So, scratch ALL of that

From October 9, 2008


Yesterday morning at 5 am I start vomiting blood again. And it won't stop. Again. I called the office & they paged the doctor on call. She called me and told me that no, this was NOT normal and to meet her at the ER. Fantastic.

I jump in the car and get down there. She checks around in my throat and determines that part of the wound in my right tonsil hasn't been fully cauterized and as the patches are coming off it's bleeding and leaking into my stomach. So she fills a needle with lidocaine, shoots up my tonsil, and cauterizes. I am sent home. On my way home, two blocks from my house, I spit blood again. I turn around and drive back to the ER. The surgeon I saw that morning was in surgery but wanted me to gargle with ice water to knock off the clot on my tonsil and stop any bleeding, and she would be over when she was done. I do this and am sitting in the waiting room spitting clear into a cup for about an hour. Then it's blood again. Alot of blood. So I'm vomiting blood again and I'm trying to gargle ice water at the same time to stop the bleeding and they put me in a room and decide to give me an IV.

The nurse says she's going to take some blood and she gives me an IV at the same time. In the bend of my arm. That is the worst place. I hate it there, do not want it there. Then she refuses to put a piece of tape over it so I can't see wheere it's going into my skin because it really makes me uncomfortable. She said they need to be able to see the injection site incase something goes wrong with it. I say awesome, thanks. I stand up at the sink to try and gargle more ice water and I have a panic attack. I can feel the IV fluid in my ear and my face, I'm suddenly light headed, my heart is racing, I can't breathe, I'm yelling and gasping for breath and looking around the room for a call button. The door is wide open but no one is hearing me and I am just losing it. I crumple over on the gurney panting Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, and things seems to be calming down, as a nurse comes by and asks if she heard me calling out. Um, yeah. Ya might have.

The surgeon shows up, I lay down normal on the gurney, I'm hooked up to all kinds of machines, she pokes around in there some more looking for the bleed spot. But I'm not bleeding anymore. I get up and jump up & down some, dance around, sit down with my head between my legs, massage my throat, suck really hard on a straw trying to make it bleed again so she can see exactly where it's coming from. No luck. So she fills another needle up with lidocaine, numbs up a larger swath of my tonsil, and cauterizes deeper and wider than before. This time there's the smell. The stench of burning flesh and it makes me want to vomit. If you've never encountered this smell count yourself lucky. I got the bonus of it being in my mouth which comes with it's own unique taste. Fucking nauseatingly disgusting. We determine that our work here is done. They unhook me and send me home telling me if this happens again to of course call the surgeon and come back.

So I drive home. And I sit down. And my hands are still covered in blood and that stench is in my nose, and my throat is sore and I'm scared to cough or talk and I keep spitting into the sink to make sure there's no blood. But that's no gaurentee of anything. I was spitting clear at the ER and then started vomiting again. I just pray to God that this is it, this is over. There was no stench the first time she cauterized that morning so I'm hoping the job is really done now. I have a popcicle that kind of comes back up, and come vicodin. I'm assuming it's alright to take since no one told me otherwise. On & off the phone with my parents. Lay down on the couch and fall asleep.

So far, no more blood. No more nausea, still a lot of pain. I'm more confident that things are alright now, but I'm still scared. Vomiting blood is horrible and I've never had a panic attack before and I am just done with all of this. Don't ever have your tonsils removed. No more surgeries, no more needles, no more blood. Please God, let this all be over now.