Well! It's been an exciting few days, I guess that's what I get for complaining about being bored with my recovery. Tuesday night I went to bed as usual but woke up to some extra bad tonsil pain. Shortly thereafter, I started spitting out copious amounts of blood. I called my doc (he didn't sound happy to be woken at 2:30am, by the way, which I found amusing. Dude, you're the on-call doctor and I'm sorry to disturb your beauty sleep, but you know what's disturbing my beauty sleep? Spitting blood. So suck it.) He told me to gargle ice chips, which seemed to stop the bleeding for a bit. I went back to bad, but let me tell you, it's a bit hard to relax and sleep when you're worried that your throat may start to bleed again. And sure enough, at about 4:30am it started to bleed again and ice would not stop it.
I woke up Jeff and my mom, and my mom took me to the North Austin Medical Center ER, where my doctor was kind enough to show up to see me just before 7am. By then the bleeding had slowed and a clot had formed and my doctor decided that rather than do another surgery to cauterize the bleed right away, he wanted to see if the clot would hold and the throat heal all by itself. To give the clot every chance of succeeding, I would have to not ingest any liquids, not even my own spit. I was admitted to the hospital, put on an IV, given IV pain and anti-nausea meds, and instructed to suck the spit out of my mouth using a Yankauer catheter (one of those things they use at the dentist).
Over all, I have to say the hospital experience has been good. I've done pretty much nothing but sleep for the past 24 hours, as the Demerol/Phenergen combo knocks me out. And the bleeding has completely stopped, and I should be getting discharged around 4 today, once they are sure that putting me back on a liquid diet again won't re-start the bleeding. I've never been so excited to have been given permission to swallow my own spit. I'm so relieved the clot seems to be holding because more surgery to cauterize bleeds would have set my recovery back by a week, and I don't know about you, but I don't think I could have faced another week of complaints about feeling shitty.
So - here's hoping my next update will be from the comfort of my own home and that it's smooth sailing for the remainder of this healing process. I will, however, miss the IV Demerol. That shit is good.
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