The Pain begins

GBS side effects in recovery are, impact to one’s blood pressure, fluctuations in body temperature, body sensations due to touch, and of course pain.

I developed bradycardia which brings my blood pressure low. During my initial 6 weeks in ICU, it was the bradycardia condition that lead to me having a cardiac arrest and having an external pacemaker. This became an issue when the nursing staff had to turn me for changing. I seemed to be okay when turned to my left side, but when they turn me right I would have trouble breathing which lead to panicking and tears. 

Plenty of tears were cried as they had to turn me for changing as I would ache with even the slightest touch to my body. Sometimes the skin sensations were like a burning feeling. There were times where my pain came from imaginary limbs. Closest thing I can compare it to is phantom pain.  I remember my sister Kathryn talking about phantom pain after her arm was amputated. The nerves told her that her arm was there but of course it wasn’t. Such a weird sensation, scary when you don’t know what is happening. Pain medication was a help as well as massage (Thank you Mom); but I had to close my eyes and then imagine putting my leg or arm back into my body. For months, I woke up feeling my arms were crossed in front of my body which of course they weren’t. So my practice was closing my eyes again and imagining pushing my arms back into my arms.

Being in ICU, you had the constant peeping of machines. The IV machine, the ventilation machines, and the heart monitor machine. It becomes scary (which brought on tears as I cannot speak to the staff) when they rolled me to the right side the bells would go off because of my difficulty breathing and trying to calm myself down, my blood pressure would drop. The nurses would try to tell me “Control and slow down your breathing this will help stabilize your blood pressure.” It took many months to get used to this exercise, so they tried their best to use my left side and spend as little time as possible on the right.

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