Im sure its just because of the amount of these things in my system (5 weeks of both by this point) but the most traumatic and painful night of my hospital stay was down to some intense swelling.
It starts off small, normally with jokes about cankles from my Dad or just having a puffy face and hands.
The only thing that really scared me about swelling was when it reached the family jewels. Annoyingly, this was now the only part of my anatomy that was still a "private part" but once my balls reached the size of a grapefruit I had to get someone to check it out. I was quickly reassured that the nurse had seen much worse and that there was nothing to worry about, but that was it. The last bastion of privacy was gone now.
As is the case with fluid retention, its constantly moving around depending on how you're positioned so the discomfort can move around and make it difficult to pin down.
On the night in question I must have been "too upright" for ages because my legs were ENORMOUS, and I mean at least 4 times the size of normal for me the whole way down from my thigh to my foot.
The pain was the most intense and excruciating thing I have ever experienced in my entire life. I honestly at one point believed that my left ankle was just going to explode like a balloon and that would be it, and got to the point where I was cackling in a kind of maniacal delirious laughter I can only compare to the Joker from Batman.
Any tiny movement resulted in a fresh wave of agony worse than the one before and that painkillers were doing nothing to dull which isn't great when the answer to dispelling the fluid is elevating the feet and moving the feet to pump it up the legs (where the pain also travels, which isn't fun either).
To make matters worse at this point my goddamn bowel decided to get involved and I needed to go to the toilet, to which I simply informed my terrified mother that I was just going to have to go in the bed and sit in it because there was no way I could move.
She obviously ignored this and called a nurse for a bedpan, and sparing more gory details with a LOT of pain and some mess I managed to use it, however not before treating the poor nurse to a full eyeful of the naked, swollen and now soiled bottom half of my person. Good call Mum.
Eventually after some very gentle movement and elevating the pain and fluid dissipated almost as fast as it came on. Needless to say the next day doctors were consulted and I was started on diuretics to help me pee out all the excess fluid (current record of over 5 litres in a day, so definitely racehorse worthy levels).
In just over a week I've lost over 13 kilos of fluid weight and have returned to a vaguely normal (if malnourished) shape so I'm off the diuretics and have one less thing to worry about!
Next step - get sexy beach ready body back...
The pain was the most intense and excruciating thing I have ever experienced in my entire life. I honestly at one point believed that my left ankle was just going to explode like a balloon and that would be it, and got to the point where I was cackling in a kind of maniacal delirious laughter I can only compare to the Joker from Batman.
Any tiny movement resulted in a fresh wave of agony worse than the one before and that painkillers were doing nothing to dull which isn't great when the answer to dispelling the fluid is elevating the feet and moving the feet to pump it up the legs (where the pain also travels, which isn't fun either).
To make matters worse at this point my goddamn bowel decided to get involved and I needed to go to the toilet, to which I simply informed my terrified mother that I was just going to have to go in the bed and sit in it because there was no way I could move.
She obviously ignored this and called a nurse for a bedpan, and sparing more gory details with a LOT of pain and some mess I managed to use it, however not before treating the poor nurse to a full eyeful of the naked, swollen and now soiled bottom half of my person. Good call Mum.
Eventually after some very gentle movement and elevating the pain and fluid dissipated almost as fast as it came on. Needless to say the next day doctors were consulted and I was started on diuretics to help me pee out all the excess fluid (current record of over 5 litres in a day, so definitely racehorse worthy levels).
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| My legs in the sexy anti-clot stockings 2 days apart |
Next step - get sexy beach ready body back...
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