Tales of stress fractures and hospital visits

Well, it's been a very busy couple of weeks for me. About 2 1/2 weeks ago I started to feel a certain pain in my right calf and there was a noticeable lump there. At first I thought of Deep Vein Thrombosis but that I thought that was a bit extreme to jump right to that conclusion so the I got thinking that maybe my Fibromyalgia was just progressing and that this was a new symptom I hadn't had before. However, after about 4 days it didn't change at all and there was still a lump in my calf that I could feel, it wasn't getting better, so I decided to call the dr and try to get in to see him. They couldn't get me in until the next day. Dr was thinking it might be a blood clot or a cyst of some sort so he ordered several different blood tests and and ultrasound. All the blood tests came back normal and the ultrasound did not show anything abnormal either so he then ordered an x-ray and an MRI. I had the x-ray and it was perfect. Then I had the MRI on Wednesday morning this week. They said it would take about 2 days to get the results back to the dr but, while I was at David's triennial IEP meeting, the dr's office called and talked to Doug. He said the good news was that they knew what was wrong with my leg finally. Turns out that the MRI showed a stress fracture about 2-3 inches below my knee. We saw the ortho dr on Thursday and he confirmed the stress fracture. None of us can figure out how this happened but it's there so I guess it doesn't really matter at this point. Due to the location, he said a walking cast (boot) wouldn't help at all and might even cause more damage because it would only go up to just below my knee which would not be high enough to help the fracture due to it's location. He even said that it might even make it worse because the weight of the boot could cause the bone to grind together rather than healing. The alternatives were either a full leg cast that would go almost all the way up almost to my hip or to simply use crutches or a walker and stay off of it as much as possible for at least 3 weeks. I am supposed to go in in 3 weeks to have a new x-ray done. He said that it didn't show on the x-ray because it was too "fresh". He said that it won't show on an x-ray until it starts to heal a bit so he said that if it doesn't show any healing or enough healing at that time then we will have to talk about doing the full leg cast. Yay. (note sarcasm)

So I went and had to get some crutches but apparently I do not have the coordination to use both of them so I just use one on the side that is injured and it helps to keep the pressure off of it.

Then this morning I woke up around 3:30 or so with really bad stomach pains, kinda like cramping but it was constant. I had to get up and get the kids ready for school and get Jonathan fed and everything and I barely made it through all of that. I thought maybe if I ate soemthing it would go away so I ate a bowl of Rice Krispies but that didn't help at all. I think I actually felt worse after that. I got David on the bus and drove Nathan to school. I had some crackers in my car so I tried eating some of those and it was ok but I was still in a lot of pain. I put Jonathan in his crib with a bottle and his crib toy and he was happy to play until he got tired. Then he just drank his bottle and went to sleep.

Doug had been over at the new house working on the tool/garden shed. He called me around 10:30am and I was in so much pain that I was in tears. He asked me if I needed to go to the hospital and I said that I thought I did so he headed home. Meanwhile I started making phone calls trying to find someone to watch Jonathan and pick Nathan up at school and then meet David's bus and watch them until we got home. Amanda came and took JJ and then went to pick up Nathan then she came back to our house and met David's bus.

So at the hospital, they gave me an iv and I think I must have been a little bit dehydrated because they had a hard time finding a good vein and they have never had a hard time with that for me before. They started fluids and gave me some meds for nausea because the pain was so intense it was making me pretty woozy. Eventually they gave me some dilodid (nice!)for the pain and that helped a lot. They also drew a ton of blood for tests. All the tests came back normal so then the dr added a few more tests for me but those were normal too. So, the dr said that he was going to send me home and said that if the stomach pains came back to come back and they would do a CT scan. I thought they should have just done itw while I was aleady. I got a nice little nap so that was nice. So since they couldn't find anything wrong, they were sending me home with instructions to drink plenty fluids and to rest. The dr said that if the pains come back to go back and they would do a CT scan. Hopefully they are gone and we will just wait and see wha happens. The dr gave a new prescription for pain meds for my leg.

Exciting, I know. They gave me another dose of dilodid before I left so I would feel a little better. Anyway so that's what's going on here. So far the stomach is feeling tons better. Lana comes tomorrow and she will help me with everything. Thanks for reading! Anyway, I'm fallig asleep so I'm off. More later...