Starting where I left off in my last post...
At midnight the nurse came in with her next dose of pain meds and she was still fast asleep. He asked whether or not we should wake her to which I replied, "Absolutely!" If she was to continue to sleep and the pain medication wore off she would wake up miserable. When I tried to wake her I got a response that was totally new. She woke up in a complete panic and was looking around the room and back and forth between the nurse and I. She kept asking, "What's going on? Where am I?" I could tell from her eyes that she was totally confused and tried to reassure her that everything was fine. I kept repeating that we were in the hospital and we were waking her up to take her pain medication but she just couldn't understand. I really got concerned when she started asking who we were and why we were laughing at her. To be honest, I probably did have a stupid smirk on my face in response to her confusion but I honestly don't remember laughing. A few minutes later she had better grasp on the situation and took her medication. I hoped she would fall right back asleep but she kept saying that she was scared and didn't want to go back to sleep. At that point the abdominal pain was coming back and she had to get up to move about the room to try to get some relief. More than an hour passed and she spent much of that time between the bed and bathroom before she finally got comfortable and went back to sleep. At 2:15am she was awake again and had to make another trip to the restroom while I stayed in bed. She woke me up shortly after and requested another dose of Tylenol because she felt as if she was running a fever again. Once she took that she went back to bed and lay awake in considerable pain and discomfort until the nurse came with her next dose of pain medication at 4am.
After that dose she fell back asleep until 6:30am when we got our first of multiple visits from the doctors. Dr. Marco came in and expressed some concern that her condition had not gotten better and was going to consult an Internal Medicine doctor. At 6:45am Jerry came in and discussed the same and said that they were going to have the Internal Doctor pay her a visit. At 7:30am the Internal Doctor came in to introduce himself and do an overall check up of her condition. Afterwards, he consulted with Dr. Marco and Jerry and the decision was made to run a CT Scan on her abdomen to make certain her digestive track was working properly. By this time she was once again dealing with significant abdominal pain and we wanted to find out what was the cause. At 8am the Tech came in from Radiology to discuss the procedure and brought with him the two bottles of Barium she would have to consume before the scan could be done. Each bottle was approximately 20 ounces and contained a milky white substance. She was instructed that she would have to drink the entire first bottle and 80% of the second bottle before they would take her down for the scan. As you can imagine, she was already feeling full and bloated and had only been able to consume trace amounts of fluid for the past 3 days. Now they were asking her to consume about 40 ounces of fluid and it had to be done within a 2 hour time period. I don't know how she managed but she somehow got it all down and they wheeled her down to the Radiology department at 9:45am. By 10:15am she was back in the room and we both waited anxiously for the results. At 11am the Internal Doctor came in to report what we had all been hoping. The scan showed no blockages and no serious issues with her digestive track. The only thing he could see was that her digestive system was taking longer than expected to "wake up" from the anesthesia and was working slower than it should. He mentioned that if necessary, they could run a tube through her nose down to her stomach to relieve the pressure but by this time Alison was starting to feel some of the gas migrating down her digestive track and declined the offer.
Soon after he left, Alison was lying in bed and felt the sudden urge to "go." She got up as quickly as possible and made it to the restroom. From that point on, for the next couple hours, she spent the majority of the time in the restroom. She would come out and start to get comfortable on her bed or in the chair before once again saying, "OH NO.." and hustling off to the restroom. By late afternoon things were really starting to look up. She was feeling a significant reduction in the gas pressure in her abdomen and the pain medications were once again working as they should. She got very groggy and fell fast asleep for nearly two hours and it was some of the best, most restful sleep yet. Since then, she has still felt some pressure in her abdomen but it seems to be less and less prevalent.
It's now 9pm and she has been doing quite well ever since. She still has the abdominal pain but it is much more manageable than before. She received her last dose of pain medication at 8pm and they are going to be administering a sleeping aide her very shortly. After that, hopefully it's SWEET DREAMS!
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