Wednesday, November 4, 2009

The power of expired milk

I seem to be writing an awful lot about obstructions these days and unfortunately, today's journal is not different.

On Sunday night I felt the familiar rumblings and cramping's of an obstruction. With no sick leave left to speak of and Tuesday being a public Holiday here, death was the only excuse for not showing up to work yesterday. I decided to head off to bed early and take a couple of these "Digesic" tablets that my GI assured me would be better than Oxycontin.

Clearly, he's never had strong pain, because they were useless.

I spent the night in and out of cramping agony, dozing in and out of sleep and crawled out of bed in the morning with a lovely set of bags under my bloodshot eyes, a swollen belly and pounding headache. If I didn't know better I'd suspect I'd had a big night on the grog!

Unable to pass anything, not for lack of trying and still in a decent amount of pain. I managed to make it into the office. The cramps continued through the first two morning meetings and then, aware that I had a good hour before my next appointment, I decided to make a coffee. I went into the kitchen, thought nothing of the milk on the counter, made a coffee, poured in the milk gave it a stir and went back to my desk. Half-way through my coffee I came to the awful realisation that the milk was well and truly off.

There is no smiley face that adequately depicts the emotion I felt.

It didn't take long before I started feeling really nauseous. Half an hour later, the gurgling and churning in my stomach was so loud that the woman who sits next to me commented. There was the most intense cramping agonyfollowed by more churning.

By this time I'd already hightailed it to the toilet

and then suddenly, with an almighty burst of pain, the floodgates opened and the obstruction cleared. I'm sure it was the pressure of my insides reacting to the off milk that caused things to shift.

Who would have thought that rotten milk would lead to tears of JOY!

My stomach's still a little sore and swollen and the whole system is being a temperamental pain in the a.. lol but it's bearable. On Monday I have a colonoscopy and an examination under anesthetic and on Wednesday I have my Remicade transfusion.

Yeah, you WISH you were as lucky as me.

I'm tired and cranky and really really angry at my doctors. Why is it that I have to beg and plead for painkillers to manage my actual pain, and get prescribed the most useless crap, while people who use them for recreation seem to be able to get them easily. I'm so sick of this. It isn't fair. I'm not a drug addict. I don't use them to get high. I use them to get through the agony that comes with Crohn's. Do I have to present at the Emergency Department every time I get an obstruction because if that's the case I may as well quit my job and move in there.

Bastards, they make a difficult situation worse. They wouldn't last one day with this illness, but they expect me to do it without help.
It just isn't fair.

Ok. Rant over. (well for now anyway)

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