or my body will do it for me.
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