Return of the 'jections or The Long Night

Ok, so I didn't have to wait a full month to know that my wart hadn't completely gone. It was still there. Weakened. Perhaps dying, I wasn't sure. But I knew it remained.

And so, September 24th rolled around and I returned to Dr. Pop's office. I began my 45 minutes of waiting room time at around 2pm.

When I finally saw the doctor he said, "how've you been, kid? how's your wart?"

I showed him. He seemed really pleased. "I think one more round of injections will do it."

I asked about the cost--again, he told me they were free. I would only be charged for the office visit. Ok. Thanks again, Pop. I also made a point of telling him that those injections hurt. I told him he needed to let Sahm know he'd been wrong. The injections hurt like crazy. And so did the aftermath. Well, I could tell him myself, said the doctor. As if on cue, Sahm walked in. And Dr. Pop gave instructions to debride and also sent in the same evil nurse who had jabbed a loaded needle into my foot the month before.

Sahm proved himself as sensitive as ever. I sat on the exam bed and lifted my foot to show him. He took a look and then I asked him if he'd like me to lie on my stomach again. "No, I don't think you need to do that."

With my pregnant belly protruding obviously, I said, "Well, good, because lying on my stomach is really uncomfortable right now."

"[I wasn't listening to you just now and have no inkling why you might have said what you just said so] actually, yeah. Let's have you lie on your stomach."

My mom seemed to want me to say "hello, dummy, I'm pregnant and I'm not sure I can handle that" but I told her to forget it. I could handle it.

When the debridement--much briefer this time--was over, that nurse came to me with her needle. This time, the first injection wasn't too painful--just the small poke they always warn you about. The next two were more of the grit your teeth and stuff that scream back down in your throat kind I remembered. Oh, and make sure you resist every nerve in your body telling you that you must yank that foot away from the needle with all possible haste. But then it was over, the band-aid was on, and I was free to limp away.

The problem is that the next 18 hours are going to be so difficult to write about that I may resort to simply listing the events. Fully recreating the details for you might send me over the edge.

1. Pain came. I winced and groaned and yelped. I limped and hopped about but mostly I sat down.
2. I took Tylenol. It helped at first.
3. I went to my sister-in-law's Scentsy party wearing Crocs. So stylish. I felt fine until towards the end of the party. I was getting ready to leave when pain came whooshing back with all its sting-y, throbby wonder.
4. I went home and waited until around 9 to take more Tylenol. It didn't help at all.
4.5. Did I mention that Tylenol did nothing to make this pain remotely manageable?
5. I was in stunning, mindblowing, excruciating pain. My heel throbbed, ached, stung, with twanged with periodic shard stabbings that built in intensity. Lifting my foot hurt. Moving it or any of the muscles of my foot and leg hurt. Resting it on anything hurt. I tried to elevate it, and that seemed better than nothing, but I was in so much pain I couldn't seem to hold my foot still. I shifted and shook and writhed, moving endlessly to find the one impossible magical comfortable position. No luck.
6. Around 11, I decided to try to go to bed. But how would I be able to sleep with this amount of pain? I had not the smallest hope.
7. Ice. I tried it. The problem was that the pain caused by placing the towel-wrapped ice bag against my foot caused me to scream. I cried.
8. Jeremy came to bed around 12. He came into our room to find me sobbing. He helped me with ice again (ouch) and we tried to figure out what if anything we could do. I couldn't figure out anything. He convinced me to call Dr. Pop's office to see if they had an overnight number where I could reach someone. I called. My only option was to page Dr. Pop personally, and I was scared to do it. This pain was knives and exploding eyeballs, and I felt helpless to the point of panic, but I didn't want to bother him.
9. Jeremy went to sleep for a bit while I tried to sleep. I called my mom at around 1am. (Note to all mothers reading this: your kids will call you in the middle of the night for the rest of your life. Deal with it.) I explained the details and she said I should page Dr. Pop. I needed help here.
10. I paged him a few minutes later. And waited.
11. He didn't call me back.
12. Jeremy went back to sleep a little but woke at around 1:45 to the sound of me sobbing again with the anguish, agony and exhaustion. He insisted that I page the doctor again.
13. Dr. Pop called back. I explained who I was and what was going on, made sure he knew I was 18 weeks pregnant, and asked him to do anything he could for me. He was very apologetic. "I'm so sorry, kid. I hate for this stuff to happen, especially to the gorgeous girls like you." Uh yeah. He even said that he wished he was with me to give me a big hug right now. Hmm.
14. He called an all-night pharmacy and chatted with the pharmacist about the best thing to prescribe to someone like me, and then he called me back to give me the details. He talked with me for quite a while, explaining what he was prescribing and why. Then he spoke to Jeremy, telling him how to find the pharmacy and what Jeremy needed to know to help me.
15. Husband of the year got in the car at approximately 2:15am and drove 20 minutes across town to the only all-night pharmacy Dr. Pop knew about.
16. I called my mom and filled her in.
17. Nervous preg-nelly that I am about drugs, I paged my midwife to have a talk with her about the safety of Vicodin and Prednizone during pregnancy. I didn't really want to disturb her, but I knew if she'd found out I was wondering if I should call and then didn't, she'd scold me. She said the Vicodin was fine, especially when taken for a short time. She told me to wait on the prednizone because less is known about its safety during pregnancy.
18. Jeremy arrived and I immediately swallowed the Vicodin and ate a piece of bread. It was nearly 3am.
19. After we got settled in bed, I told myself that that it would only take about 30 minutes to kick it. I decided to simply count from one to sixty 30 times. Either the counting would put me to sleep or it would keep my mind occupied until the pain was bearable enough for me to fall asleep. I remember counting to sixty at least 4 or 5 times, but Jeremy says I was asleep in an incredibly short amount of time.
20. I slept.
21. About 30 minutes before it was time to take the next dose of Vicodin, I awoke with enough pain to know I needed more drugs soon. I tossed and turned until the magic time arrived and swallowed more of that blessedly effective substance. Not long after that, my kids were up, but Jeremy got up with them and let me sleep a long time.

I took one more dose of Vicodin, but when it was time for the 4th dose, I had no real pain to speak of as long as I stayed off of my left foot. By the end of that Friday, I had done plenty of walking around and I could put weight on that heel with very little difficulty. And by Saturday morning, it was hard to believe the monstrous Thursday night had actually happened.

But it did. True story.

[The rest: I spoke Dr. Pop Friday afternoon and got a tongue lashing for not taking the Prednizone. He persuaded me to take some that afternoon. He ordered me to come in to his office Saturday morning, which I did. I was again scolded for putting off the anti-inflammatory steroidal drug--Dr. Pop literally slapped my hand. He also declared again how sorry he was, kid, that I'd had to go through this. He hates causing people pain, especially the beautiful ones like me. And he stated that he felt this treatment was going to do the trick--the wart was probably on its way out now. But if somehow it didn't go away this time, he would not be using the injections on me again. "your body just reacts too strongly to it, kid. We won't do this to you again." Uh, no freaking kidding. He marked "no charge" on my chart, began to leave and then turned back saying "there is a charge" and reached out his arms to hug me. Do I even need to say how awkward I felt that was? I could have said "I don't want to hug you," but I just submitted. I was told only to come back if that wart was still present at the end of a month. I sincerely hope that I never see Dr. Pop or his helpers ever again.]