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Monday, August 20, 2012

My long night in the hospital.....

So, I wanted to explain my recent health scare before everyone in my life starts to freak out. First off let me say that I am in no danger of dying anytime soon ( I hope). As most of you know recently I had a bad case of tonsillitis. I was quite sick for a while but they got me on some medicine and I finally seemed to get better or so I thought.  Well about three days ago I found a lump in my neck. In addition to this lump I have had an annoying itching on one side of my neck. It was on the same side as the lump, this lump was located very close to the "tubing" for my VP shunt. Let me briefly explain what a VP shunt is and what it does.

Most of you probably know I was born three months premature. Due to being born so early the blood vessels in my brain were underdeveloped and one of them broke. When it broke, it filled my brain with fluid. Obviously this was no good and they had to fix it because fluid and/or pressure on your brain can kill you or cause brain damage. I got real lucky. I had great doctors and they put a pump on my brain connected to a tube that snakes its way through my body into my stomach. All the excess fluid drains naturally from my brain into my stomach lining, keeping the pressure off my brain and keeping me alive.

When I was 13 years old due to my growth spurt my "tube" broke and they had to replace it with a longer one. Since then I have had no problems to speak of. Well when I felt this "lump" it was really close to my tubing and this obviously freaked my girlfriend out. She insisted we go to the hospital and get me checked out.

We arrived there at just before 6pm. We waited to see the admitting nurse after giving all my information I got admitted. After much waiting we saw basically an intern. Now my Spanish is pretty decent now but it is just so much easier to have my beautiful and amazing girlfriend Viviana do all the talking for me because A) she knows my total medical history forwards and backwards now and can say all the right words correctly and quickly. B) For some odd reason I understand Vivi's Spanish MUCH better than other people's Spanish so its much easier if I can just listen and then Vivi can translate Spanish into Spanish for me haha.

Well our intern didn't know what was wrong with me so she referred us to a "real" doctor. After more waiting we finally got to see a "real" doctor. Well she wasn't exactly sure what was wrong with me either so she wanted a second opinion from another doctor. Yet more waiting. After much time we finally got to see him. He had a rough idea of what was wrong but he decided he wanted me to get my blood drawn and a CAT scan/picture of my brain. Of course he couldn't draw my blood or take my CAT scan so both of these things required waiting once again.

The only upside to all this waiting was Vivi and I got to practice my Spanish and her English a lot. I feel that we both improved over this time haha. Well even though I told them my pain was only a two or a three on a scale of 1-10 (ten being the worst) they insisted that I needed an IV saline solution. The nurse decided to stick me not in my vein but into my upper arm/hand. She was super nice and super professional but man it hurt so bad! My other nurse was terrible I think she was blind. She missed my vein (for drawing my blood) THREE times. So now both of my arms are out of commission and hurt badly. My IV was totally unneeded in my opinion and now I am in more pain than when I came into the hospital haha.

So, after eight hours and one intern,two doctors,a specialist, a CAT scan and having my blood drawn they have determined that nothing is wrong with my shunt and I have a blocked lymph gland from my recent tonsillitis. They gave me some medicine to make this lump go away and it is not serious. I also seemed to have developed contact dermatitis/allergy/itchy stress rash on my neck. This is also not serious but I don't yet know what I am allergic too. I have never had an allergy to clothes or soap or anything so this is strange but they gave me medicine for this also and it doesn't seem to serious.

So the good news is I am not dying. My lump/allergy I hope will be cleared up soon. My shunt is fine and I shouldn't need anymore hospital visits (I hope) because we didn't get to leave there until 2am! The quality of care was good it was just SLOW SLOW. It also annoys me that they have to have a different person (hence more waiting time) for every single little thing. (including paying your bill!) the good news is though even without Colombian health insurance the whole visit cost me only 125 dollars USD! Pretty damn cheap for a Specialist, a CAT scan, blood drawn and seeing a "regular" doctor. Colombia has not been good to me health wise but I am hoping from here on out to be healthy and have no more problems. Wish me luck!-Tyler

P.S. I have the most beautiful, amazing,awesome girlfriend in all of Colombia. She has spent a total of 12 hours of her life seeing doctors and hospitals with me and all without complaining. I would never be able to do with without her. Thank you/ Muchas Gracias a Viviana Gaitan!  :)



  1. glad to hear everything turned out fine. And lucky to have a translator, your medical history sounds like a real challenge to explain in spanish, lol.

  2. Hola amor, gracias por tus lindas palabras, últimamente muchas de ellas están dedicadas hablar de mi. Quiero pedirte disculpas por mi torpe movimiento con la solución salina esa noche... y quiero que sepas que no solo puedo pasar 12 horas en un hospital por ti, puedo hacer mucho mas para que tu siempre estés bien!!!! :D

    PD: tengo el mejor novio, un hombre maravilloso, con un buen corazón y me hace muy feliz!!!!

    Viviana Gaitan

  3. I know it was a long ordeal, but it's nice to know everything is working fine. mom