My Illness - Pelvic Inflammatory Disease
>> Tuesday, June 1, 2010
I said before I'd tell more about my illness later. Well, it's later.
I was hospitalized due to Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (due to bacterial vaginosis...NOT an STD which the doctors would not believe until the cultures came back proving neither myself nor my husband cheated on each other and gave each other a disease!) after an ER visit had me admitted for fear of abcess and the need for surgery. I was really sick with high fever and extreme pain. They gave me morphine in the ER for pain, then dilaudid (I think that's how it's spelled) once admitted, then Percocet as the pain went down. Apparently, the flu I thought I had with fever for four days a few weeks ago was the start of the infection raging through my reproductive organs until they were screaming at me to get to the hospital.
The drugs at the hospital made me so tired. I didn't need any type of sleep aid to get me to sleep. Unfortunately, the antibiotics (Gentamicin and Clindamycin) they had me on had such bad side effects (dizziness, nausea, ear pain and hallucinations) that I was happy to get off them after 2-1/2 days when I got sent home. I think it was the Gentamicin that did all that to me. The faces flying at me in my head were bad enough (and the evil grins some of the faces gave me were downright scary) but when the Virgin Mary statue outside my hospital window turned and looked at me several times, I rang for the nurse to get me off the medications!
I may be infertile now. I'm not sure until I see my gynecologist for further testing to see what, if any, scarring was done to my girl bits. Since we have our four kids and my husband's two children, we weren't planning on having anymore children anyway so that's not a real heartbreaker for me. I don't like the fact that my choices may have been taken away but it's not like we ever planned to have another child anyway.
I'm still on antibiotics and the pain comes and goes. I'm still healing. I think it's going to be awhile before I'm back to 100% me.
2 comments:
I'm so sorry you went through this. I'm in the same boat as you. I was hospitalized on the 6th in extreme pain and fever. They thought it was my appendix but a cat-scan revealed that my fallopian tubes were inflamed. I was on i.v. antibiotics for 5 full days and still on two different antibiotic pills for another 14 days. They kept saying it was an STD as well until they found out it wasn't. They kept harping on it and not giving me a diagnosis. Finally a wonderful gynecologist said no you don't have an STD and it is PID. I had pus in my discharge - ewww! This is my second bout with it - had a much more minor attack about a year and a half ago while on vacation. When I got back, my doctor had no idea what it was (it had already cleared up by then). This is something I never want to experience again. Thankfully I have two wonderful children and am too long in the tooth (I'm 48) to have anymore. I'm back at work but am still incredibly tired. Take care of yourself.
I had heard of PID but never realized how painful it really is. The doctors really annoyed me with their belief that it had to be caused by a STD when I knew it hadn't been. They would not even consider another reason until the cultures proved them wrong.
I ended up with C. Diff. bacteria either from the hospital stay for the PID or the Clindamycin - or both. That was awful but antibiotics (again) seem to be clearing it up.
I'll be happy when I just feel good again.
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