Third times a charm? - Week 12

Where I left off in my last entry, I had just gone to the ER for some random sharp pains on my left side. The doctor called it "muscle pain" and said it shouldgo away in 5-7 days. I didn't want to seem like a complainer, so I was giving it a full week before getting it checked out again. Easter Sunday, we went to church, went to my mom's to eat, and then over to Matt's mom's house for more family fun and food. After we had been there about an hour, my stomach started to feel weird, but I wasn't sure if I had eaten too much, or was hungry again, or honestly if my pants were a little too tight from the extra pounds I'd gained from using the excuse of it being my birthday week, and eating everything I wanted. Around 3:30pm, the baby was getting tired, so I took hm upstairs, and we laid down on my mother in law's bed. The stomach pains were getting stronger and more frequent, and after about 45 minutes, they were getting BAD. I called for Matt to come up so I could tell him how I was feeling so it didn't seem like I was just being rude and avoiding visiting with family. While he was up there with me, the pain just kept getting worse and brought me to tears. He got a percocet from his mom and I took it (it takes alot of pain for me to actually take something for it). Matt went back downstairs, and I continued to lay down, hoping to feel better. About 20 minutes later, I had gotten much worse, and called Matt in again, and when he saw me, he decided we had to get to the hospital right away. He told me he had never seen me in so much pain, even in labor, and then I told him that was exactly what it felt like.
So, he quickly made arrangements for his aunt to take the twins home, and Taylor and Cash to stay with his mom, and we left for Evergreen Hospital. On the way there, I started vomiting, and luckily we had the kids bags of Easter candy in the car, so Matt dumped one out just in time for me to use it as a barf bag.
We got to the hospital at 5:30 and luckily there was noone waiting, so I went right back to the triage nurse, and they took me to a room immediately. After an inital exam and some questions from my nurse, she drew blood, started my IV and gave me a shot of Dilaudid and Zofran. Within about 20 minutes, the pain had died down so much, that even though I was still feeling it, I was much more relaxed and could finally stop crying. When the nurse came back to check on me she was amazed at how relaxed I was, and told me that when they first wheeled me back to my room, she took one look at me and thought for sure that I was in labor.
After awhile I saw the doctor, and he had ordered my records from Stevens hospital from the week before and looked over them to see what tests they had done and what the results were. He agreed that everything had looked fine, and then discussed with me that the only thing he thought that would be helpful and worth repeating at this point, would be to do a CT scan, but this time to do it with the contrast dye, because he was guessing that it might either be my spleen or a dying kidney.
I was taken for the scan, came back to my room, got another shot of medication, and waited for the doctor. Around 10:30, he came in and explained that the scan did show something; part of my small intestine was enlarged and that was the cause of my pain. He also said that the sharp pains I was having last week was most likely the start of this pain and it just progressed and became more severe and moved to my stomach. He explained to me that an enlarged small intestine is sometimes a sign of Crohn's disease. He went on to say that since we knew that the Dilaudid helped with the pain, he was going to send me home, but only because he could send me home with a prescription for Dilaudid, and his hope was that I could keep the pain at a minimum for 48 hours and then see a Gastroenterology specialist, but that if for some reason the pain broke through, or my symptoms got worse, that I was to come back to the hospital immediately, where they might perform surgery to remove the part of the intestine that was inflamed.
Finally, a little after midnight, we were home and I had my prescriptions and my mom kept the kids for the night so we could both get some sleep.
This morning I woke up feeling rested, in just enough time to take another pain pill before all the medication from last night wore off.
I'm doing better today, thanks to the dilaudid..I really don't know what I would do without it, but I hope that there is a solution to make the pain go away without having to be dependant on it. I have an appointment tomorrow at the Gastro clinic, so I'm sure I'll find out more then and I will update with any information I get.
So, that is 3 sundays in a row that I have ended up in the emergency room and this is a tradition that I do not want to continue.

Well, it's been a long day, and I need some sleep, but I'll have another entry tomorrow.

Goodnight,

April