Thursday morning arrived bright and early.  I was up at 4:00 a.m. and off to work at 5:00 a.m.  About 10:30 a.m. that morning I'm standing at work and feel something wet.  I reach behind me, touch my butt and my hand is covered in bright red blood.  I am a little freaked out.  My supervisor comes to replace me and I head off to the restroom to figure out what is going on.

Once in the restroom I realize I have rectal bleeding and an awful lot.  It takes me about 20 minutes to get it slowed enough to be able to put a pad on and stand up.  By this time I'm feeling a little dizzy and nauseous, but I go back to my work station and things appear to be fine for about an hour.

This time there is blood dripping on the floor and I'm vomiting within about five minutes and nearly passing out.  My work station has to be cleaned up and sterilized.  I'm carted off to the hospital where I have to wait in the waiting room for almost three hours before I am seen.  I vomit in the waiting room, bleed on the chair and am white as a ghost.  Admittedly, they were packed, but I didn't know how much longer I was going to be able to sit there like that.

Once back in an actual room, the nurse immediately puts in an IV and the doctor is quickly back to see me. I can't stand needles and usually it takes the nurse several attempts before it all goes well.  This nurse was great and needed only one try.  It worked perfect and just a tiny bruise from it today.

The doctor presses around on my stomach and I have severe pain on my left side that makes me bite my lip.  At this point I am told to roll over onto my left side while he looks at my butt.  Then he informs me that he will be inserting his finger to feel around.  Anal virgin here so thank goodness he used lube.  It hurt like crazy.  Maybe he had a big finger.  Maybe I have a tight ass.  Perhaps I'm just not feeling good.

He says he believes I might have diverticulitis and explains to me what it is.  He orders a CBC blood test and about an hour later I'm told that my white blood count are high and my red blood count is low.  From here I am told I am going to be sent over for a CT scan.  The nurse comes in and hands me a drink and tells me to drink it all, that it will run through my system and help things show up on the scan.  I finish it and then she hands me an entire pitcher of it to drink.  It didn't taste bad, but it was just to much too fast and it made me feel even more nauseous.  I have to wait an hour for this to work through my system before I can get the scan done.

I just want to sleep, but between the pain, bleeding and crazy ER noise, I just can't do it.  The hour passed slowly and finally I was taken over for the scan.  Once there the tech put something called "contrast" in my IV and told me it would make me feel warm.  Boy, did it!  It started in my chest, went down through my stomach and spread between my legs.  A light fire feeling that didn't last very long, though, and about 15 minutes later back to the ER I go.

Perhaps an hour later the doctor comes in and informs me that yes, I do have diverticulitis.  I have gall stones.  I have four spots on my lungs.  And he feels certain I have polyps. He asked me when I had last eaten or drank anything.  I hadn't had anything since Wednesday around 7:00 p.m.  So, there I stay in the hospital until around 8:00 a.m. I am told to drink this bottle of wonderfully delicious (note sarcasm) white stuff and sent off to the radiologist for a PET scan.  I'm there for three hours.  From there I go to the gastroentologist to schedule a colonoscopy.  Said colonoscopy scheduled for Tuesday morning.  Starting Sunday morning I cannot have anything except liquid and even that is limited.

Late Friday night I had another bleeding incident.  Around 9:00 p.m. I all of a sudden had very sharp pains in my stomach that left me doubled over and crying.  About 2 minutes later I was bleeding again.  Another trip to the hospital and six hours later I am home again with another prescription and specific instructions on what to do should it happen again.

I have two antiobiotics, two pain pills, a stool softener, and something for anemia.  I have two bottles of stuff that I have to drink from Monday to Tuesday morning to clean me out.

It's 4:16 p.m. Saturday and since 4:00 a.m. on Thursday I have had about 4 hours sleep, I have bags under my eyes and I am exhausted.  I'm worried and naturally my research online has just left me withering away to nothing in a few days so I stopped that.

I received a lot of information from the ER, the Gastroentologist and the Radiologist.  I have to follow up with my doctor about the gall stones and see a lung doctor on Thursday regarding the spots on my lungs.