BACK HOME FROM THAT GORRAM HOSPITAL!!!

Thursday, August 4, 2005 8:16:01 AM

{{{{{BIG RED BUTTON PUSH}}}}}

COME AND GET ME OFF THIS GORRAM CORE WORLD NOW!!!!

Ariel sucks.

Tuesday 9AM: arrive for interview for clinical study I'm trying to enroll in, prep for 11:30AM procedure.

(insert much sticking of needles here)

10:30AM: Find out Dr. is "a little behind"....uh huh.

10:30 AM -- 4:30 PM (yes, you read that right): Lay on uncomfortable guerney, get ever more annoyed. Husband and mother also getting annoyed, afraid to leave because the staff keeps saying "they'll be taking her soon..."

4:30PM: I threaten to leave if something doesn't happen soon. Mind you, I have had no food or water since midnight. I am a bit surly at this point. This IS an understatement.

5PM: FINALLY go down to cath lab for procedure. Wait there for 40 minutes...... End up having to give me 8 doses of Versed (as opposed to usual 2) to get me to stay under during the procedure (could it be I was just a *little* keyed up? Naaaahhh.....)

7PMish: Finally done and in room. Begging for food! The cruel staff tells me I can't have anything until they pull my arterial line out at 9PM, cause I "might get sick". However, they do relent and let me have some juice.

9PM: OW........I won't go into gory details, but I had this done 2 months ago, and this is by far the worst part of the whole gorram procedure. I was NOT looking forward to this. They have to pull a tube out of your femoral artery and then apply massive pressure for 30 minutes or so until you stop bleeding. I ended up upside down when my blood pressure started dropping (I TOLD them that would happen, but nooooo, no one wanted to believe me....) They also gave me morphine which doesn't set well with me...made me very agitated and hyper, didn't seem to do a damn thing for the pain. (also made me sick all day yesterday!)

10:30 PM: I FINALLY get to eat!!!!

I occupied myself by watching Firefly eps until I wound down enough to sleep.

Spent yesterday AM trying not to get sick (didn't work....), finally begged enough for something for nausea, and they gave me phenergan which made me verrrrry sleepy. Managed to finally bust out of there about 2PM, went home and crashed until about 8PM. Managed to talk hubby into getting me a veggie pizza for dinner, at least!

So, Here I am....home, not exactly comfortable, but doing ok. I can lift my Bodyguard into my lap, but that's about it. No driving until the weekend, so I'm stuck here till then. Unfortunately, my back is killing me sitting up in my office chair, so until Hubby hooks up the wireless network tonight (I will insist on it! -- I'd do it myself, but I can't get up and down off the floor easily right now), I'm probably not going to spend a whole lot of time here, or only in spurts.

Oh, they did end up putting in one more stent above where the other 3 were (area of 60-70% blockage), and found a small vessel that they just didn't feel was worth trying to do anything with -- too small to stent, but not big enough to worry about. Probably what was causing the abnormal result on the stress test. If I get accepted into the clinical study, I have to have another one of these ruttin' procedures in about 18 months ....sigh .... but if I can get the meds (hopefully I won't get the placebo), it might just be worth it.