It’s been 13 days since I’ve started carrying out my sentence here in the bed. Thirteen days ago I checked myself in for cavitation surgery and unknowingly paused my entire life. No, it hasn’t all been because of the surgery, but what transpired was nothing I saw coming and it brought me to my knees. Sometimes when life throws you the unexpected, you respond by dealing in unexpected ways.

The pain from the surgery gradually worsened the first 2 days until about hour 72 post op I found myself meandering helplessly into the doors of the ER. Pain I had never in my life encountered (and I’ve given birth) had twisted my figurative arm to the point of mercy, and I had to get some help. I was already a little disappointed in myself for using Tylenol and ibuprofen to try to alleviate some of it, and the dentist who performed the surgery didn’t leave me with any pain prescriptions. Neither of the OTC’s were working, and I needed bigger guns.

You always think you have a plan until you don’t: I planned to use homeopathic mouth rinse and gel to deal with the pain, because I planned for the pain to be about a 4 out of 10. I didn’t plan for the 11 out of 10 that slowly crept in that night at 2:30am, making me aware of my pulse under the stitches, aware of each micro surge of blood with each heartbeat, feeling it all pass through the incision site with utter agony. Every second that passed I fell deeper into that unknown pain - and felt myself become scared. I didn’t have a plan for this. What I had a plan for was recovering, maybe using Tylenol if the pain got really bad, and getting back to life after two or three days. Yet, here I was, writhing in misery, starting to separate from my body to escape the sensation, and trying to unearth a magical solution for the situation I suddenly found myself in. I had no clue what I was going to do.

The only thing I knew to do after thirty minutes of that gut-wrenching torture (which felt like an entire day)was to get in the car and drive myself to the emergency room. Never my Plan A. But surely there would be something they could give me to help. I could feel myself leaving my body to escape the pain. I assumed this meant I was flirting with infection, too. I made it there, and in true emergency fashion they had me sit in the waiting area for two hours. I swear to you it was the puniest I’ve ever been - I hadn’t eaten for three days and my mouth felt like active shifting tectonic plates. I literally sat there and wept out loud out of instinct. And it’s not easy for me to cry. This was a new level of pain and misery that was unlocked.

I finally left after noticing that my dentist was probably awake by that time in the morning. Getting a prescription from him would be less runaround than the ER, so I checked myself out, having never been seen, and texted my dentist. He graciously called in some hydrocodone-ibuprofen for me.

By the time I got some prescription pain meds in me, it was about 2:00pm the next day. I felt guilty about the OTC pain meds; imagine how this felt! I’ve spent years preaching about avoiding prescription drugs at all costs. I’ve raised my son to fear these things. I’ve even felt judgmental thinking about people who use these kinds of things regularly. *But this wasn’t part of the plan.* I was thankful to feel relieved. I was thankful there was an answer. In that moment of desperation, I was simply thankful for that which I had outwardly loathed.

But that wasn’t all. The point of thinking you have a plan until you don’t was really driven home about three days later, when I finally felt like I was going to be able to put the pain of surgery and recovery behind me. I took a shower, all the optimism in the world flowing through me. And just as quickly as I had gotten the shampoo out of my hair, the feeling hit me like a case of bricks - the flu. There was no denying it, no matter how badly I willed it out of my thoughts. My son had been picked off by this two days earlier. And I’m a big terrain-theory girl, so it didn’t even cross my mind to fear catching it myself. But what I failed to acknowledge was that I had spent the past 6 days completely undernourished, not being able to eat more than a few bowls of bone broth, and overburdened by the OTC and Rx meds in my system. This was a different terrain for me. And now the flu was here to exploit that.

It took me down in a matter of minutes. It came on hard and fast and there was no warning. I couldn’t do anything to curtail the impact. By the afternoon I was back in that bed that I had only narrowly escaped for about 2 hours in the past 7 days. Within four hours, seizures and hallucinations ensued. I’ve never been so sick in my life. Temperature lingered at 104.2. Nothing this scary had ever befallen me so hard and so fast before. This was NOT part of the plan.

And neither was more OTC meds. But children’s Motrin brought me back to a safe place, and for that I’m grateful. I had already been weakened by surgery and by days of not eating, and now a dangerously high fever and flu-fashioned full body aches were bringing me to my knees.

I made it through the night in what seemed like gallons of sweat under five blankets. My brain was pulsing with pain and felt like it was going to rupture through my skull. And now, the site of the surgery was flaring up - a new kind of pain was beginning to radiate from my right jaw and up into my ear. I could feel it surge on and off, like someone was flipping a power switch up and down. I knew what this meant, and again, it wasn’t part of the plan.

I tried to ignore the mouth pain for another night, but when it was bigger and bolder the next morning, I had to make a critical decision - I knew that if the surgery was infected there was only one thing I could do and that was antibiotics. I texted my dentist, *again.* And in my desperation, once I retrieved the large bottle of 47 antibiotic pills, I didn’t hesitate for a second to shove one down my throat.
I never planned to have to deal with any of the things that found me in the past two weeks, aside from some minimal pain and a little initial downtime - *that* is what I had “planned.”

But I think my lesson was clear - keep an open mind and do what’s necessary. Principles are nice to have, but sometimes they’re out the window when serious illness is what’s on the menu. It’s been easy for me to throw these modern options under the bus, but that’s because I haven’t found myself in a situation where I truly needed their help, where there was infection in my mouth that could have quickly and easily traveled into my brain or down my heart (which, by the way, I had been noticing heart pains in the day leading up to the antibiotic).

I never planned the OTC pain meds, the prescription pain meds, the flu, the surgery infection, the antibiotics, the sinus & ear infection that surfaced after the flu, NOR the positive response my body had to using all those things. I experienced relief and healing. Not to be ignorant - of course I’ve got my work cut out for me for the next several months as far as repopulating my gut goes, but I’m alive to repopulate it.

I’d like to share a little about my experience with the antibiotics, since it’s not something I have too many opportunities to observe:

I took Clindamycin 300. I took 9 capsules of it over 3 days. I did not finish the entire prescription (47 capsules!)
It made me so thirsty, but it also made water taste awful.
I noticed a shakiness, but could also be from not eating enough. It was more noticeable after having the antibiotics.
My skin was itchy on my face and abdomen, and I was noticing tiny raised bumps all over.
And nausea - I am not ever a nauseous person, it’s not something I ever struggle with. But this had me feeling uneasy in my stomach, especially after eating something.

I noticed the pain in my jaw and ear start to reduce after about a day, and I realized that taking antibiotics was helping me kick an infection that could be really bad if left untreated. This positive thought allowed me to think that it’s possible the antibiotics are doing more than just killing this infection; maybe there are other areas in my body that, while I’m throwing antibiotics at my system, stand to benefit from a good overhaul. I’m not exactly thrilled about wiping the status of my gut microbiota, but are there other illnesses or old infections that this dose of antibiotics can take care of while they’re in there? Maybe it’s going to be good after all. I have to believe that in the absence of any plan, these specific events transpired in my favor.

You Always Have a Plan, Until You Don’t - a Case for Antibiotics

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