I can hardly believe it’s been eight days since that last post, or what has happened in that time. Turns out I was correct to be concerned about not ridding myself of copious amounts of fluid; after two one-hour sessions per day with the Lympha Press on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of last week, I had a sort of health crisis in the middle of the night on Friday.

I woke up shaking with chills, and not just “throw on an extra blanket the air conditioning is too high” chills, but rather the body acting like hypothermia had set in. I began shaking and it quickly progressed to a violent, uncontrollable spasming all over my body. It lasted for more than 20 minutes and, just when I was on the verge of calling 9-1-1, it subsided and I drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, I decided to give the Lympha Press sessions a rest for the day and see how I felt. I had another small session of shivering that afternoon (nothing like the first), but the most significant thing was…I quit peeing. I kept feeling the urge, but it never yielded anything significant. And then it went from insignificant to nothing. I spent most of the day sleeping, and not eating or drinking much.

On Sunday morning, I had a headache and a persistent dull pain in my right side and lower back, and when I ate three spoonsful of oatmeal, I became nauseated. I finally decided to call for help. An ambulance came and transported me to Northridge Community Hospital’s emergency room, where they immediately put me into a room and started their investigation. Since I told them “reason for visit” was “I can’t pee,” an early response was to give me a CT-scan, which revealed that I had a kidney stone blocking my ureter!

This explained a lot, especially with what I had been doing for three days. It turned out that although the kidney stone was the block, the serious problem was the volume of urine built up behind it, which became severely infected while just sitting there. I feel like it’s no wonder this was so serious, given that I had been trying to help the body rid itself of toxins that have been sitting in my lymph system for a while, not knowing that they had absolutely nowhere to go!

I spent most of the day and evening sleeping, due to the painkillers they gave me, and when I woke up and found out I would be transported upstairs and admitted, I hadn’t eaten anything since the tiny bit of cereal that morning. The tech with me kindly offered me a sandwich, but it was pressed turkey and I’m a vegetarian, so I wasn’t eating that. I had some apple juice. They took me upstairs at 11:00 and got me settled into a room; then they gave me a shot of morphine, to which I had a violent reaction (extreme nausea), so they followed up with nausea medication and gave me a basin (I won’t share the rest) and eventually I went to sleep.

During the night, my heart apparently went into AFIB (never happened before), so they moved me to another floor/ward that takes care of heart patients. I have no memory of that, except that the personnel changed, and the bathroom was on the opposite side, but I thought I was just confused until someone reminded me of it on Tuesday afternoon!

The next morning (Monday) I was told that I would have an operation later that day, not to remove the kidney stone but rather to place a stent, which would allow all the trapped urine to come out and hopefully carry the kidney stone along with it at some point. During the day, each of the nurses in turn kept calling me “Ms. Garrison,” and I would respond, “No, my name is Elliott, Garrison is my middle name.” They all appeared puzzled but marked it down and changed it on their info board in the room, and then the next one would ask me “name and birthdate please” and I would answer “Melissa Elliott,” they would say “Wait, isn’t your last name Garrison?” Nope. (This is significant later.)

At nearly 4:00 p.m. I was beginning to despair of having the procedure that day and meanwhile still had had nothing to either eat or drink since the apple juice the night before! (They were giving me IV fluids. Yay.) Just then the urology surgeon, Dr. Perer, a tiny but mighty presence, popped up in my doorway and said “Please tell me you haven’t had anything to eat or drink!” I said no, and she said “Okay! Well, I’m standing by ready to do this as soon as we get a room.” Big sigh of relief.

At 5:15 they came to fetch me and took me down to the Urology operating suite. I’m lying there waiting to go in, and the lady at the desk barks at me, “Name and date of birth!” So I say, “Melissa Elliott, etc.” and the head nurse says, “Wait a minute, your last name isn’t Garrison? Well, we’re not operating on someone who isn’t booked into the hospital under their right name—the surgery’s postponed!”

My heart sunk. I couldn’t take another whole day of this! I was in pain because they kept thinking the surgery would happen so they had backed off on the pain pills (I had loudly insisted on no morphine after the night before, and instead requested they go back to the pain pills, which were something similar to Vicodan) because of the impending anesthesia. And I wanted to start peeing again so I could go home!

Fortunately they were able to call the front desk, clear it all up, get a new set of paperwork, stickers, and a new bracelet with my proper name on it, and we went ahead about 25 minutes later.

The surgery apparently went well for the most part, but somewhere in the middle I had a breathing crisis and they had to give me something called Nalaxone to rapidly remove all the opioids from my system? I didn’t hear about this until a day later, and can’t remember the details and kept forgetting to ask again. I’ll have to find out during my follow-up.

Anyway, no matter how successful the surgery, the re-entry was kinda bumpy. I woke up blind, my nose clogged, and feeling like my head was in a bag of water. I started screaming “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” and demanding kleenex, and they had none, so they gave me a washcloth and I blew my nose in it about 20 times while still screaming “it hurts! it hurts!” and “I can’t breathe!” and a bunch of other stuff not fit for dainty ears. The nurse sat with me fairly patiently, but finally said “Listen. LISTEN TO ME! You CAN breathe, you’re NOT dying, and you need to cut this out, because there are other patients in recovery with you, and you’re going to scare them! Now breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth and STOP IT.” I apparently at that point became maudlinly, tearily apologetic to everyone and wept for a while, and then they took me back to my room, where my dinner was still waiting for me.

Thus begins the saga of my interactions with the kitchen. I had told the nurses I was vegan, because it aligned most closely with my current eating patterns (i.e., no meat, no dairy, no eggs, no gluten, no sugar), and therein, Kirsten believes, lay my first mistake. People can handle the no-meat thing pretty well, but tell them “vegan” and they freak out looking for stuff to feed you, especially if you add “no gluten” to that. And it usually turns out to be some kind of substitute for everyone you’re not eating, most of it containing additives and preservatives that supposedly makes it taste similar to “the real thing” but actually just tastes crappy. If they had asked me “what do you usually eat?” I could have helped, but instead they just sent stuff.

That first night I had red lentil pasta with some kind of smelly gravy, plus some undercooked green beans and a lemon sorbet. I’ll just say that the sorbet was good. I also had a carton of Silk Soy Milk, whereupon I told the guy who brought the food that I didn’t eat or drink soy products, and he noted it down.

The next morning, I got gluten-free toast (tasted like paste), a hash brown patty (not bad), a bowl of oatmeal with chopped walnuts and “sugar topping” (who knows what was in that), and a fruit cup. I skipped the toast and ate the rest. I also had a carton of Silk Soy Milk. When the transport guy saw it, he got on the phone and said “She SAID she doesn’t do soy, so why are you still sending it?” He went and got me some Silk Almond instead.

For lunch I got a vegan burger. I opted, again, to skip the bread, but the burger itself was delicious, and they sent lettuce, tomato, and pickles with it, so I ate some of those. Rather than mustard, however, there was a packet of mayonnaise, first two ingredients: soy oil and eggs. Oh, and a carton of Silk Soy Milk. Again, the guy who brought it threw a fit on my behalf.

I don’t remember dinner that night, only that I didn’t eat it because the pasta and the gravy were bad, and came accompanied by steamed squash, my least favorite vegetable. I enjoyed my fruit cup and a carton of Silk Almond I had saved.

Next morning for breakfast was another hash brown patty, and a lovely plate of stir-fried vegetables and tofu. And a carton of soy milk. So I sent it back (kept the hash browns and cut-up orange) and asked for oatmeal with walnuts and brown sugar, which arrived at 10:45.

Lunch arrived at 12:30, and I opened the plate to discover the exact same plate of stir-fried veg and tofu, this time accompanied by sesame carrots and brown rice. And a fruit cup, and a carton of soy milk. At this point, my nurse got involved! She called them and said “Bring her a burger. Ask her exactly what she wants on it and bring that. And no more soy milk!!!” So I got on the phone and said “I’d like the burger but no bun, with mustard and some sliced tomatoes.” An hour later, I got the burger, ON a bun, NO tomatoes, a packet of mustard, and the carrots and brown rice. I didn’t even bother with dinner; I could see the vendetta on the wall. I ate the fruit cup. It was good.

Thursday morning I had oatmeal, no nuts, no sugar topping, a cut-up orange, and a cup of chamomile tea. Lunch never arrived; I noticed at 3:30. And then I checked out!

Meanwhile, back to the medical; both my surgeon and a regular doctor in charge of my care (Dr. Almli) came to see me multiple times, and very kindly listened to everything I said and gave informative and exacting responses. I have to say that I have seldom met either better or nicer doctors anywhere. Dr. Perer explained that the stent would stay in for a while, and during my stay the nurses would filter the urine produced (lucky them) to see if the stone appeared. It is quite a small one (under 3 mm). Then I would go home, with an antibiotic and some other transitional drug(s), drink lots of water, and come see her in her office, where they would do another CT-scan; if the stone is gone, she will pull the stent right there in the office and that will be that. If it’s still there, I may have to have another surgery. I’m really really hoping it’s gone!

Meanwhile, Dr. Almli was all ready to let me go home on Wednesday (Dr. Perer concurred), when fate in the form of a grumpy cardiologist intervened; Dr. Elias came along to tell me that my heart was in AFIB and they needed to observe me for another day while starting me on heart medication! Then Dr. Almli came to tell me that my blood pressure had jumped up and stayed high, so they wanted to observe that, too. All very discouraging, especially after the wearying routine of the hospital.

First of all, you never sleep through the night because they wake you up every hour or two to take vitals or draw blood. Despite being able to raise and lower the bed into almost any position, the beds being squishy and pneumatic make it impossible for someone like me, whose legs are carrying 50 lbs. of lymph fluid apiece, to either get in unassisted or, once there, to “scooch” into a more comfortable position. I give that staff huge credit; since I was a “fall risk,” every time I had to go to the bathroom or get in and out of bed, one or more of them had to come to assist me, and each time they had to hook and unhook various IVs, wait, strain the urine, then physically lift both of my legs onto the bed and position them as best they could. They were wonderful, all so kind and patient, and I felt increasingly terrible asking.

Finally, I, who am never without at least a book and a spare, came to the hospital with only my Kindle, which ran out of juice on Tuesday, and the recharger (2013 model) is so hard to match that there was no way I was getting the battery back. So I watched old movies I’d seen before, and dozed, and longed for my cat (who was being fed and watered by the sainted Kirsten), some fresh food without additives, and a bed into which I could get without a forklift!

Wednesday afternoon they decided to try me on a drug for the AFIB, which they put into a bolus in my IV drip. I had 17 seconds of drip, whereupon my head went woozy, and a pain started at the top of my skull and ran rapidly down to my tailbone. It was a dull but intense ache that seemed to permeate everywhere! I yelled “Turn it off!” and gasped for about 10 minutes while they flushed the feed and called the doctor. She showed up and said, “Well, maybe we’ll wait half an hour and try again.” I said “Hey, I’m not a guinea pig, and we are NOT trying that again,” and then backed up my “request” by vomiting copiously. She called the cardiologist for another drug, which I received Wednesday night by mouth (a pill) and to which I had no weird reaction.

Thursday morning I was allowed to go home after promising to do and not do certain things. Doc said I’m cleared to try out the Lympha Pump again (starting sloooowly); I am also to make appointments with my various doctors for points from one to three weeks out to follow up, get exams, change or eliminate drugs and, in the case of Dr. Elias, to receive some sort of shock treatment designed to jump my heart back from AFIB into a regular sinus rhythm! Well…at least maybe my hair will look better….