A Cute Diverticulitis

A Cute Diverticulitis

After my first-ever bout with diverticulitis, I wanted to make notes about what happened over the last week.  First, I want to say there is nothing “cute” about acute diverticulitis.  You are bent doubled over, knees to chin with severe pain in your lower left stomach area.  Some people have nausea but all I had was pain.

 Sunday, May 19, 2019

On this particular Sunday morning I woke up to the normal pop up reminders on my phone’s Facebook app, one of which reminded me of a golf trip to Mexico seven years ago with my buddy Scott for his birthday.  There were several photos from the flight down as well as our golfing and diving that week so I wrote a note wishing him a great birthday and went outside to do some gardening and motorhome upkeep and repairs.  The weather is hot here in north Georgia now so getting out early and doing any outside work is almost mandatory.  It had been getting into the high 80’s the last few days so I wanted to start some roof repairs on the motorhome and get it ready for another trip out west.

I spent several hours doing the roof repair, letting things dry before starting the next phase when I decided to come in out of the heat to re-hydrate for a while. Later, I went back outside to work on a drip irrigation system for many of the deck planters and pots so they would get watered while away.  I started to feel pain and discomfort in my lower-left abdomen, went to the bathroom but afterward it felt like a golf ball was lodged on that left side. It did not go away and only intensified as the afternoon turned into evening.  I was awaiting the start of the season finale for Game of Thrones.  GOT was about what I expected with several story lines left for further development, if wanted by the show’s producers.  All in all, I was a little disappointed but as my pain grew by the hour it did not matter anymore.

I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what it was and several hours later the intense pain was still there in my lower belly.  Around 10:30 pm, I decided it was time for a trip to the emergency room, which was fortunate, because as I would learn, a proper diagnosis of diverticulitis required a CT scan with contrast.

The ER nurses and doctor asked me to rate the pain on a scale of one to ten, and I answered it this way: “The pain is only eight, but the discomfort level is a 9 or 10.” (If doctors ever ask you to rate the “pain,” I encourage you to differentiate between pain and discomfort as well; because when I first answered that the pain was an “8” to the check in desk they seemed to handle my case very slowly.  Once I made this distinction in the exam room, they moved faster.)  It was not too long before an IV was started and a shot of morphine was given to help with the pain.  They drew blood and the nurse waited for me to give them a urine sample before they could do a CT scan with contrast.  I was running a fever, so there was definitely an infection in my belly.

The pain meds did not seem to alleviate the pain and discomfort so they gave me morphine’s “big brother”, laudanum. I have heard about this opioid in several movies like, “Wyatt Earp”, “The Shootist” and “Deadwood”.  I will say that it took the pain away very quickly and lowered my threshold to a manageable level.    

The doctor’s nurse drew blood and did a urinalysis on the sample I provided, and after those test results looked okay, they sent me for a “CT scan with contrast.”

One of the reasons they did the urinalysis was to make sure my kidneys were functioning properly, a precursor to having the CT scan with contrast.  (It sounds like you can’t have the contrast if you have kidney problems.)

The CT scan showed that the problem was most likely acute diverticulitis in the lower-left abdomen, the sigmoid colon to be specific.  After my colonoscopy several months ago, it looked like there may be another potential problem to watch out for over the next couple of years, diverticulitis, and now it moved from a possible problem to a full blown painful event to deal with.

All I knew of this disease was from an old comedy sketch on Saturday Night Live.  Doug and Wendy Whiner is a married couple played by Robin Duke (Wendy Whiner) and Joe Piscopo (Doug Whiner).  The couple was just as their name suggested - whiny and annoying.  Their sketches had them in a variety of situations, from being passengers on a flight to adopting a child (Drew Barrymore).  In one particularly funny sketch, the couple was attending an SNL broadcast.  They are shown in line waiting to be seated, nagging the usher (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and whining about who the host would be.  The couple always mentions that they have diverticulitis, usually whining this in unison.  This was a funny thing to think about and look up a YouTube video at one o’clock in the morning.  I couldn’t watch long as the pain hurt too much when I laughed.

Doug and Wendy Whiner SNL Comedy Sketch 

The ER doctor prescribed 2 antibiotics, one named Metronidazole 500 MG, and the other Ciprofloxacin HCL 500 MG.  This will hopefully get rid of the infection in my colon. He also prescribed Hydrocodone, one every six hours, as needed, for pain. 

Still somewhat doubled over I was discharged from the hospital around three in the morning.  The drive back to Helen was slow, painful, with not a vehicle in sight the whole drive home.  The song, “A Pirate Looks at 40” playing in my head; “I passed out and I rallied and I sprung a few leaks”. 

The next several days were spent lying in bed, knees to my chin hoping the pain meds dulled things enough to sleep.  If not in bed, I was lying on the sofa, not doing anything, trying to recover.  It is a pain in the butt (side) to feel this way, as I hate being sick.

Finally on Thursday, May 23, 2019, I began to feel somewhat better, not normal but a little better.  I could feel the diverticulitis pain if I poked on it directly, but otherwise I didn’t feel it across my whole stomach. I’m writing this on Friday morning, and I still need to take the antibiotics for a few more days.  I began eating some crackers and a bowl of soup Tuesday night, and everything seemed okay.  I had my first bowel movement, since Sunday, yesterday so hopefully things will start to return to normal soon.  So far it just seems the gasses want to be released so Icewind blows once again as the winds of change have come over me.  Growing older is not for sissies folks.

“Yes, I am a pirate, two hundred years too late
The cannons don't thunder, there's nothing to plunder
I'm an over-forty victim of fate
Arriving too late, arriving too late” – Jimmy Buffett