Friday, October 3, 2008

Episode 24- The December Illness

I believe it was the second Friday in December 2005. I went to bed that night feeling very sick to my stomach but I had no idea what had caused it. By this time I had added 50 mg of Benadryl to my nightly cocktail so I downed my meds and tried to sleep.

I tossed and turned as the discomfort in my stomach worsened. I threw up many times during the night and had my first night of complete sleeplessness in months. As the light crept in through the window I realized dawn had arrived and I went into hysterics as I realized I hadn't slept at all. 100% insomnia had become my greatest fear because I worried that one sleepless night would send me into another tailspin and that I would start hearing voices again and end up back in the hospital.

I crawled out of bed and went down stairs to wake Cody up. I just needed to be near him and feel his warmth. At this point I thought I'd been food poisoned and that it wasn't a virus. By mid morning I was in serious pain and it was stemming from my stomach. I continued to vomit so Cody called Dr. Draper. He called in a prescription of
Phenergan and Cody ran to the pharmacy to pick them up. At this point we were all worried about dehydration because I couldn't keep anything down.

While Cody was gone, I spent my time on the bathroom floor. I began having what was feeling like contractions, but it wasn't that because it was only on one side of my body. But every few minutes an intense pain would hit and I would scream out in agony. Cody finally got home and I took the medication, only to throw up soon thereafter. Dr. Draper had said that if I continued to throw up I needed to get up to L&D to get on an IV.

We decided that was the best bet so we packed up and left. But I made sure that I grabbed all my meds just on case I was going to be there for a while. The thought of being away from my candy made me sicker than I already was.

I was on an IV and monitored for hours. The pain in my left side had subsided a little, or maybe it was just the drug in my IV that made the pain subside. Late that afternoon they discharged me and we went home. When we got home Cody took Ethan to do a massive grocery shopping trip. While they were gone I wandered into the bedroom, still groggy from the IV medication. I drifted in and out of twilight sleep for a few hours, even after the guys got home.

I got up to go to the bathroom and I noticed that I'd passed a kidney stone. Oh okay, that sure explained it. It hadn't been a stomach bug at all. I'd passed many kidney stones in my adult life, some mild, some that made me want to put a bullet in my head. This one had been one of the more mild ones, but it still made me throw up and hurt a lot.

I tried to relax a little because I knew that I would sleep better that night now that the culprit was no more. Around midnight I laid down and tried to fall into real sleep...but sleep didn't come. The harder I tried, the less successful I was so I finally got out of bed and started pacing the floor. I don't know how ling I paced, but I think I wore a path into the carpet. I then sat back on the bed and starred at the blinds as traces of street lights showed through.

Then out of no where a beast errupted from within me and I began to punch the pillow. I got on all fours and beat the crap out of the thing. I punched and I ripped and I cursed. I remember shouting out "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!" And I know who I was talking to. The baby. I hated her at that moment. I hated what she had done to me and I hated who I'd become. And it was all her fault! At that moment I wished that she'd never come about. Here she hadn't even been born yet and I wished she never would be. And so I punched the pillow and cried and somewhere along the line I fell asleep.

1 comment:

Krystin said...

Reading your story is like reliving my life in so many ways. Most days I am so thankfull for my kids, But there are those days when I wish none had ever been born. Some days I am a great Mom and others I could care less.