The Rosebush

When I went to the Bangkok hospital on Friday afternoon I saw 3 specialists - 2 about the shooting pain in my back/leg and the other about my mirena. Well I had some x-rays for my back and was told I have mild scoliosis (when your back isn’t straight, but more S shaped) but worse, I have hypermobility in my lower spine, so two vertebrae are moving too far apart when my back bends and the other sides of the vertebrae are moving together and touching a nerve.

To rule out herniated (!?) discs, they decided to give me a lovely MRI scan on Saturday morning, which meant the Mirena had to be postponed, as having an MRI with a coil can cause it to heat up (apparently).

So the next day, I went to see the physiotherapist first (or… the ‘Voodoo Doctor’ as I now like to call her). I told her I was nervous about having an MRI without sedation and she suggested acupuncture for a few minutes before the scan to calm me down. Well it didn’t exactly work. In fact, two of the needles she put into my neck almost instantly made me feel like I was going to throw up. I told her this and she pulled them out a little bit, and it immediately went away. Amazing! She kept talking about ‘bad energy’ and my ’spirit’ though, so it was like she was fluctuating between western medical approaches and Chinese traditional medicine… I lost a bit of faith, I must say…

The weirdest thing was that she put needles in my arms, the wrists and upper arms, but then she put them in the fleshy area around my elbows. She did the left one which felt weird, but was okay, and THEN… the other one in my right arm, and it was incredibly painful… It didn’t hurt for long, just a second, but it was definitely the worst needle and it hurt a lot. I told her this (and she would have noticed me jumping halfway across the room) and she told me that this part of my arm is related to the bowel. Well how STRANGE - the bowel is where I had endo excised from and is where I still have microscopic endo… Coincidence or was the voodoo doctor actually talking sense? She did know that I had bowel issues, so was she just tapping into that, like a perceptive fortune teller or is there really a neurological link between my right elbow and my bowel? Intriguing.

Anyway… after my not-very-relaxing-at-all acupuncture, I went for my MRI. I was in pieces, terrified, because last time I had an MRI was back in October before my lap, and I panicked and just couldn’t go in the machine without sedation. In the end they pretty much just put me under and did the lap straight away afterwards. This time I was wide awake and really scared. I was actually crying as I lay down on the bench… The nurse was so sweet, and put her hand on my foot and asked if I wanted her to stay with me, and I said yes.

So I managed to grit my teeth, squeeze my eyes shut and not completely freak out inside the machine. They put some music on through the headphones which was a godsend cos it gave me something nice to focus on, though it didn’t drown out the sound of fifty machine guns going off all around me, but it definitely helped. I forced myself to keep my eyes shut cos I knew I’d panic if I opened them and saw the top of the machine 6 inches above my face! (I’m so brave!!) Luckily they only kept me in there for about 20 minutes, so that was a relief!

So… no herniated discs, so the next step was to be given a really attractive back support (flesh coloured, of course - I did ask if they had any other colour, but alas…). After that… it was mirena time. I was taken up to the OR area and changed into a robe. I had the drip inserted and the pre-med went in, making me a tiny bit less ‘with it’. I was wheeled into the OR and it was FREEZING and the room was full of metal and I started thinking ‘crap, I really hope I’m out for this, cos if nothing else I’m gonna freeze to death.’ There were so many people in the room, considering all I was having was a mirena!! Didn’t exactly calm my nerves. A doctor put a small mask in front of my face and asked me to take some deep breaths. I took a couple and thought ‘oh god, it’s not working, I’m going to be totally alert through the whole thing’. That was the last thing I remember thinking before waking up in the recovery room with a nurse saying hello and telling me it was all finished.

So… I had wanted to give a detailed description of the procedure, so that future Mirena patients on here would learn from my experience, but… if I was at all awake during the procedure, I don’t remember a single thing about it. (The twilight sedative is basically the same as Rohypnol, which is why you have no memory of the procedure afterwards.) Sorry!!

What I do remember, all too clearly, was the pain in my lower abdomen when I woke up - it was excruciating. The nurse gave me paracetamol and something else, but I was still squirming around and sucking in my breath after a few minutes so she went to find the doctor and when she came back she had a syringe full of Fentanyl in her hand which she threw my way via the drip. A minute or two later the pain was almost totally gone.

Now, 4 days later, I am taking 8 different tablets, most of them more than once a day, and I’m not sure what most of them are. I think there are 2 kinds of anti-inflammatories. One is Ponstan, which seems to be the one which really helps (its the only one which I forgot to take yesterday and yesterday is the only day so far since Saturday when I’ve had bad abdominal pain - like a period pain) but I only have 2 left, and I’m a bit worried about how much it’s gonna hurt when I can’t take the Ponstan any more.

Anyway… so whilst the whole weekend was pretty much taken up with medical crap, I made a point of spending Sunday and Monday relaxing. Bit of a shock to find out about the back stuff, especially as I may have to give up taekwondo which I *love* - the only sport I’ve ever enjoyed, and feel like I’m achieving something in… Anyway, I’m officially rambling now!!

So there you go… hope you’re not all asleep. Thanks for taking the time to read about my experiences at the weekend!!