A Blood Faucet
In the middle of January, I woke up in the middle of the night with my nose gushing blood. It was like a faucet turned on full blast. As soon as my mom saw how much blood was coming out of me she called 911. Originally we got an idiotic doctor in the ER who insisted it had nothing to do with the fact that I had just had a brain tumor removed through my nose three weeks earlier.
We got home from the hospital around 4 AM. Around 9 AM my mom called my neurosurgeon who was irate that they hadn’t tested the blood for cerebrospinal fluid.
“Of course, it’s related to her surgery,” he’d fumed, as he made an appointment for me to come to see him in two days. His strict instructions were to immediately return to the ER for any more bleeding.
“Have them check it for cerebrospinal fluid, if it comes back positive get her here immediately.” Dr. Swearingen had instructed.
Blood Coming From My Brain
When I started pumping blood out my nose again at 2 AM the following night, my mom called 911 again. The ER tested my blood for cerebrospinal fluid. When it was present and the bleeding just wouldn’t stop, Life-Flight was called. They rushed me to Mass General for emergency surgery.
After the surgery, I started having more symptoms of that pesky diabetes insipidus disease. Diabetes insipidus occurs when you can’t concentrate fluids. You just pee out all of the fluid in your body and your sodium levels skyrocket. You also get very very thirsty and want to drink everything in sight.
Dr. Swearingen couldn’t put me back on the nasal spray Desmopressin (Desmopressin is the medication used to treat diabetes insipidus). My whole nose was packed from my surgery. So he put me on a pill form.
Diabetes Insipidus and High Sodium Levels in My Blood
Two days later, while I was still in the ICU, my diabetes insipidus still wasn’t responding to the oral desmopressin. The levels of sodium in my blood were still sky high. This meant I was quite dehydrated. I was constantly desperately thirsty, but they wouldn’t let me drink more than 2 liters of fluids a day. It was like torture.
“Some people just don’t respond to the oral dose. You have gastroparesis and malabsorption so it’s not surprising that it’s not helping you. We’re going to have to put you on the subcutaneous desmopressin instead,” he explained. “Do you think you’d be able to give yourself injections?”
Learning How To Inject Myself
I thought about it for a moment, I didn’t like the idea of getting two shots a day. Giving them to myself felt daunting. On the other hand, I couldn’t stand this insatiable thirst. Also, I knew that I couldn’t leave the hospital until the sodium levels in my blood straightened out. Besides I was going to be a nurse. This would be good practice.
“Yeah, I can do that.” I hesitantly agreed.
That morning the nurse came into my room with a vial and a needle. She showed me how to flip off the top of the vial. Then she scrubbed the hub of the vial for fifteen seconds and drew back the amount of air that was equivalent to the dose I would be getting. She then demonstrated how to push the air into the vial, flip the vial upside down and draw up the dose into the syringe and push out all the air.
That part I was okay with, it had nothing to do with inserting sharp pointy needles into innocent skin.
Then she had me pick a site on my stomach, about two inches away from my belly button and swab the area with another alcohol wipe. After that, she instructed me to pinch up the area of skin at the chosen and sterilized site.
The Moment of Puncture
“Now you’re going to with a little quick flick of your wrist, dart the whole needle into your skin at a 90- degree angle,” she explained.
Panic was setting in. I was about to put a scary needle into my own body. I took a few faulty attempts where I got scared and stopped the needle a centimeter away from my skin.
“Take a deep breath to relax, then as you finish blowing out just flick the needle into your skin.” the nurse explained.
Feeling determined, I held the needle between my thumb and forefinger, blew out my deep breath, and then before I had a chance to change my mind, darted the needle in and sunk it all the way in so that the needle was completely embedded in my abdomen.
Surprisingly it didn’t even hurt that much.
Professional Desmopressin Injector
According to the nurse’s instruction, I depressed the plunger all the way so that I could send all of the medicine into my fat cells, where it needed to go, and then withdrew the needle and safety locked it.
I immediately felt so accomplished. Now I knew how to give myself subcutaneous injections. It hadn’t been that physically difficult or painful at all.
For the next few days, even after I was moved from the ICU to a regular floor, the nurses supervised me giving myself the injections of Desmopressin until I felt comfortable doing it on my own. It didn’t take long.
The first time I gave myself the Desmopressin shot at home without supervision, I was shaking and sweating the whole time, but within a week it became like second nature.
Moving Forward With Life
Once I had my packing in my nose removed a few days after coming home we had tried to switch the Desmopressin back to the nasal spray, but sadly it was no longer having an effect that route and it was explained to me that I would be on the injectable version permanently.
“At least I’ll be a pro at giving shots in nursing school,” I joked with my mom and doctors.
Things were supposed to get better from there on in. I’d had the surgery, I’d had the revision, I was getting my figure back, the tumor was gone. Sure I was still on a prednisone taper, and more medications than ever, but now it was time to get better to go back to nursing school and start my adult life. It was time to put all those IV lines, NJ tubes, and blood tests behind me.
Back to Nursing School
I only took two courses in the spring semester of my sophomore year in nursing school. Taking Health Care Ethics and Pharmacology was enough for me. Thinking about it, I had to take into account everything I was dealing with, and all of my doctors’ appointments. Both of my classes were really interesting and a lot of fun. I had a leg up on my classmates in pharmacology because I had been on half the meds we learned about.
I was able to go to classes with just the walker and that had been my goal so I felt very accomplished. The other students were great about holding open doors for me and there were elevators in all of the buildings as well as ramps to get in and out.
The extra weight that I had been carrying around due to excess levels of cortisol was now dissolving away. In the four-month period of my semester, I lost so much weight that I went from being a size 2x in women’s to my previous baseline, children’s size 14. It was easier to move around, my face wasn’t swollen anymore, I had a little more energy. My baseline blood pressure dropped dramatically from the high levels of severe hypertension I had been experiencing.
I finished out the spring semester with an A in both classes and using a cane instead of a walker to get around.