My trip to the ER this weekend

I haven't had a period since like 2 days after coming home from my mastectomy in April 2006. It's been great. No blood, no mess, no anything. I would get horrid mood swings, but I was willing to deal with that if I didn't have the blood.

Last month I got what I call the"warning" cramps. The kind that come just like a day or two before your period starts. Then I got a yucky brown discharge for a day or two. I mentioned it to my oncologist and he didn't seem too concerned. Well this month I started to get those funky cramps again. But this time they got way worse and then I started to bleed. Not a little bit, but tons. I was soaking a super plus tampon and pad every 90 minutes or so. Not good. It got so bad Saturday night, that I felt something funny and went to the bathroom. I had bled through my pad, my undies, and my pajamas. Clots were passing and it was like I was literally dripping bright red blood! It was gross and disgusting. Jason was with the girls helping them go to sleep. So I call my mom and wake her up with all this.

I thought with tamoxifen that I wouldn't have a period for 5 years. Through all the info I've been given, that's what I understood would happen. So when I got this heavy heavy period, it totally threw me for a loop and scared me. Even when I had periods, they were never like this, even after having my babies. She said to go to the ER for it. I felt dumb and scared, so I called my oncall oncologist and he said it's fairly unusual to bleed like that on tamoxifen and it might be a good idea to go in to the ER. So I have to wake up dh and tell him what's going on. He insisted on coming with me and managed to get my inlaws to come over and sleep on the couch for us.I felt like all this was unnecessary but I was still kind of scared. All sorts of things went through my mind.

But we get to Adventist(closest hospital but I would have preferred SWMC) and we were the only ones there! Saturday night in an emergency room? Seemed crazy to me. Got back fairly quickly and into a private little room. I was given an IV because they wanted me to have liquids in me in case I was becoming anemic. That HURT!! I told the nurse that and she said they don't mess around in the ER. They find a good vein and get it without second guesses or stopping to see if it hurts. It did. Plus all the lovely tape they put on my arm to keep it in place. It was in the middle of my forearm on the backside.

Anyways, I had to lay on one of those lovely pads and dress in one of those nasty ugly backless gowns. I was always fine when a nurse or the doctor came in, but once they would leave, I would start shaking almost uncontrollably. I finally laid down and that helped a bit. They took my blood and told me I was not anemic, so that's good. The doctor came in and started the internal exam and barely got started and could tell that things weren't right. She said that my uterus was "fried" or "friable" whatever that means. I'm still researching it. Said it's soft and moveable. Anyways, they wanted to give me progesterone hormones to stop the bleeding. I can't have that since my breast cancer is hormone driven. So I was given a prescription for Naproxem (dur, Aleve) and just for fun, they asked me what I like to take for pain. I told them after surgeries I would have Vicodin or Percoset. So they wrote me up one for Vicodin. I was really surprised but happy. Sometimes you just need one and I was out for a long time.

We leave the ER around 3am with instructions to call m regular doc, my oncologist, and a gynocologist on Monday. We also had to find a 24 hour pharmacy to fill my prescriptions. We ended up going to the Walgreens by Peacock Lane and wandering around in there while my stuff was filled. We got home around 3:40am and didn't get into bed till close to 4am. My girls never even knew that their grandparents were here. They snoozed through all of it. Thank heavens for my inlaws. They came over immediately and slept on the couch and easy chair while we were at the hospital.

Sunday night I started to lose it with all the info I had because i was getting a stomach pains and I just could not handle anything else happening. Our whole family has been doing the urps and poops and yuckies lately and I could NOT handle one more things going on while I was worried about all ths. So dh called President P and he came over and watched me cry and listened to what was going on. Then he and dh gave me a blessing. He hugged me and said he loved me which started me off again.

It's now Tuesday afternoon and the bloodflow has slowed down considerably and I haven't had cramps for almost 24 hours. I'm very very grateful. I have doctor appointments with my regular doctor on Thursday and a new gynocologist next week.

The one thing I'm happy about is how well I handled things in the hospital. Nothing bothered me. I've been through worse, so anything the nurse told me, I was fine with. I know there is a slight risk of uterine or cervical cancer with tamoxifen use, but I'm not going to worry about that till I have these other doctor visits and find out what's up. I'm good with a hysterectomy if I need to, but that's down the road a ways.

So think good thoughts this week as I go through more doctor visits!!!