The Rain Keeps Falling... in General Mental Anesthesia

I had just got out of a 16 day hospital stay and now I just spent another 4. It’s not looking so good.

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It started innocently enough. I saw my primary care Dr. Because I had a cough and vertigo over the past month. But while there, my resting heart rate was 147 bpm. She had blood drawn.

The following day she called me and said that my labs came back and my white blood cell count was 17.4 (normal is 3.4 - 10). She told me to go directly to the emergency room. So I did.

More blood work showed my lipase levels at 3,557 (normal is between 23 - 130). They covered me in stickers from head to toe.

Even without health insurance they didn’t hesitate to admit me.

IV, EKG, ultrasound, x-rays, CT scan, breathing apparatus…

It’s not a good look, swollen, red, exhausted (I had been up for 40 hours) and breathing into a tube because of incessant coughing).

All this resulting in a diagnosis of acute pancreatitis with bronchitis. They had me on 52 hours without food and were also seriously considering surgery to remove my gallbladder because the gallstones may be causing issues not only with the pancreas but also exacerbating my ulcerative colitis as well.

They decided against surgery because of my being on 60mg of Prednisone (and being on it for years). Because of the prednisone and my bodies inability to heal (I still have a bruise on my belly from an injection I had in Jan 2017!) it was much too risky. When I can get off the med though, it’ll have to be removed. Now I’m on Meclizine for the vertigo to add to everything else.

Why me???

So as if I wasn’t in enough pain already, I’m in even more.

I did get a referral to a pain management clinic, but when they called I found out that it costs $300. So… no pain management for me, and my next GI visit is on May 16th at $319.00. Just kill me now......

While in the hospital, they had me on morphine (a sugar pill in my humble opinion) but it must have done something because my resting heart rate went from 140’s to normal (60’s to 70’s). Now, at home after a couple of days with no pain medication, I’m back over a 100 - 110’s and climbing.