Bullet-Dodging 101

On the morning of Wednesday, February 6, 2019, I was at work preparing for my 10:00am class. I was feeling a little bit "off," such that I had emailed my dean to tell her I would be going home after my class that day.

I went to the rest room at 9:00am--a usual pre-class stop-- and found myself suddenly bent in two by a blinding abdominal pain. I was cold-sweating, I was nauseous. It felt like the cramp-pain from constipation, except that unlike that rolling pain, this pain wasn't rolling; it was constant right across my belt-line.

No knowing what to do, I staggered down the hall, looking for someone to tell that I was leaving for the day. I ran into a colleague, passed along the info best I could, and left. Somehow, I managed to drive myself home, whereupon I had the idea that perhaps laying down would bring a modicum of relief. No, no it did not. It most definitely did not. I could find no position where I could get any relief. I texted my wife Deanna and told her I needed her to come home, that I needed to go to the hospital.

By 12:30 PM I was sitting in the ER with my wife, clutching my third vomit bags like a lifeline as I sat in doubled-over patience and awaited my turn. Finally, some three hours later, I was taken back for triage. From that point, things proceeded relatively quickly. At first, my "discomfort" was thought to be an acute appendicitis. On the hospital pain scale of zero-ten, with zero being none and ten being the feeling of having your hand stuck in a wood chipper, I was riding an eight.

Off to the Cat Scan room I went, where it was discovered that not only was it not my appendix, but that it was my bowel. Specifically, it was a hole in my bowel.

That blue section, the "sigmoid" colon, is where I had a perforation. 

My colon had perforated, as a consequence of an attack of diverticulitis, a condition that up until that moment I was unaware I had. At any rate, the thinking at the moment was that they were going to put me on high level antibiotics (Why do I use the term "high level?" Well, let's just say they weren't giving me amoxicillin-- more later), in an effort to ratchet down the crisis. It was the doctor's thinking that if they had to go in an operate immediately, they might not be able to re-attach the bowel as a result of the effects of the spreading infection/sepsis, and Ray ends up with a colostomy. Yes, I was at that moment literally full of shit.

The outcome hoped for was that if they could run the antibiotics into my arm for a day or two, any surgery at that point would be more "elective" and less "emergency," and they would be able to properly resection my bowel, sans colostomy.

After two days of spiking a 103 degree fever, they found the correct antibiotic, and my fever all-but immediately went away. The antibiotic was working. That, and bowel rest: for the first four days I had nothing to drink or eat, no oral meds, nothing. To be honest, it wasn't so bad, as I was preoccupied with the impending potential for surgery. And the lingering-but-fading pain, of course.

When the storm of infection was fnially abated, I went in for another cat scan, and got Yet Another surprise. You know in hindsight, surprises in the hospital are not usually surprises that make for happy conversation. This time, however, the doctor told me that the antibiotics work so well that the perforation was closing without surgery. Woohoo! Finally, some good news.

The next day, I progressed from ice chips to a brief clear liquid diet. All went well, and so this was followed up the day after with solid food for lunch The doctor said if I tolerated it well, I could go home that afternoon. I did, and I did.

This was followed up by bedrest at home, as the five day stay had weakened me with a profound physical and mental exhaustion. I ended up losing 15 pounds, and while I was elated at not being in the hospital, I was surprised at how mentally and physically drained I had become.

And the antibiotics continued-- two of them. Again, "High Level." The stuff of nightmares, is more like it. One of those meds is normally prescribed for Anthrax and the Plague. The side effects were most definitely annoying, the two main ones being insomnia and anxiety (the twitchy kind like you've had too much caffeine, not the mental kind). Also I found myself to be itchy.

At any rate, it was well-worth the discomfort, as I am healing and am headed out of the abyss, without surgery, which would have laid me up fo an additional eight weeks. Diverticulitis? I literally had no idea I had it until the day it caused a perforation in my bowel and dropped me to my knees.

This time, I definitely dodged a bullet that had been fired from a gun that I didn't even know was aimed at me.

© Ray Cattie