I arrived home late Thursday evening from Ohio. Got up and made a trip to Cullman Friday morning. That was a somber visit to say the least. We are definitely still processing all of that visit. We will share at some point! But only after we have processed through! And life has not allowed us to process through at this point.
After dinner on Friday, Zine began to feel very bad. Thought he might be getting a stomach virus. We ended up taking meds for nausea and indigestion. Finally at 1 am, I convinced him to just try to go to sleep. So we got in bed about 1. Only for him to awaken a bit before 6 feeling very, very bad. Showered in cool shower to try to stave off what we thought was going to be a MS hug. As the day wore on, he just felt worse and worse.
I was very concerned about Zine. His color was off, his symptoms were none like we’ve ever dealt with before. I knew in my heart something was not right. I let him give me reasons why he didn’t feel good until about 3. At 3 in the afternoon, I sat down and just explained that I felt like there was something going on that we couldn’t see and I really felt like he needed to be checked out. Now, let me say…he felt horrid!! The only times Zine has ever admitted he felt bad he was VERY sick. So when he admitted he felt bad, I knew he was VERY sick. He obliged me without too much argument to come to ER. We went straight through triage and into a room.
What we have discovered….
His enzymes that the pancreas produces were extremely elevated. Elevated by multiple thousands!
His blood sugar was high.
His liver enzymes are elevated and his liver is enlarged.
He has gall stones and his gall bladder is enlarged.
He has been diagnosed with acute pancreatitis.
We were admitted to hospital.
We slept none last night. And had slept very little on Friday night.
He will have surgery in the morning to remove his gall bladder.
We will be here thru mid to late week.
We loved the internal medicine doctor we had this morning.
We loved the surgeon that spent a long time with us this morning.
We would love to feel like we could come up for air long enough to take a deep breath!
We do not like that we have yet another medical thing to deal with.
We are sad that our kids don’t get scared when they know that dad’s going to the ER.
We don’t like the fact that our kids have had to grow up so quickly.
We despise chemo and its long lasting effects!
We are done fighting this disease. This disease called MS can now take its course and we will treat symptoms. But no more chemo, no more immune modulators…done! At some point you have to make tough decisions.
Zine doesn’t like to take pain medicine because he feels like a whimp to take pain meds. But when he finally agreed to some at 5:45 this morning, he saw how miserable he had been and has been being a good patient and asking for it when he gets to hurting. Mid morning when the surgeon was in here, he got very sick. So they have given him nausea meds through his IV to help with that. But truly our door has been a revolving door constantly of medical staff. Hoping it is going to settle down.
We did learn in the ER that they have seen two other patients besides Zine who has had the same chemo come in with the same problem. So we do feel and the doctors feel as well this is side effect of the chemo. And for that reason, it is hard to know how long this could affect him or even after it clears up, will it return. As the surgeon said this morning, I don’t have a crystal ball!
I’m done writing for now. It has taken me literally about three hours to write this post because I keep having to sit it down. But…now you at least have an update! Be praying that surgery will go well and that there will be no complications!
