Everything is okay now, but my oldest daughter, Katie, wound up in the hospital all weekend with pancreatitis.
Even when she’s sick, she has a sense of humor. She kept telling me she was going to make a Lifetime movie of her experience, and title it, “Christmas in the Hospital.” (And in the photo above, she practiced for her cameo.)
Katie, who’s 18, had been feeling sick for the last two weeks. After the first week, her dad took her to urgent care and she was diagnosed with costochondritis — a painful inflammation of the cartilage that connects the ribs to the breastbone. The urgent care doctor prescribed rest, Tylenol 3s, and prescription antacids.
Katie didn’t get better, though. Last Thursday, she ran out of Tylenol 3 and switched to Motrin and Excedrin. By Friday night she was throwing up everything she ate or drink — even small sips of water — and she could hardly sit up. She was obviously dehydrated, and she had a splitting headache.
I took her to the emergency room at Fairview Southdale. There they did x-rays, which showed her pancreas was enlarged, and blood tests that showed elevated lipase levels. The ER doctor suspected gallstones, so they did a full set of ultrasounds, but luckily she didn’t have any.
Even so, pancreatitis is bad enough. The doctor put Katie on morphine and a saline IV, and admitted her right away so she could have a few days of “bowel rest” with nothing to eat or drink — just the I.V.
Ultimately, the doctors concluded that she started out with costochondritis, but all of the pain relievers she took irritated her system and inflamed her pancreas.
“Bowel rest” sounds incredibly disgusting, but it worked. After a day and a half, she started eating beef and chicken broth, and gradually worked back up to real food. We came home from the hospital on Christmas Eve.
Katie is still tired and sore all over, but she’s eating well. She even got into the Christmas chocolates last night — against my better judgment, but her doctors did say, “no restrictions.” She’s also taking just one medication a day, a form of Prilosec.
It was a long weekend. Today my parents are going to come stay with Katie while the rest of us — my husband and two younger daughters — go to my sister’s house a couple of hours away for a belated Christmas gift exchange.
