The Clot Part I

Hi!

As my friends and family know, I am a chronic blog reader. I love blogs, and follow them regularly. About six months ago I decided that maybe since I love reading blogs I should have my own. So, I started this one. FAIL. Wrote like three posts. Never thought about it again. I think it was just hard for me to post randomly because I didn't have a focus. Im not super into fashion and products. I am not getting married. I'm not having a baby- you get the picture. I guess I wasn't really going through any big changes in life. This changed last week.

I have decided that since I will be spending a lot of time resting and awake when everyone else is asleep that I would blog about this experience not only for myself, but also in hopes that someone will learn something from it and not make some of the mistakes that I made during this process. I have been so overwhelmed with calls/texts/facebook/visitors that I thought I could use this to keep everyone posted on my progress. You all have made me feel so loved through this scary time that I literally get so emotional about it that I can't read texts or messages all the time because cry and it makes my head hurt more. I am  SO sorry if you have contacted me and I haven't gotten back to you or I was out of it/asleep when you came to visit. I am so appreciative of the love and support and I promise I will catch up to all of your messages ASAP! Trust me I will have plenty of time! Unfortunately, I feel like this is going to be a long recovery of ups and downs. Please continue to pray that i continue going forwards and not backwards. I seriously have the best friends and family on this planet and  I can't yet find the words to say how thankful I am. God is too good to me.

Here goes the story...

Friday (10/19): On my way home from my first week of traveling for my new job (awesome timing, right?)  I had the worst headache of my life.  At first,  I ignored it. Earlier in the week I had to go to the doctor for some throat issues- and i thought maybe I was just getting a sinus infection on top of it. I took some tylenol and rallied. My BFF from college and her fiance were on their way to town from DC and we had Keeneland plans the next day. Tons of our other friends were going to be in town for the weekend and we had all been looking forward to it for months. As many of you recent college graduates know, it is nearly impossible to get all of your friends together in one place to hang out. Those days are over. So to say I was excited is an understatement. Moving on- Friday night, people get in town and some of us do dinner at Harry's. Throughout dinner, I continued to feel bad. So bad that I couldn't even have a glass of wine. This girl loves her wine, and I knew this was a bad sign. But I tried to keep positive about it and kept hitting up the tylenol bottle.

Saturday (10/20): Wake up and feel so bad I cant get in the shower. I tell my friends to shower before me, take some more tylenol, and hope to feel better after 30 more minutes of sleep. This doesn't happen. I end up staying home from Keeneland, in my bed, while all of my friends and family go to Keeneland. I was so bummed. After Keeneland, we had all planned to go to Tin Roof to watch the UK game. Thought maybe if I rested, I could at least do this. Didn't happen. I spent most of this night on the bathroom floor feeling like I was going to barf. Thankfully I never did, but I almost feel like if I had let myself I might have felt better. Finally got to sleep this night around 1AM.

Sunday (10/21): Wake up and feel ok. Hang out with Kate & Adam before they leave to drive home, go pick up Panera, eat, and nap after they leave. I cleaned the house a little, made dinner that night, and thought maybe I was feeling better. Went to bed around 10PM.

Monday (10/22): This day was my first actual day in the office at my new job as my first week was spent in Cincinnati, Virginia, and Cleveland for  fairs, preview nights and counselor luncheons. I honestly felt ok this morning. I took a bunch of meds before I went in, and I think I was just excited so it got me through most of the morning without feeling terrible. By lunchtime, I started to get the really bad head pain again. My pain was in and around my eyes, in my forehead, and behind my ears. The right ear specifically. I started to think maybe I had an ear infection? I called my doctor and got his last appointment and headed there after work.  He thought that maybe I did not get rid of the throat infection fully, and my sinuses were clogged. He looked in my ears, said they were fine. Put me on a really high dose of amoxicillin (my stomach is super sensitive to most antibiotics and this is one of few i can take), Mucinex D, and gave me a stronger pain medicine for my headache. I started to feel like this headache would never go away and that people were going to start thinking I was a junkie looking for pain meds. I went to the pharmacy near my parents house and waited for everything to get filled. My mom made me dinner and I took all the meds, but at the end of the night I felt so bad that I didn't even want to drive home, so I just stayed the night at home.

Tuesday (10/23): Woke up around 5:30 with the intention of going home, showering, and going to work. I got up and tried to feel normal but this was by far the worst I'd felt since Friday. Let me remind you again that this is only the 2nd day in the office of my new job. I had to text my boss and let him know i wouldn't be in. I was so conflicted about this because I felt like I was really not putting my best foot forward with work and got really upset about it. Like cried for hours, talked myself into thinking I was going to get fired and that everyone probably thought I was cray. But- my mom stayed home from work with me this day because she was worried and she tried her best to talk me out of feeling bad about staying home. Throughout the day we tried everything to get the headache gone. Sniffing steam, ice packs, ib proufen, tylenol, pain meds from the doctor- you name it. We tried it. By 6:30pm I was back on the bathroom floor willing myself not to throw up everywhere. Mom called the on-call doctor and she said we needed to head to the emergency room. I made my mom drive me to my house beforehand to get some comfortable clothes and let me take a shower before going to the hospital. This was probably the best decision I made all week even though I had no idea what was to come in the next 24 hours.

Tuesday Night/Wednesday Early AM: This time frame deserves its own paragraph because it was the longest 7ish hours I can remember. We get to the ER and the place does not look that busy. They get me checked in and look at me like i'm an idiot because I'm coming in because of a "headache". I was positive at this point they thought I was the biggest lunatic. I got a few like- why is she coming here for a headache? type stares. It made me want to barf on everyone and flick them off. As the waiting begins in the emergency room lobby- which might I add was under construction and dirty- the place starts to go HAM. I'm talking at least 5-7 people come in on stretchers, about 10 more people come in and are waiting, I mean the place was poppin. We wait for THREE AND A HALF HOURS before even getting in a room. At this point I am losing my mind and scaring the crap out of my mom. We legit almost left because i didn't think i could sit in the waiting room any longer. I can't even go into detail about the weird people in the waiting room because it would take another hour to describe, but let me tell you it was a show. Anyways, we get in the room and have to wait another 30-45 minutes before anyone even comes in. I was really losing it at this point. Like not sane. When the doctor finally gets back there he is amazing. He is so nice, and immediately gets me hooked up to all kinds of things that start to make me feel better within 15 minutes. He then sends me to get a CT scan. We wait for a while and he comes back to tell me he has good news and bad news. I don't even remember what he said the good news was but he proceeds to tell me that I HAVE A BLOOD CLOT IN MY BRAIN. Excuse me?! To say I was shocked is not even an accurate way to describe what was going through my head. Thank God I was sedated. After we talk for a while, he lets me know I need to get an MRI so they can tell more of what is going on and afterwards I will be heading to ICU to be monitored and put on blood thinners. Again- excuse me?! The letters I-C-U didn't sit well with me at all. The MRI was an awful experience, so again thank God I was sedated. Being in a small tube making loud noises and vibrations is not fun when you have a headache my friends. The scan took about 30 minutes. Which does not seem long when I say it but felt like 2 hours when I was in there. I go back to the room after and wait for them to look at the scan. Another doctor comes back and tells me I'm going to have to have surgery. INSERT COMPLETE PANIC. I am not sure how my mom held it together for me at this point but thank God she did because I lost it. Before they wheel me to ICU I call Christy and she immediately comes to be with me. We call my dad and he comes too. This begins the longest and scariest week of my life.

Alright I'm finally tired and ready to sleep tonight. More of the story to come tomorrow.