Pancreatitis

Well, everyone got the diagnosis wrong, which is something we're slightly accustomed to.  Daddy spent most of Sunday at home in pain, living off of Mommy's old medication to keep him stable.  Surely this would pass soon.  The idea was to make it to Monday when we could see a specialist or anybody.

Mommy asked if she could go out and get the prescription for Daddy at about 5:00 pm, which seemed fine at the moment.  And yet, that's when the biggest pain of Daddy's life hit - the official "10 out of 10," which I'd rather not ever relive again to be honest.  He called Mommy, he called Nana and Ye-Ye, he called the church - he was all alone with Madison in the house.  Oh, Madison.  I'm so glad I was upstairs and you were not witnessing anything.

But she did get to see something:  an ambulance and fire truck arrived at the house.  There was a knock on the door, and Madison carefully stepped towards the door, not sure who it was.  Fortunately, Daddy was halfway down the stairs, letting her know it was okay.  That's when she opened the door for men to come in and assist.  

Mommy was on her way home from Gainesville, and called 9-1-1 on her phone.  The guys actually beat her to the house, which was amazing.  

This was Daddy's first ride in an ambulance in quite some time (last time was in 1988).  I kept thinking back to Madison, and how it all must appeared to her.  Ye Ye and Nana had arrived quickly and told us that Madison was doing just fine, actually.  

We pass by the hospital every day to go to ballet practice.  Just last week, if you can believe this, Daddy went on to explain the hospital to Madison and what it was for, and how ambulances help sick people get there quickly.

Daddy got to the hospital quickly.  Mommy was with me this time, along with Chris, who heard about everything on Facebook and joined us.  This time, the social network was chattering with news of my predicament - it spread, and soon everyone was wanting to know what it was that had brought me back to the hospital.

It took more tests, and more time.  But at least I had more painkillers, and loved ones nearby.  The answer was pancreatitis.  This is a nasty little monster with one clear way of getting better:  no eating or drinking, and just sitting here in the hospital for days and resting.  An IV was hooked up for fluids, and that was that "what it is and what to do about it" side of things.  But where did it come from?

Here's Daddy, savoring that orange tracer drink shortly before a CT Scan.  You have to drink two bottles of this stuff in an hour, which seems like an easier task at first.  Unfortunately, every time I tried to drink it would trigger pain from the pancreas, so things were more of a battle than I'd hoped.  Through the week, I had many tests to determine what caused the pancreatitis.  The big cause is excessive drinking of alcohol, which led to frequent exchanges:

"Do you drink?"


"No."


"Not at all."


"No."


"Not even a few drinks?"


"No."

Each day, we'd have this conversation about three times with different doctors or nurses.  The other possibility of a cause was a gallstone, which led the team at the hospital on a holy quest, using three CT scans, one MRI, two X-Rays and one ultra-sound.  They could not find anything though.

Finally, an Asian doctor appeared once.  We never saw her again, but she suggested it could have been a spider bite, or a scorpion bite.  Very interesting!  We have been out in the garden frequently.  Perhaps this is what happened?  But how come I never noticed the bite?

Through the week, it was a quest for an answer, but no doctor or nurse could find that solution.  We just chalked it up to heredity (Mommy just last week discovered that my great-grandmother passed away from complications with pancreas), and we're leaving it at that.

So the prescription was rest - and no eating.  Believe it or not, the "no eating" part was remarkably simple.  Daddy had no appetite whatsoever.  Mommy made the wise decision to not have Madison by, where she could see Daddy in his less-than-superhero like state, but we did talk on the phone quite a bit.  Daddy is short of breath - another symptom.  They give you an oxygen tube to assist, which blows oxygen up your nose, and basically works to create these super boogers that lurk and block and before you know it you've got another symptom to deal with, but that's not the biggest symptom of being in the hospital by far.  No, the biggest one is boredom.

Fortunately, Mommy brought books and DVDs for Daddy to watch, which he actually got through quite quickly.  There is never anything on daytime television, which is sort of a fact.

The IV tower beside me may have been a friend, but was also an enemy:  the wires would kink up, and the thing would blare out noisily and you'd have to fumble to find the restart switch.  It sounded like nurses and patients were struggling with this all the way down the hall!


And now... a few words from Madison:

NMJIOP    MNBV       NMV               VVBHYTUHJ                                BNMK                     JKLO
MNBVCXZASDFTYUIOP12345678910
12345678910               ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
MJHTEWZXC