Curve Ball

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Life threw me a whopper.

I went from feeling the strongest and fittest in my life to the most feeble and weakest in a matter of hours. I was feeling set and very excited two weeks ago to run my first marathon in Toronto. My flight was booked to leave on Monday mid-day. I had started packing on Saturday evening after I got home from a physio appointment to loosen up my hamstring.  My groin on my left side felt sore immediately following the appointment which I thought was odd since I hadn’t had any pain there throughout my training. I emailed  Mike and he thought my hip simply got kinked out of place and gave me an exercise to do to realign things. The next morning I met Lucy and Ian for an easy run around the lakes. My groin was still pretty sore but I was able to run and felt ok for the rest of the day. That night however, things got dramatically worse. In a matter  of hours, the pain got extremely intense and had now moved over to my right side as well. When Joey arrived, I was in agony no matter what position I was in. I thought I must have pulled or torn a groin muscle even though this seemed ludicrous as I hadn’t done anything to aggravate any muscle…I was on a taper! I emailed Mike again and he said now it didn’t sound mechanical but perhaps it was a stress fracture or something else. What?! How could this be??

I struggled through the night in immense pain. I couldn’t get out of bed or walk without Joey practically carrying me. I passed out on the second trip to the bathroom from the pain. It was 4am. Realizing I needed medical treatment and because there was no way I could make it into a car, I called 911. Once I got to emergency at the Jubilee,  I was examined, reexamined, asked questions and was given morphine for the pain. The emergency doctor initially thought I had torn my adductors and wrote out a prescription for codeine so I could get home but wanted to see if I could walk first. I was determined to get on that plane to Toronto so I tried several times to get myself up on crutches so I could prove that I could leave. Despite the pain meds, I passed out two more times. An x-ray showed I had a separated pubis symphysis and inflammation in the area. Still the doctor didn’t think that was what could be causing so much pain as women who give birth often have this condition and aren’t in so much pain. Something wasn’t right  so the doctor decided I would be staying put. That decision saved my life.

By Monday afternoon the pain went from really bad to excruciating. The blood work from the morning came back and didn’t show anything abnormal. I don’t remember much of the next three days so from here on in I have had to ask Joey what happened:.  I was given injections of  Diloted so I was in and out of it, apparently lucid one moment and then talking gibberish, joking around the next. That afternoon, I finally slept for an hour and a half, my first sleep since Saturday night! By this time,  Erica and Slaw had showed up to support Joey and to see how I was doing. A team from the clinical teaching unit came by to review my case. They seemed to be fascinated by my heart murmur which was very clear. They still were thinking it was a very bad groin injury. I stayed in an examining room in emergency that night.

The next morning, I was rallying somewhat having slept a bit. By the time Joey came to the hospital I was feeling nauseous. I still hadn’t eaten and the drugs were making me feel sick. A second blood test revealed a very high white cell count indicating an infection and a blood culture was ordered. I was told I would be moved to a holding unit while they got a room ready for me in a ward. By early afternoon I got transferred to the “HUB” unit. The nurse there took my temperature and saw I had a low-grade fever. She alerted the resident.  I was still tired and in pain. The fever went up to 39.5 and now they were concerned. Another x ray was taken of my chest.  That evening I stayed in a temporary room for the night. Kimmy and Dave came and I was getting worse and my legs were swelling.

 The next morning (Wednesday) I was sent down for an MRI and it revealed  I had 10 litres of fluid from my waist down!!  The blood cultures came back positive for staphylococcus aureus so I was immediately put on a wide spectrum of antibiotics through intravenous. I had no sense of how long I had been in the hospital and was still pretty out of it

My oxygen saturation was dropping rapidly and was at 80% even though I was on oxygen. I was having difficulties breathing and an x ray of my lungs revealed some fluid collecting in my left lung. I was brought up to ICU so they could keep a close eye on me overnight. Jen was with me until I fell asleep. At one point, even though I was completely out of it, I got a strong feeling I was in trouble. I knew I was struggling to breathe and could feel gurgling in my lungs. I felt extremely weak and unable to fight and this started to scare me.  Not good. I found out later everyone was pretty worried because I wasn’t getting better despite the antibiotics.

Thursday was a better day. I was moved to the west wing and this is where I stayed for just over a week. For the first few days, my legs were insanely swollen, I was still in pain and couldn’t walk or get myself out of bed on my own. Sleeping on my back was my only option. I finally started to eat after three or four days of basically fasting…then I couldn’t stop! The specialists were still perplexed and frustrated because I was still testing positive for infection even though the antibiotic I was on should have cleared things up after 48 hours. The  “vampires” took a whack of blood from me daily in the wee hours of the morning (they wake you up while it’s still dark and before you are fully roused, there is a needle being jammed into your already black and blue arm!)  and as a result, I became anaemic…terrific. I was in a room with three elderly women, one of whom cried out for someone to help her. It was heartbreaking initially but soon got tiresome especially as 90% of the time she was fine; she had dementia. One lady was deaf so she was fine but the lady next to me was feisty and provided me with comic relief  by yelling back to her to shut up. It was like being in an asylum at times and made staying in the room  for any length of time or sleeping torture. As soon as I was able to escape for an hour or so, I would get the hell out of the room and hang out in the sitting area down the hall (my condo) or would get someone to wheel me down to the common eating area or eventually outside. The nurses and doctors were amazing though and I got great care from beginning to end. 

Ok so here is where my eyes well up. I have the most amazing circle of friends. It was rare I was alone and therefore my morale stayed high. The girls (Kimmy, Shan, Lis’ and Jen) took on shifts to keep me company, brought me food, mags, you name it. Joey, despite being right in the thick of rehearsals for the opera which opened the second week I was in hospital, sent updates to family and friends and brought me in hot meals from Cooks Day Off so I never ate a single hospital meal. He was incredible. Matt (who also asked Erica and his parents to check in on me while he was away!!), Kirsten, Lucy, Kris, Janna, Don, Slaw all paid me regular visits to cheer me up and I got a bunch of surprise visits from other friends and colleagues at work. So yes, the past two weeks have been a nightmare. Yes, I cried as I saw the results come in the morning of the ScotiabankToronto Waterfront Marathon. I worked so hard over the summer and I was ready to have the race of my life. I also cried in pride for Kat’s great race and of course, Reid and Eric’s incredible times. Yes, the disappointment of not getting a chance to show what I could do was heartbreaking.  HOWEVER, I feel very fortunate to be alive and getting my health back. I also feel very fortunate to have my family and so many friends who cared enough to visit, email, call and send messages.

The final diagnosis based on a second MRI is that I got a staph infection in my pubis symphysis joint (sceptic joint- ew!) which also seeded in my adductors. The swelling in my joint has resulted in a wider separation of the bones. Stress fractures also showed up on the MRI on either side of the joint. The infection made a bee-line to an already stressed and weakened area (a nice home with blood uptake for the bacteria to seed) the fractures were either already there (although I never had any pain in that area prior to the infection) or the swelling caused the bones to fracture due to the pressure from the swelling. I suspect the fractures were there as I have read that people often don’t feel fractures in that area…I still find that hard to believe  but from what I have read, it’s true! Mind you, if the swelling was fracturing the bones, it would certainly explain the crazy pain I was in. I also have two small abscesses in either side in my adductors.

I’m home now.  I still cannot sleep on my side. I sleep in my “0 Gravity Chair”, a tip from Kirsten. It takes  the pressure off of my pelvis and it’s easy to get in and out of. I have to use a walker to walk. I do a short granny walk, once a day. At first I only had the energy to be up and about for two hours before I had to nap. I am now able to last five! I am getting stronger every day. I have a CAT scan in two weeks to see where the swelling is at in the joint. I had a PICC line inserted last week so I can get IV antibiotics for another 4 weeks with a portable IV pump. I won’t be running for a while. I have no idea when I’ll be ready but I am guessing not until the New Year if all goes well with the healing. I am giving my body every chance to heal that joint and promote the bones to fuse back by staying put (reading and watching movies) and putting as little stress on the pelvis as possible. Lis’ and Paul are helping with advice. I’ve got Mike checking in too so I am being looked after as I go through this healing process. So, my blog posts will be all about rehab for a while…and you thought my training entries were boring! Just you wait!! YAWN!

I’m part of a panel discussion taking place on Saturday at the Victoria Marathon weekend.The title of the discussion is “Running into Forty”.  Arriving sporting a walker ought to get a few laughs!