My week in Review

What a horrible week it has been! It actually started back in February, when I woke up 3 different times to go to the restroom and found about a half of cup of blood in the toilet each time. I went to see my family doctor that week and she did a few minor tests and didn't see anything out of the norm. Ever since then I have been feeling really crampy and nauseous, I thought it was just women problems. Last Saturday evening I started feeling really yucky, so I tried taking it easy the rest of the night. Around 10:30 p.m. all hell broke lose! Diarrhea, vomiting, sweats...ALL NIGHT LONG until about 10:00 a.m. I thought that was one nasty flu bug and I took Sunday to just relax, but I couldn't keep anything in my body it just went right through me. Monday morning rolled around and I still felt horrible. I jumped on the scales and found that I had lost 8 pounds in 36 hours. Sounds like a fabulous diet, but medically very scary. I had to cancel my preschool classes and I sent Ellie to the Buddy Bin after she got out of kindergarten. Allen went to work late to get the kids off to school, thanks Allen. I just felt horrible all day, but I kept trying to shake it off and I kept trying to do little chores, but ended up laying around longer afterwards. Tuesday rolls around and I push the pain away and get the kids off to school. I was able to go and pick up Ellie from school, but had to let her know that mommy still wasn't feeling very well so she had to be the pretend mommy for the day. My mom came up that day, I think she knew that I was hurting. I had been on the phone with my OBGYN all day discussing what was going on. At this point I was still thinking women problems. They were really concerned about the bleeding and the losing that much weight in such a short time. They told me that if I kept feeling sick to go to the instacare or the ER because I couldn't get in to see them right then. They also told me to make an appointment to have a colonoscapie, skip the initial doctors appt. and just go do the procedure as soon as possible. The soonest they could get me an appt. for that was Friday, April 2nd. By Tuesday night I was in so much pain and still not keeping anything in my system, not even water, that my mom took me up to Instacare. It took 2 nurses to find a vein to poke me since I was so dehydrated. They took blood for testing and hooked me up to an IV to get me hydrated. A few minutes later the doctor came back in with the nurse who had a very sad looking face on. I didn't have a good feeling about the news. The doctor first asked me if I had ever been on dialysis for my kidneys, "no, why?" A normal person's kidney function is 0.9 or lower. My normal kidney function is 1.2 or 1.3, which is slightly elevated due to my lupus. Tuesday night my kidney function had jumped up to 2.0 which is a huge jump. The doctor was extremely concerned that I was on the verge of kidney failure and told me that I needed to get up the hospital right away. He called up to LDS hospital and talked to the doctor working that night and made arrangements for me to come up. I was hooked up to another IV and had continual liquids pumped into me to try to get me hydrated again. They took a ton of blood work and stool samples and you name it. After being in the hospital for 2 nights my kidney levels came back down to my normal numbers, now we just had to figure out the stomach pains and why nothing was staying down in me. One of the tests came back that I had one blood cells in my stomach somewhere which means infection. Since I had an appt. on Friday for a colonoscapie they sent me home on Thursday with meds to prepare for that. Friday rolled around and I went back up to the LDS hospital for my procedure. The doctor came in to talk to Allen and I after the procedure to tell us that my colon didn't look like a normal person's colon. He took a few biopsy's and we should get the results in about 7 days. He thinks I have either colitis or an auto-immune disorder, which is not related to my Lupus. Is it possible for one person to have 2 different auto-immune disorder? We are obviously hoping for colitis, sounds wierd to hope you have colitis, but compared to the other options it doesn't sound too bad. Until then I am taking pain meds to help my stomach and drinking tons of fluids, I don't ever want to be in this position again. My family and my ward has been amazing. They have brought in meals for our family and my mom has turned into a surrogate mother to Carson and Ellie, oh and Molly. I had sweet friends and family call me and send me flowers while I was at the hospital to help cheer me up. I feel very blessed for the friends I have that check in on me and make sure that I am doing alright. We will keep you posted as to wait my results will be. A special thanks to my mom, Allen, and Heather who have helped substitute this week. You guys are the best.