i had to go and have my labs drawn again this am...all is good saw the ct/mri tech who i apparently yelled at, my bad, she said they took my med alert dog tag off in the er so she had no idea i couldnt have an mri. i refused to get in the tube and she didnt know why, i guess i wasnt as gorked as they thought...she tried to put me in the tube, i yelled and then went into the ct room and climbed onto the table and fell asleep. apparently the er doc was not happy but the tech told him something was up...they looked at my ct films and finally got it
the rabdo...i had one patch at a time before but that time they were so concerned about my pain levels and letting me leave the hospital, i am not a good patient i get bored quickly so they thought 2 patches slapped on and dilaudid, mscontin, valium, and a bunch of other meds would be ok. so i left the hospital at 2000 hrs and promptly went to bed. the following morning my mom checked on me, told me my meds and some food were ready in the kitchen and went to work. she called all day and i never picked up. she was finally able to leave work (she is an iv sedation/recovery room nurse at the surgery center). when she came into my room i was lying on my bed (in the exact same position she had left me in) and i was blue. while she was waiting for the ambulance she checked my vitals (low bp and 3-4 resps/min). in the ambulance they gave me narcan and i improved a bit. i was in the er for a few hours then moved to the icu under the care of the trauma surgeons team. i guess the good thing about everything to that point was the fact that i worked as an emt for the ambi service and in the er for a few years so i knew all of the techs/nurses/docs and they all knew me so they knew my medical history. it didnt hurt that my mom was the SO of the CEO of the hospital at the time. anyway so the first concern was whether i had accidently ODed on the oral meds i had been given, all knowing mom brought all of the containers with her. after multiple people counted all of them it became clear that i hadnt taken anything. for about 24hrs they couldnt figure out what was going on with me, then in a random moment of consciousness i complained about my legs feeling tingly. my mom had worked in an icu with a lot of elderly patients when she first got her degree and remembered that patients with rabdo exhibited the same symptoms so she talked to the doc. they were already flooding my system with fluids because of multiple system failures but the doc ordered a more percise lab series and the results showed that i had rabdo. i was in the icu for 2 weeks and in pcu for another week. in that time i coded twice, my kidneys failed and i was put on dialysis and i gained 70 pounds in fluid retention (5'3 100 to 170). the doc actually wrote an article about it because i was one of the few patients who was 1)young 29 at the time 2)no previous major health issues (not counting the crps of course and 3)was on a pillow matress instead of a hard floor surface.
the trauma doc called docs all over the country and none of them had ever encountered a patient whose crps had resulted in total system failure. in the end the DX was something to the effect of the crps had moved into my internal organs. as random as it sounds the same dystonia that is common in extremities was in my organs. because movement was restricted the meds in the duragesic patches didnt flow through my blood stream, it sat in the organs and as a result the meds were at a toxic level. the only reason i am alive today is because even though the trauma doc didnt know what was wrong he ordered unusual labs and was able to treat me effectively. whenever one of my docs describes it to another physician who is knew to treating me they say it is total body crps (as opposed to full body that implies that all extremities are involved).
i think i have been a medical anomilly from age 9 (dislocated knee in a kid who wasnt a gymnist) so the rabdo was just another chapter in the book. i brushed it off pretty quickly and actually had my stim trial and implant within a month of my release from the hospital. my mom on the other hand was totally freaked, it was nice that we live in a small town so everyone (nurses and docs) came and hung out in my room so she didnt have to focus on me lying unconscious in the bed attached to lots of tubes.
oh well i do love the go big or go home moniker
i think to some degree or another there will always be new chapters added to the book of CRPS