Category: surgery

Just a Bad Dream: Chapter 3

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The ride home from the hospital was brutal. Gritting my teeth, I tried desperately to find a position that took the pressure off my poor, aching butt. But I felt every move the car made. Searing pain radiated through my body each time the car jerked over the smallest bump, making me gasp and wince in pain. My mom drove home carefully, swerving out of harm’s way when she could, but she was cursed from the start. The road home from the hospital was dented with divots and craters. Trying to escape the pain, I curled into a ball and rested on my left side. It was no use, the residual pain from the abscess and the fresh pain from my recent surgery was so intense, I nearly threw up. Never before had I felt such overwhelming pain. I wanted to escape my body, if even for a moment to get a bit of relief, but I was stuck.

The 30-minute car ride lasted forever. By the time we got home, I was exhausted. We pulled into the driveway and I grimaced in pain. I tried not to take my anger out on my mom. After all, she was just the driver. Logically, I knew it wasn’t her fault the road was littered with potholes, but I was so enraged it wasn’t safe for anyone who crossed my path. Happy to finally be home, I hobbled towards the house, bracing myself against my mom. Limping, unable to put any pressure on my right side, I struggled to get inside. After climbing the garage stairs, one foot at a time, I finally made it safely into my house. I couldn’t wait to crash on the couch. I thought for sure I’d finally get some relief.

By the time I got inside, my butt had a heartbeat from the radiating pain, and I could hardly stand. While I stood waiting, my mom made me a comfy bed on the couch with my favorite comforter and plenty of pillows to prop myself up with. When she was finished, I limped myself over to the couch and gingerly laid down. I bundled a pile of pillows together, propped them up, and leaned my left side into them. I used another pillow to stuff under my right leg, to take the pressure off where the surgery had been. To my unbelievable disappointment, I quickly realized that no matter what position I placed myself in, no matter how I situated myself, I could always feel the pressure from the abscess. And it hurt like hell. Everything felt like a bad dream and I was ready to wake up.

Exhausted, frustrated, and in pain, all I wanted to do was sleep. Popping a couple of pain pills, I tried desperately to get cozy on the couch. Thankfully, sleep came swiftly. Worn out from the car ride home, if it’s even possible to be worn out from just sitting (it is), it didn’t take long for me to doze off. A few hours later I woke up to find my mom nervously watching over me. Upon seeing me stir, she immediately jumped up and insisted I get some food in my belly. At the time, I wasn’t yet used to having pills be the only thing in my stomach, so I agreed that food would be a good idea. After nibbling on toast and sipping chicken noodle soup (my mom is SUCH a mom), I immediately passed back out.

When I woke up later, I was disappointed to note I didn’t feel any better. At the time, the word “patience” wasn’t in my vocabulary. I was too accustomed to instant gratification, so I assumed healing would be a relatively quick process. I figured I’d sleep it off, and wake up feeling good as new, or at least a little better. But, that wasn’t the case. Despite the discomfort, I tried to stay positive by chalking everything up to surgery pains, hoping everything would heal up and go away in a few days. After all, I really didn’t have a choice, I had to get better, and fast. My college graduation was in a few days, and there was no way I was going to miss that. Not a chance. It was an honor I had worked too hard to achieve for it to be taken from me because of some silly pain in the butt. I was too proud of myself and all my hard work, there was no way some illness was going to rob me of that. Besides my graduation, the weekend was also my brother and sister’s (they’re twins) high school graduation party. It promised to be a good time, and I was excited to celebrate with friends and family. My body had better get its shit together, I had too many important events coming up, I just couldn’t afford to be sick.   

Determined to be well enough to walk at my graduation, celebrate with friends afterward, and enjoy my brother and sister’s party, I put on a brave face and did my best to heal as quickly as possible. As if there were really anything I could do to speed up the recovery process. Mostly, I slept on the couch; I was new to taking pain pills, and they really knocked me out. The boy who I was dating at the time came over to visit, but I wasn’t much company after being sedated. He mostly sat on the couch next to me and stroked my hair. After a few days of resting, I convinced myself that I was feeling better. Pushing the pain aside and ignoring it as best I could, I pretended that I was fine. I forced myself to walk around the house as normal as possible, so I didn’t draw attention to the fact that I was still hurting. By joking and smiling, I put on a happy mask and thought, “fake it till ya make it,” with hopes that a positive attitude would be enough to help me feel better. Even though in the back of my mind I knew something wasn’t quite right, I had too much riding on these next few days to be sick; I decided to ignore the warning signs. So, with a slightly exaggerated clean bill of health, I reassured my parents that I was feeling better, packed a bag to take with me to school, and I headed out for graduation. The plan was to stay with my old roommates for a few nights so we could celebrate our graduation in style with one last, outrageous night on the town.

My first night back at school was amazing. I drank enough to not feel the pain, danced the night away with my best friends, and laughed until I cried. My roommates and I reminisced about living together and all the shenanigans we got into, and I completely forgot about being sick. It was a great night. The following day was my graduation. My family and boyfriend arrived in the afternoon, leaving us plenty of time to have an early dinner and do a bit of celebrating before the big ceremony. We went to a nice steakhouse, had a few celebratory drinks, and then it was time to make the big walk. Before we left for dinner, my mom cornered me and asked me how I was feeling. I lied and assured her I was feeling just fine. But by this point of the night, it was becoming apparent that I wasn’t feeling well, more than just being slightly hungover. I was doing my best to hide it behind a bright smile and laughter, but I was having a hell of a time sitting still. My family eventually noticed I was favoring my right side and asked if it was the butt pain again. I shook my head no, and tried, yet again, to make excuses. I lied that I was just uncomfortable sitting in a dress and that I was walking weird because it’s hard to walk in heels. My family didn’t buy it, they know that I’m a pro at walking in heels. They didn’t have time to argue with me because it was time to line up for graduation, so we separated to find our respective seats. Before I walked away, my dad stopped me and said, “you know, you don’t have to do this. If you’re not feeling up for it we can go home right now. We know you graduated, this whole thing is just bullshit.” I wish I had listened to my dad.0730743372004

Once seated, I knew I had made a grave mistake. Not only were the plastic seats uncomfortable to begin with, sitting on them after having butt surgery was excruciating. I shifted in my seat, trying desperately to find a comfortable position, but to no avail. I scooched back and forth, trying to cross my legs and take the pressure off the right side without drawing too much attention to myself. I thought about making a run for it, but all hope was lost when the ceremony began, and I was trapped. I couldn’t pay attention to anything being said. My head swam as I tried desperately to come up with an exit strategy. I texted my parents to find out where they were sitting, and I plotted my exit. I worried to myself, “Should I just get up and walk out? Should I leave after they call my name? Should I just wait till the end?” The next thing I knew, I was being ushered out of my seat to the front of the auditorium. Momentarily distracted, I excitedly thought, this is it, this is the moment I’ve been waiting for! Walking up the steps to the stage, I handed a sheet of paper with my name to the reader. Moments later, I heard “Brittany Creasor” boom in my ears. Are you kidding me? BRITTANY?! Um. you mean, Britten! Typical.

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I was furious. Not only had I sat through three hours of pure torture just to hear my name called, it turns out it wasn’t even my name that I got to hear. Feeling defeated, enraged, and exhausted, I carefully walked across the stage, received my diploma, and walked down the four steps to freedom. On my way back to my chair I truly debated just walking straight through the back doors, but my nerves got the better of me. I didn’t want to make a scene, so reluctantly I returned to my seat. When the ceremony finally ended and I was free to find my family I, again, put on a brave face. I didn’t want them to see how badly I was hurting because, honestly, I wanted to spend one last night with all of my friends before we all went home for summer and started our “big kid” jobs.

After noticing how drained I looked, my parents insisted I come home with them, reasoning that my friends and I could just get together over the summer. They didn’t understand, it wouldn’t be the same. Reassuring them that my boyfriend would drive me home the next day and that I really felt fine, my family reluctantly left and we went back to my old apartment to get ready for our night out. I tried to get into the party mood and forget about the pain, but it was so severe I was having a hard time. After being at the apartment for about an hour I finally gave up, I pulled my boyfriend aside and told him how much pain I was in; I couldn’t fake it any longer, I had to go home. Unwillingly, I explained to my friends that I wasn’t feeling well and said brief goodbye, promising to catch up with them over the summer. I didn’t go into detail about why I was really leaving. None of them knew I had even had surgery or was struggling with a chronic illness. I was too scared, embarrassed, and unsure of the situation to say anything. Even though I knew leaving was the right thing to do, I was still devastated to miss my last night of college because of this pain in my ass. It was so ironic that I almost had to laugh.

How Getting Sick Saved My Life: Chapter 1

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If you had told me that one day I would get sick and never get better, I wouldn’t have believed you. I would have laughed, thought, “yeah, right,” and shrugged it off without a second thought. After all, I had no reason to believe that I, an active, healthy 22-year-old, unknowingly had a horrific disease brewing beneath the surface. There was no way I could have known. There were no warning signs, no hints of an underlying illness, nothing to indicate that everything was about to come crashing down around me.

Prior to getting sick, I was lively, energetic, and outgoing. I was always up for an adventure, always the life of the party, always smiling, always laughing. I played soccer and volleyball and was a premier Scottish dancer. I was an active member of a sorority, I worked diligently on my studies, spent quality time with friends and family, and just enjoyed life. I had no idea that life as I knew it was about to change forever. I was just finishing my student teaching experience when the disease that would plague my life for the next five years began to swallow me whole

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Each day felt longer than the last as I counted down the days until the end of the year. I was working myself to the bone, passing out exhausted every night around midnight, and looking forward to the promise of a relaxing weekend when I first noticed that I wasn’t feeling well.

I had been feeling a little under the weather, suffering from a sinus infection or something like that, for a few weeks. I knew I was run down, but I easily chalked that up to the late nights and long hours of lesson planning and grading taking a toll on me. It wasn’t until my cooperating teacher stopped me mid-sentence about the intended lesson for the next day that I finally noticed how miserable I actually felt. I tried to push on and continue the conversation about The Great Gatsby, but my cooperating teacher interrupted me and said, “No offense, but you look awful. Why don’t you take tonight off? Take it easy and get your health back under control.”

After being given permission to take care of myself, I hastily threw my lesson plans and essays to be graded into my teaching bag, said goodbye, and rushed out of the office. Ducking against the cold, I placed my phone to my ear as I ran to my car. I yanked the door open, sunk into my seat and called my mom to complain about how awful I felt. Obviously, you can’t be sick unless you tell your mom about it. I tried, at first, to downplay my symptoms, but in the back of my head, I knew something really wasn’t right and that I needed to go see a doctor.  I knew this because as I walked down the hallway to and from my classes and the English office I noticed a strange pain, and there’s really no nice way to put this, but in my butt. It hurt when I walked, it hurt when I stood still, it hurt when I sat down. It just hurt. It was a severe, dull pain. It was unlike anything I had ever felt before. Not realizing that it could actually be something serious, I explained it away as a drunken tumble from the weekend before and a resulting bruised tailbone or something. After all, what else could it be? Luckily, my mom convinced me to go see a doctor. And that started the ball rolling.

I stopped briefly at my grandparents’ house, where I was staying at the time, to change out of my work clothes, then I headed to the doctor. By the way, I was on my way to see a Pediatrician. I was so terrified of “the doctor” that I refused to leave my childhood practitioner, even though I was in college. I guess there was something oddly comforting about the alphabet border on the walls and the muted Disney movie playing in the waiting room. Or maybe I was just a bit of a wimp.

In the waiting room, I fidgeted nervously side to side and waited to be called back to a room. I watched a kid try to smash a block through a round hole and picked at my nails.  When it was finally my turn I followed a nurse back to a room, climbed on top of that awful examination table and waited to be poked and prodded.

Once the doctor had finished her exam, I was exhausted and ready to hear the prognosis. To my surprise, the doctor concluded that besides a sinus infection which she could treat, she had no explanation as to why my butt hurt. She suggested I take the next few days off of work to rest and recover and to find a GI doctor; at the time, I didn’t realize the significance of that moment or that a GI specialist would quickly become a prominent figure in my life. Being naive and completely in the dark about even the idea of a chronic illness, I ignored the doctor’s advice about finding a GI and simply took the antibiotics for the sinus infection and took Thursday and Friday off of student teaching. I figured my butt pain would clear up on its own.

Now, I am not someone whoever takes it easy. On the contrary, I’m actually a little tightly wound and a bit of an overachiever. What can I say, I’m a perfectionist. It’s in my blood. So, having to take a step back because of my health was really frustrating. It felt unfair, like a cheap excuse. But when I didn’t start to feel better by the end of the weekend, I knew something was wrong. Even though I felt miserable, all I could worry about was missing work, because missing work was simply out of the question. It was unacceptable, and lazy, to take time off. So, I put on a brave face and pretended like I felt fine. There was absolutely no way I was going to take off another day of student teaching after already missing two. I had worked too hard for too long to take it easy now. If I failed now, then all of the late nights and long hours were for nothing. If I failed now, then all of the time and energy, all of the pressure I placed on myself to succeed, all of the sacrifices that had been made along the way would be wasted. And that, I couldn’t live with. So, to prove I was fine I went to DSW with my mom to do some shoe shopping, my favorite thing ever. I rationalized that if I could get myself to go out and walk around and look at shoes, I could muster up the strength to teach the next day.

Sunday morning I walked into the shoe store with my mom. I was able to make it three steps down an aisle before I doubled over in pain. The blood drained from my face and I shivered violently as I was suddenly overcome with goosebumps and chills. My mom, noticing that something was wrong, put her arm around me. I leaned fully onto her, unable to support myself any longer. A sob caught in my throat. My stomach turned and I worried that I might throw up. Not wanting to cause a scene in the middle of the store, we left immediately and went home. For the rest of the day, I laid on the couch and literally writhed in pain. It was the most intense hurt I had ever felt, at least up until that point of my life.The next day my mom insisted we go to the hospital and without any reluctance, I agreed. When we arrived, we found a spot in the corner and tried to get comfortable; we knew it was going to be a long day. As we sat in the waiting room on cheap chairs with the too-straight backs, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. My butt hurt terribly on the right side, so I crossed my left leg under my body and leaned fully to the left. Within the first ten minutes, my back twisted into knots and began to ache. Little did I know at the time that this would become my permanent sitting position for the next five years. UGH.

When they finally called my name, mispronouncing it Brittany as always, the nurse brought me back and got me ready to have an ultrasound. It was the first one I had ever had; I didn’t know what to expect. Up until this point in my life, I had been a relatively healthy person. After all, I was an athlete. And besides taking Imodium religiously because of a few stomach problems, which I referred to as “DSS” (Distressed Stomach Syndrome), I was perfectly fine. Or so I thought. I was quickly proved wrong.

My mom worried quietly in the chair next to my rolling hospital bed. Neither of us knew what to say. I was in too much pain to make conversation. My mom tried to comfort me, but her attempt was futile; we both knew there was nothing she could say to relieve any of the pain.

We waited and worried, worried and waited. I rocked back and forth trying to find a moment of relief from the pain but was unable to find a comfortable position. Eventually, a doctor came in to read the results to us. My mouth went dry as I listened to the doctor. He explained that the pain I was feeling was due to a perianal abscess, a little bigger than a golf ball, located about 6 inches up into the muscles of my right butt cheek.

What? What does that even mean? How is that possible? What caused it? Did I do this to myself? Can you fix me? A stream of questions rushed through my head and out of my mouth. Unfortunately, the doctor could only offer up the information he saw on the scan. We would have to see a specialist and have more tests done before we really knew what we were dealing with. All we knew moving forward was that I was going to have to get the abscess drained, immediately.