Monday, February 21, 2011

Powerade, my new best friend

Powerade (or Gatorade) and I will so become best buddies.  So over the weekend I got an infection, a mild one but it made me really sick. Temperature of 101.4, 98 bpm, nauseas, lots of pain and falling in and out of sleep. So we ended up in the emergency room Sunday night. They wanted to give me antibiotics through an IV along with pain medicine, nausea medicine and some fluid to hydrate me.  The nurse tied a rubber band around my arm and was poking around with her finger trying to find a vein. I had told the doc that my veins don't cooperate very well. He told me the nurses there were really good at this stuff. So she tried the other arm too. Then went back to my left arm and started poking away, with the needle this time.
Now I'm not a needle phob, I don't like to watch, but I consider myself pretty tough, you kinda become that way after going through a couple pregnancies - you get used to needles, plus I've been poked a lot lately. So I could tell she was having a hard time and was chasing my vein all over then I felt her stick it in a little harder and oh my gosh, pain. PAIN! Shooting down my arm to my wrist (she was in my elbow pit). It felt like she burst a vein or something, I screamed and some profane words slipped out. I'm a pretty shy person and don't like a lot of attention drawn to me so for me to shout that out is really out of character, thus how much it hurt. The doc gave me a choice before if I wanted an IV or just the pill so I told the nurse I didn't want the IV any more, just the pill. And she was offended! HELLO! Anyone offended here should be me.  She just kept saying she got it in and that I didn't want her to do it any more. (Well if she got it in why the heck did it hurt like that and why did she take it out?) I've had plenty IV's lately and they aren't supposed to feel that way.
The reason why they had such a hard time was because I was so dehydrated so my plan is to drink like a dozen powerades/gatorades a day leading up to my chemo treatments. I'm going to have powerade blood by the time I have to get stuck again.
They sent me home with an antibiotic which I threw up a couple hours later but this morning I feel much better. And my antibiotic hasn't come back up. Yay! :)
We are so grateful for Jeff's parents too, they watched the boys while we ran to urgent care and the ER last night. My house was a disaster and they even cleaned it while we were gone! Thank you guys so much!
So just for kicks and giggles I think I'll keep a tally on how many of these powerades I drink (they're 32oz) leading up to my first chemo and I'll let y'all know if it helped.

2 comments:

  1. So glad youre feeling better today! Sounds like you had a rough night :(
    Let me know if you decide to watch The Bachelor tonight, now that youre feeling a little better and we know you dont have something contagious :) I hope that no matter what, youre feeling well enough to watch the final episode in a couple more weeks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Omigosh, my days are so off. I totally missed the bachelor! :( Thank goodness for Hulu!

    ReplyDelete

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