Anybody wondering why I haven’t been around much lately? No? Well, fine. As it happens, I had a “little outpatient procedure” a week ago Monday that turned into a nightmare of return visits to the surgeon because my wretched body simply refused to heal co-operatively … I have literally spent every one of the past ten days in the sheer agony of nerve pain.

Today I started out by having outpatient surgery first thing. My surgeon had to re-open the 10-day old incision and remove the internal stitches. The whole thing was very painful and really gross … especially the part when he had to prod at the raw nerve that was inflamed and causing me 10 days’ worth of intense pain. I went to work afterwards, took one of the anti-biotics he gave me — the very same ones I took every day last week after the initial procedure — and an hour later I went into anaphylactic shock!!! Also known as an “acute allergy attack”. My face, neck, and palms all turned bright red and I had hives on the back of my neck. I dithered around for a few minutes with an ice pack, started to panic, and then bolted from work. I called my surgeon on the way out and he said to get checked at the ER and report back to him. I drove like a maniac to an emergency care clinic . . . only to find it was no longer there. The only hospitals I knew of were too far away. I tried calling my friend Jill to see if she knew somewhere close-by but she was away from her phone. Then I called my health insurance company and they were just clueless! Very reassuring for a huge national insurer. I hung up on them and came home and looked up the ER online to find they had moved up the street and I then shot back out and went directly there. Nothing much else to tell about that, just that I had to tell my story three times over to three different medical personnel and eventually the doctor gave me a steroid and an antihistamine.

Now, I’ve had these mystery attacks half a dozen times over the past decade. I’ve had batteries and batteries of allergy tests and nothing has ever been conclusive. So, it’s possible that [a] it *could* have been an allergic reaction to the anti-biotic; [b] it *could* have been a “delayed reaction” to the nerve shock pain [separate from my swearing and panting during the actual pain -- I think I invented some new swear words that included my poor sweet surgeon's name]; or [c] it might have been neither of those things.

The clinic was right across the street from the restaurant where my friend Nick works so I stopped in for some free sympathy take-away Asian food then came home to call everyone back to let them know I was alive. I now have to go pick-up my prescriptions [including a different anti-biotic just-in-case] and then get back here and pack my suitcase because Shelley [who has a 3-hour drive to get to Houston] and I fly to Idaho at the crack of dark o’thirty tomorrow morning … which means I have to get up around 3:30 a.m. to be at the airport by 5:30 a.m. for a 7:30 a.m. flight …

Now, where did I put that Vic0din?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Humour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.