Turn on a dime.

Turn on a dime.

3/1/2025

8:57 am

It has been 6 days.

Perspectives about myself, our system, and the medical care we rely on changed in those 6 days.

I woke up early Sunday morning, took my son to work, and began working on organizing my craft room. My day was going as planned, or so I thought.

Then there it was, this dull ache in my lower right side.  The same ache from the night before had gone away after some ibuprofen and sleep. It was a subtle ache at first, and I thought it was just indigestion from the previous night’s dinner.  I ate some rice cakes, almonds, and sunflower seeds while trying to finish my first cup of coffee for the day. I was starting to feel nauseous.

As the morning progressed, so did the pain.  It was becoming more pronounced, and I started feeling like something wasn’t quite right. I started feeling slightly off.  I looked at the time; it was 5 pm and still an hour before my son would need to be picked up from work.

I debated whether I could wait that long, then suddenly the pain tripled, feeling like I was being stabbed repeatedly from the inside. I knew that I had to get to the emergency room.  I called his work after unsuccessfully trying to reach him on his cell phone. They said they could let him go early. 

In those few moments, I debated whether I could drive to his workplace and pick him up; it was 20 minutes away without traffic. With each stab, the pain radiated throughout the whole right side of my back. It felt like the wind was being knocked out of me. The sense of urgency was becoming intense, and I was trying to stay focused. I hoped that I could make it there. I decided to drive to him instead of calling for an ambulance.

The next twenty minutes were the longest drive of my life.  The traffic stopped and came to a standstill across a bridge. 

In those moments, I felt like abandoning my car and calling for emergency services; I did not know if I was going to make it.

There had been a car accident, and the traffic finally began to move.  I continued driving to his workplace, and after I picked him up, we got back on the highway, making our way to the hospital emergency room.

The pain was coming in intermittent waves, and I was struggling to focus on driving, but by some miracle, I made it to the hospital. 

There was a brief moment of panic trying to get me from the car to the hospital. I was doubled over in pain on the sidewalk and having trouble walking. A nurse came out from the waiting room and assisted, and we finally got checked in. 

It was a 30-minute wait until I was finally seen and was writhing in pain while trying to maintain my breathing.  I was afraid I was going to hyperventilate or pass out.

After my vitals and information were annotated, I was then wheeled off to get a CT scan completed and then await an ultrasound.  I was given Morphine for the pain, but on the pain scale of 0 to 10, it felt higher than 10 when I arrived. The Morphine took it down to about an 8, but it only lasted for about 15 to 20 minutes. 

Before the ultrasound, I was given Doloten after the Morphine wore off; it helped take the edge off the pain, but it was still substantial.  I cannot be given traditional painkillers because of previous allergic reactions.

During the ultrasound, they found a huge cyst that had formed in my uterus. I saw the pictures they took after the surgery.  This caused a condition called uterine torsion. The cyst caused the right ovary and fallopian tube to twist, the blood supply had been cut off, and the ovary had swollen to the size of a small apple. The cyst itself was the size of a small coconut.  Emergency surgery was required.  I had made it to the hospital just in time.  I pushed aside the thoughts of what might have happened and the potential different outcomes.  I was lucky.

After waking up from the surgery, I realized how lucky I am to be a veteran. Through my military service on Active Duty, I have been afforded medical care for the rest of my life. This covers not only my general care but emergencies as well, such as the surgery that I had. 

I picked the same hospital that I have been going to for emergencies over the last 12 years because they maintain my medical record, have access to my complete medical history, and fully coordinate my care with the VA medical system.

On day one post-surgery, I was still in a lot of pain. The pain was not as intense as the day I arrived.  It was manageable through ibuprofen and a Tylenol drip. Allergic reactions to pain medication prohibit me from consuming them.  I have had to learn how to manage the pain.  

I felt much better and slept on and off most of that day.  I was waiting for the drugs and anesthesia to wear off because it made me nauseous.  My son unfortunately had to see me throw up a few times while my body got rid of everything.  I have been a lifelong opponent to medications unless medically necessary, such as surgery.

Later that evening, I was finally able to eat a regular diet with no restrictions.  My son went home to get some sleep. Later that night, at around 3 in the morning, I was wide awake and made my first attempt at walking. The surgeon wanted me to attempt walking the first day, even just for a few minutes.  He stated it would help with the healing process.  I had a better sleep afterward.

I stayed in the hospital for one more day and made substantial progress. I met all the criteria they required and was released to go home.  The one concern I had was the driving aspect of my daily routine.  I was cleared for drives but no lengthy outings.  I drove myself home.

While discussing the situation, updating my children and online relationship about my progress, the concern about my driving came up. My youngest son has now realized the importance of learning how to drive despite his trepidations.

I have always been a big-picture kind of person.  I take in all the information and formulate plans not just for my own sake but for those I surround myself with and care about. 

It was an alarming moment of realization for my family that things can turn on a dime. You should be prepared for any outcome.  It may not go as planned, but it will help you manage through a crisis if you have some sort of forethought. 

There had been great discussion among my adult children about my living will, power of attorney, and last will & testament. They did not realize that I had prepared it long ago, or they just forgot.

Included in that paperwork is what to do with my belongings as well as my burial requests. I have tried to be prepared for the sake of my children. I do not want them to feel burdened with those decision-making processes. I want them to know that as their mother, I am still there for them even when I am not there.

I am now safely at home with a 6 to 8-week recovery time ahead of me. I am not happy about being stuck at home and not being able to do what I want to do, but I will behave, follow the recovery plan, and do the right thing.  This has made me realize that taking my health more seriously is paramount and necessary.  

This also made me realize that even though I have been advocating for myself with my providers, they still did not completely hear me over the last year.

I found out after researching this rare condition what some of the signs were before the occurrence. 

It made me realize that some of the complaints I voiced concern over the past year as it pertains to my reproductive care and menopause could have been more proactively looked at. The general bloating, feeling heavy, the pain I thought was in my intestinal tract, and general malaise was not all in my head as I was told or completely related to possible diabetes. The cyst had been growing for a while to get to the size it was. 

Those concerns were overridden by the provider’s insisting that I was diabetic, and it was the root cause of all my problems. They have been trying to put me on diabetic medication and high blood pressure medication since I first enrolled into the VA system over 10 years ago. 

I have been advocating the strategy of changing my diet, performing more exercise, and losing weight as ways to manage all of it.  I have been told that I have been pre-diabetic and have had high blood pressure since my early twenties and have managed through these same strategies that I have advocated for the past 34 years.

While in the hospital, all my lab work came back within normal range. Even when my blood pressure went up because of the severe pain, it was still within an acceptable range, then went back down to slightly below normal after the surgery. 

Before this incident, after my last provider visit, my daily checks of my blood pressure and blood glucose reading were finally going into the green and within normal limits. This was due to changing my diet, sticking to serving sizes, drinking more water, not eating after 8 pm, losing weight, and beginning exercise again.

During my last provider visit, which did not go well, I was prescribed diabetic and high blood pressure medication. This was due to the numerous yeast infections I was experiencing over the previous 6 to 8 months because of high glucose readings.  Coincidentally, four days before this surgery incident, it had finally cleared up after months of back and forth. To me, that was a sign that the high A1C and glucose were finally getting under control. The logs I made tracking my numbers also showed progress.

I knew that I would have to make dietary changes and lose more weight for it to clear up, but I was not moving quickly enough for the provider.  She seemed annoyed with my progress, and instead of conferring the issues to the diabetic pharmacist, who she sent me to previously for consultation, she decided to change the plan we already had in place. She canceled my May follow-up appointment with the Diabetic Pharmacist.

I was also told that my B-12 and Vitamin D levels were extremely low.  I was sent medication for those as well.  I looked over my lab results and could not understand why I was sent B-12 when my lab work said my levels were within normal range.  The low Vitamin D levels were already expected; it has always been low. I had not taken any of the medications she prescribed before this incident. I was waiting to talk with the Diabetic Pharmacist.

I came into that yearly check-up with expectations of finally getting some answers about what I should be doing as a menopausal woman. All the other medical concerns were being addressed per my provider’s plan of care, including the up and down A1C readings.  She has only been my provider for a little over a year.

I had been experiencing neck, knee, and hip pain over the past year and was worried about possible osteoporosis issues since I do not consume dairy or take calcium.  Instead, I was met with push-back and assumptions made because of “stereotypical” notions about diabetes as it relates to indigenous communities. There is the belief that all Indigenous people are predisposed to diabetes or are diabetics.  She made the statement, “…with your DNA, the deck is stacked against you…”, yet she did not once ask anything about my family history. 

If she had taken the time to ask, then she would have found out that within my family, the only generation that has diabetics in it is the first generation of grandchildren, my generation, to include most of my cousins.  Our grandparents, our parents, our children, our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren do not have any diabetes or heart disease. 

The generation I am in within my family is the group that grew up mainly consuming processed foods, fried foods, snack foods, fast food, sugary drinks, and deli meats, with very little emphasis on fresh fruits, vegetables, and water.

We were smokers and drinkers who did very little exercise compared to our parents and our children. It is all about how we take care of ourselves and what we consume.

If she had asked, then she would have found out that I have understood this for a very long time about my family, and that is why I stopped eating certain things, smoking, and drinking.  I am not the greatest when it comes to being physically fit, but I can still make changes.

Out of my generation of cousins, I, at the age of 53, am still one of the healthiest, despite the rotator cuff injury in 2019 and this surgery this past week.  By this age, most of my cousins have already been on insulin for at least 10 years, are dealing with diabetic complications, or have had bypasses or stents put in due to heart disease.  I made changes to not only avoid it myself but also to encourage my children to not walk down that path.

All of this medical history and the issue with my current provider and previous provider came to a head after my emergency surgery.  I had a previously scheduled phone appointment while I was in the hospital recovering.  It was the diabetic pharmacist who was doing a follow-up with me after my May appointment was cancelled and rescheduled to February by my provider. 

When I told her where I was and that we needed to reschedule the appointment, I found it rather odd that the first thing she said was, “Well, I am sure everything we have been doing as far as treatment had nothing to do with it.”. I never said it had any correlation to the situation I was experiencing. I never even mentioned it.

My son was there in the room as well as the nurse who was taking my vitals. I had put the call on speaker.  Everyone in the room looked at each other. The pharmacist rescheduled the appointment for 30 days out.  Now, I am at an impasse about how I should proceed going forward.

I am going to wait until I am fully recovered before approaching any of this with patient advocacy or a possible lawyer.  I need time to heal and think about it.

Like I said before, things can turn on a dime, and you have to be prepared.

All I know, at this moment, is that I am grateful for the doctors, nurses, techs, and hospital employees who took care of me.  I am grateful that I had the resources to seek out the care I needed. I am grateful for my family being there.

It has opened my eyes further to what I need to be looking at going forward as far as my health and well-being.

I can no longer sit around and mope about my situation or my existence. I have been given the chance to keep going forward, stay motivated, and find my purpose.

Thank you so much for stopping by and supporting this blog.

Have a wonderful week!

Peace, love, happiness, good vibes, and good health, always!

Suzanne