Living in Faith

I had my lumbar puncture (spinal tap) done last week and it went well. Or at least as well as I am used to No medical procedure I have done ever seems to go too smoothly but I have just chopped it up to I am in that 1% that if it goes wrong it will go wrong with me. Which according to the nurse with me on Tuesday it seems that there are a few people that deal with lots of medical issues and every time they have a ‘procedure ‘ done there is a fluke. I have seemed to fall into that category. Oh well what can you do but laugh about it.

The procedure itself went smooth it was all of the PRE procedure stuff that did not go smoothly. The nurse I had at the beginning was new to the department. NOT new just new to that department. First she said that I didn’t have to have blood drawn for the procedure even though I knew i had to because my neurologist said that I would because of one of the tests. So I got back to the room and the nurse said yes you do need to have blood drawn so she called my original nurse to come and do it. She came and I told her I have a port and that would be easiest because my veins are little and bad from chemo. She didn’t bring the stuff necessary with her to the room to use my port so she said she draw the blood from my arm. Let’s just say it didn’t work… like I warned her it wouldn’t. After her first attempt I told her I wanted her to use my port. She left and got the stuff to use my port. Before leaving she asked if I wanted freeze spray. I said yes. Basically what freeze spray does is exactly what it sounds like. You spray it on the skin where the port is located and it freezes or numbs or the area so that the the one inch needle they have to use doesn’t hurt as bad. I can have it accessed without the freeze spray but why be in any more pain than necessary with everything I have gone through in the past 4 months. So the nurse comes back and says “I couldn’t find the freeze spray, is that okay?” So I said fine. Well that’s when the newbie attempted to access my port the first time and FAILED. She couldn’t even get it to flush which even if you access it wrong you can usually flush saline in and she couldn’t. So she took the needle out and had to go find another. When she came back she miraculously found the freeze spray. UGH! I had been stuck twice and my procedure hadn’t even started yet!! On her second attempt she finally accessed it and got the blood. I asked her again if she could draw extra blood for my weekly chemo labs and she said she couldn’t because it wasn’t allowed. (this I know is not true because someone has done it in the past for me) so I didn’t push it. 

Now we are on to the actual reason I was there… for the spinal tap. This was nothing like you see on TV. THANK YOU LORD!!! I was so nervous about the procedure because my only knowledge of what to expect is what I have seen on ER, Grey’s Anatomy, or House. And we know just how accurate these shows are to real life.  For the actual procedure they numb up the area which stings like crazy for about 10 to 15 seconds then they add more numbing stuff deeper when the first stuff takes affect. Once you are completely numb they put insert the needle used to get the spinal fluid and you can’t feel pain at that point just pressure when it is inserted and pressure when they take it out. So the actual procedure isn’t that bad. Your nerves are the worst part to keep calm.

After the procedure they said that I basically needed to lay flat for the rest of the day, all day the next day, and then take it easy the following day. That is what I did until Friday. Everything was going well until I went to meet some girlfriends for lunch that’s when I got the worst headache of my life… no exaggeration! I left lunch early and started my 40 minute drive home. Before I even made it home I had to pull over on the side of the highway and throw up. Two miles later I was throwing up again in the middle of intersection. Again, not fun and a first for me. Once I made it home I laid on the couch and instantly my headache went from a 11 on a scale of 1 to 10 to a 2. So that basically meant that I got the spinal tap headache they warned me about. I called my neurologist and they said that I needed to go to the ER and get a blood patch done. Again, not fun! By this time it was already after 6:00 pm so on the advise of the doctor I decided to just keep lying flat and go to the ER the next morning. She said that if I went to the ER on a Friday night that I would not be a priority so I would likely be there all night. So Tyler and I went on Saturday to the ER. There goes our date day! Nothing like spending 6 hours in the ER on a Saturday instead of going to lunch and a movie. Oh well what can you do? To add to the fun Rachel was getting her last two molars and was running a fever most of the weekend so Gran had to take care of her.

So treatment for my spinal tap headache was a caffeine drip IV. Yes I did say a caffeine drip. The treatment plan for me was to hook me up to an IV of caffeine for about 4 hours. If that didn’t work then they would do the blood patch which I won’t explain because it is not pleasant and I didn’t have to do it. After a very long nap and a lot of caffeine my headache went away and they sent me home.

By the next day I was fine and very… awake.