Health Update, Emergency Surgery

I posted a video a few months ago about the chronic health issues I have, and your comments were so kind and encouraging!  I've learned from those comments that so many of us are struggling with health issues and pain.  One of the big reasons I'm sharing my struggles is so others who are struggling with chronic health issues will know they're not alone.

Health issues and pain can affect our entire lives.  It also affects our productivity levels and just how much energy we have to focus on anything other than getting through the pain.  It really can be all-consuming.  While I've dealt with a lot of long term chronic pain for the last few years, it recently got MUCH worse, and it ended in emergency surgery.  I'm recovering now, and things really are much improved!  If you want full details, keep reading or watch the video here.

I didn't advocate well for myself.

Throughout all my health struggles, I truly thought I was doing a good job of being my own health advocate.  But, um, looking back, I definitely was not!  I thought I was getting the help I needed, but I really minimized what was happening with me.

I first want to state that I have always had good experiences with doctors.  I trusted them, and I truly think they all cared about my health and made reasonable recommendations based on evidence.  But I'm the expert on my own body.  I know how I feel, and I know when something isn't right.  This is is soooo important to remember!

When did the pain start?

I would say I first started having real issues after the birth of my son, who is 7 years old now.  I basically felt 7 months pregnant for the first two years after I had him.  Things just never really felt right or “normal” again.

Gall Bladder Surgery

I found out that I was having gall bladder attacks, and I had gall stones.  I had my gall bladder removed, and there was so much relief!  The pain went away, and it was a pretty easy surgery with not much recovery.  I was good for about 1-2 years after that.

Then the pain came back slowly over the next 5 years, but this time there was just no explanation for it.  I'd have 2-3 months of pretty bad pain, then a few months that weren't so bad.  Nothing seemed to make a difference.  I went to lots of doctors, including functional medicine doctors.  I tried different diets, medicines, supplements.

They diagnosed me with IBS, which basically means pain with no explanation and no cure.  It's an “I don't really know what you have, but you have something,” diagnosis.  And I did ALL the testing, lol!  I even did some testing with the functional medicine doctors where I paid out of pocket when insurance didn't cover it.

A turn for the worse.

Last January or February, things really went downhill.  I got a ton of tests, tried a bunch of supplements, did lifestyle changes and diet plans….but nothing helped!  I was trying to increase my protein and gradually increase fiber, and I was doing this with a functional medicine doctor.

The pain got so bad at times that I couldn't even watch TV or work on a computer.  I'd always been grateful that even during the times I had to stay in bed that I could still be productive on my laptop or take a break here and there for a Hallmark movie.  But this pain was so intense I couldn't even do those things.  I would say the pain wasn't quite as bad as late stage labor, but it was just underneath that…so it was bad, LOL!

During this time I was doing the diet I mentioned.  My baseline for protein was around 50 grams.  If i increased it to 70, I'd start having huge amounts of pain, so I'd go back down in proteing.   But nothing really seemed to reliably cause or help the pain.

A CT scan

Things got so bad that I had a CT scan, and they found a hernia at the incision site from my gallbladder surgery.  It turns out this is pretty normal.  The gallbladder surgery gave me back my life when I had it, so I'd do it all over again, even knowing about the hernia.

The one thing I do wish is that they had warned me about the potential for the hernia.  I still would have had the surgery, but at least I might have known what to watch out for.

There was really no pain at the hernia site.  The surgeon told me it could grow, it could get strangulated, or it could be totally fine, and I could live with it for years.  Strangulation is the scariest outcome because it can lead to death.  It's when intestine or colon poke through the hernia site, and the muscles squeeze/strangle it, which leads to tissue death, sepsis, and death if it's not treated.

The surgeon told me the risk for strangulation was pretty low, but I was still trying to pay attention to that in case it did happen.

Scheduled Surgery

About 2.5 years ago, I actually scheduled a hernia repair surgery.  It was robotic, laparascopic, and outpatient using mesh.  The risks were that it could come back and that there was a slight increase in infection risk with the mesh.

Right after I scheduled the surgery, I had an appointment with my regular doctor, and I told her I had scheduled the surgery.  She said she wouldn't do it if she were me.  She told me that people live with hernias for years and that if there was no pain there, then there was really no reason to undergo the risks of surgery.

This made a lot of sense to me, so I canceled the surgery.  Hindsight hits hard here.

Dealing with the pain

Because I was used to having quite a bit of abdominal pain, the increase in pain didn't really raise any red flags to me about my hernia.  I thought it might have something to do with the hernia, but it was so hard to distinguish.  I brought it up with my gastro, and he thought it wasn't related.  I tried a few different medications to help with the “IBS,” but nothing really worked.

I even went to urgent care with pain and talked to a different doctor about it.  No one really thought there was any kind of an urgent situation going on.

3 months before surgery

I had a new primary doctor by this time.  My other doctor had left, and I really liked the new one.  I asked him if he thought the hernia might be my issue.  He said it could be, suggested I get it fixed, but said it wasn't urgent.  So, I planned to have the surgery in late 2024.

The pain was already starting to get a lot worse.  I asked him how I would know if it was strangulated.  He said the pain would come and not let up, and it would be intense.  But he also said my risk for that was low because the hernia was pretty big.

This is when I should have insisted that I have a scan.  Hindsight is always clearer, but I just KNEW something was wrong.  The doctor would have ordered a scan had I told him I really wanted it.  But I thought the risk was low, so I didn't push.

About 2 months ago

It was around Valentine's Day, and we were having a party.  I was actually really happy it was at my house because I could go lay down if I needed to, and once I felt better, I could join back in.  I went to bed around 10:30 like normal, but I woke up at 1 am with a LOT of pain.

I've had trouble going to sleep with pain before, but I had never been woken from a dead sleep with it.  I just knew something was wrong.  It was really intense.  I spent most of the night going back and forth about whether to go to the ER or to urgent care.  I knew I needed a CT scan, and they don't do those at urgent care.

It was a Sunday, so around 7 am I decided I needed to go to the ER.  My mom came and took me, and my husband took the kids to church.  My husband is not at all good in medical situations, LOL, so I was really grateful to have my mom so close for support.

The ER visit

Everything went pretty quickly here.  I was sent back right away.  They took blood tests, gave me pain meds (which really did help!), and then took me for a CT scan.  The nurse came in after they saw the scan and said the surgeon was on his way.

The surgeon and surgery team was there in literally 2 minutes to tell me that I needed surgery NOW.  I had just been thinking that this would be another time where they wouldn't find anything.  Then I was quickly texting my husband to tell him I was going back for surgery.

What was going on

It turns out that my hernia was not strangulated, but it was “incarcerated,” which I really didn't know was a thing.  It means a bowel was pushing through and was stuck, so it couldn't go back in. If left that way, it could strangulate, and then I could lose that part of my bowel and/or die– not good options!

The surgeon told me that it had 100% been happening for months.  So if I had insisted on that CT scan when I talked to my regular doctor, this all could have been avoided, plus I could have saved myself months of pain.

So the bad news is that because the surgery was an emergency, they had to use stitches instead of the mesh.  These will fail at some point, and I'll have to have another surgery sometime.  I'm not looking forward to that!

However, I'm SO glad I went in when I did!  Had it not been a Sunday (when my urgent care is closed), I probably would have just went there, and I might have let it go on longer.  Waking up in the middle of the night with pain was another red flag for me, too.  I'm glad I finally took things as seriously as I needed to.

I have my life back.

While I'm by no means pain free, I feel unbelievably improved.  The pain is so much less.  It feels manageable now and doesn't interrupt my life nearly as much as it used to.

I'm also ready to start improving other things like my diet and lifestyle.  Before we kept thinking that raising protein and fiber intake were causing my pain, so we'd back off every time we increased.  It kept me stuck in a more unhealthy state when we didn't know what as wrong.  Diets might help me some now.  But they were never going to help my pain before because it was a physical problem.

My life lesson

What I've learned from this experience is to trust your instincts and advocate for yourself!  I really thought I was doing that, but I think I often minimized my pain when talking to my doctors.  I didn't want to be too demanding or “that patient” who makes a big deal out of nothing.

My doctors never made me feel like a bother, but I felt like I was a bother.  But I'm worth the extra trouble and expense of a scan.  I should have been more forceful about what I felt I needed.

I think as women, we often minimize our pain so we don't cause any extra hassle for anyone.  If you didn't know me well, and we had a five minute phone conversation, I could probably sound perfectly fine even though I was in terrible pain.  I also put on makeup and a dress when I go to the doctor's.  On the outside, I don't look like I'm in dire pain most of the time.

If you're dealing with chronic pain or other health issues, don't be afraid to ask for what you need!  You are not alone in dealing with pain, and you are worth the effort to find out what's wrong.

Organization that actually sticks for busy, happy lives

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