Things have been quite down the hill lately in terms of my health.
One thing led to another.
It came to a point where I got hospitalised twice within a week.
I was discharged on Sunday, and by Monday I was back in the ward.
It all started with a simple pain in my right upper quadrant. Went to see Shona who ordered some blood test.
Turned out the ALT on my liver test was concerningly elevated.
She thought it was because of the beta blocker, because that's the only meds I took.
Then she contacted Darren, my cardiologist, who agreed to change the beta blocker from Carvedilol to Metropolol. Carvedilol is RARELY and less likely to caused the elevation of the ALT, but just to be safe Darren changed it.
Now with beta blocker, the first time you had them - or when they increased your dose - normally had a brutal effect. Some will have vivid nightmares, hallucinations, some will have a super low blood pressure or a super low heart rate (which will make you feel very light headed). On me, I'd feel soooo exhausted for the first few days. Then my body will adjust to it and I'd feel a lot better.
With Metropolol, surprisingly I dont feel any of those. Which is good.
Anyway - a week after I was on Metropolol they did another bloodtest. And the liver test has gotten worse. So the carvedilol is definitely NOT the culprit.
Shona called me on Thursday, said that if I vomit I needed to go to ED. and she scheduled to meet with me first thing on Friday.
Sure enough I vomited several times that Thursday night. But ofcourse, I didn't go to the ED as told. I chose to wait til morning, I was going to see Shona anyway.
Friday-26 Aug I saw Shona at the medical centre. I looked bad, apparently. Shona was a bit upset that I didn't go to ED the night before. She gave me no option- she called the registrar right there and then, wrote a letter and ordered me to go straight to ED.
I was still arguing with her. Told her I was planning to go to hospital - but for my 2 pm meeting in my office! Not to ED!
She simply said "nope! No office. Stop thinking about work!"
Then yeah. So Andi drove me to ED.
Sure enough, I was admitted. Put an IV line and put me on drips.
They did X-rays, bloodtests, ultrasound.... They can't really find the caused. Everything looked normal.
During my stay at the hospital, the pain was sooo bad that I was given morphines coz no other pain killers worked. Boy that little tablet was God given miracle!
Couldn't eat any solids for days. They put me on drips. The nausea was so bad that I couldn't even take a sip of water. They gave me some anti-nausea through my IV line. Cant remember the name, but it was a strong meds that normally given to cancer patient who goes through chemo.
Yea it was that bad, considering medical professional here dont easily give meds.
I was discharged on day 3 because all the test came back okay and I started to eat solids, I was feeling okay.
But the next day at 830 AM, i started vomitting badly. I vomitted more than a dozen times in 3 hours.
So off we went again. Back into the ward. This time, they ordered endoscopy where they put a camera through my throat to see the inside of my tummy.
I was sedated, completely out throughout the procedure. The next thing I remember I woke up in the recovery room and they wheeled me back to my ward.
I felt really wuzzy. I talked shits. I was such a hoot! Kinda like when I got drunk. I can't seem to stop talking! It was quite embarrassing.
Anyway, they found 2 ulcers in the tummy. So we found the culprit!
I'm a lot better now, but just like mouth ulcer- there's nothing much you can do. You just have to wait for it to heal.
Mine wasn't caused by bacteria, so no antibiotics given. Im on antacids for a month. Then another endoscopy to follow up.
The hospital food? Sucks. Big time.
So that was pretty much my story about what's going on in the last 2 weeks.
Today is 12 September. I had my 6 weeks check-up with Darren for my heart. ECG showed my heart rate is still 128 bpm. Darren was quite surprise that it still fast even after Metropolol.
But he wanted to wait for a couple more weeks before he increased the dose or change the meds. The reason was he wanted to see whether my ulcers contributed to it or not.
I was scheduled for another 24hrs Holter monitoring on 30 September. The we'll see how it goes from there.
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