Now the boyfriend lived with his parents and she lived with my husband and I.

The day after I filed the paperwork, she woke up and couldn’t  move her right arm. It was totally numb.  I tested it with a pin stick, almost to the point of bringing blood, but she couldn’t feel it.

I told her I would take her to doctor, but she insisted on going alone. She went to see her orthopedic surgeon.  Later that evening I got a call from the surgeon saying she needs to be hospitalized and have surgery immediately or she could very well be paralyzed. They are running tests now, can I please come down there. I flew to the surgeon’s office.  After about 20 minutes in the room, I realized that she was in pain, but also that she was not going to miss an opportunity to obtain pain pills. I voiced my concerns to the nurse. They said they knew, but that she had to have this surgery, a chipped bone in her vertebra had almost severed her spinal cord.

The doctor’s office called the ambulance to transport her immediately. The surgeon said a neurosurgeon would need to perform the surgery, that he was not comfortable with a surgery that involved the spinal cord.

She would only agree to be transported if they administered intravenous pain medicine immediately.  The EMT’s refused, not knowing what the neurosurgeon would order once at the hospital.  She started raging, but after another 15 minutes, she gave in and was transported, but not before calling me every name in the book because I voiced my concerns to the doctor.

She was transported to Wellington Regional Medical Center emergency room. I got there first hoping to speak to the surgeon to let him k now that she was already under the influence of pain pills and I wasn’t sure of what else, and to please take that into consideration if anesthesia and/or additional pain meds were to be administered immediately.  I was denied.  I started raging then. I had her purse, and in it was several empty pain pill bottles, all with fill dates within the last week. Who knows what she had already taken that day.

I demanded to speak to the surgeon again and she heard me that time. She started raging again – wanted me thrown out of the emergency room, she had security escort me out of the emergency room. Once outside, I called the sheriff’s office. Someone was going to hear me out even if I wound up in jail — for her safety!  I explained the situation to the deputy and he went in to speak with her. She agreed that I could come back in. While the deputy was inside, I was frantically trying to summarize her addiction issue on a piece of paper. Hopefully I would have the opportunity to slip it to the surgeon without anyone noticing.

Once inside again, the surgeon asked to speak to me in private. Thank GOD!  I handed him the summary and explained everything as quick as I could… previous surgeries, the scoliosis, the addiction, the doctor shopping, the other numerous trips to ER’s to get pain pills, etc. He absorbed it and thanked me.

Back in the surgical waiting room, we were visited by the surgeons bean counter… his practice did not accept any insurance. She was on my insurance, but it would do no good, she would be billed for the entire surgery.

When the lady produced the paperwork authorizing surgery and agreeing to pay, my daughter looked at me like the 2-year-old that broke her leg so many years ago… like, “help me mom.”  At that moment, I didn’t care if the doctor ever got paid or not, I just wanted him to fix her.   Fearing that her level of care would be different if I indicated that payment could be a problem, I signed the paper, fully aware that I would be responsible in the end.  I would just have to deal with that later.

The surgeon came in to explain exactly what the surgery would entail. She then became scared, started to cry, apologized to me for all kinds of things in the past, told me she loved me, etc. We were then transported to another building on campus for the MRI’s because the surgical MRI had malfunctioned.

Once back at the hospital, they wheeled her to surgery. The surgeon told me it would be about a 2 hour surgery with a 1 hour recovery before I would be able to see her, but that he would come out as soon as he was done to let me know how it went.

Two hours passed, three hours passed. I expected to see the surgeon walk in to the waiting room at any moment. Four hours passed — but no surgeon.  I was afraid to leave the waiting room for fear of missing his update. I decided to call the hospital and inquire, my cell phone battery died. I flagged down a passing nurse and asked her to check for me. She never returned. My stomach was now tied in knots and eating itself.  My imagination ran rampant, assuming the worst.

Finally after five hours, the surgeon came in and said the surgery was successful, she would be heading to recovery shortly and I could go in after an hour or so.

Another hour passed, and I again flagged down a passing nurse. She returned and said that she was in recovery and that it would be another hour. I called my husband to bring me something to eat and a change of clothes. His mother brought me clothes and my husband brought me a burger. Two more hours passed before I was able to go in and see her. She was drifting in and out of consciousness.

 She was still in and out when the surgeon made his rounds in recovery. He informed us that she would be kept in ICU overnight. His first words to her were, “We had trouble waking you up after surgery, do you remember what you took before you came to the hospital?”  I almost passed out with sickness in my stomach. That was why it took so long – and no one was going to tell me. I don’t think I have to explain my thoughts on that issue.

She spent the night in ICU and I in the ICU waiting room.  The next morning, the surgeon was pleased with her recovery thus far, he said she could go home. I was in shock again, but relieved that he felt the surgery was that successful. He explained that a cadaver bone was used instead of metal plates, so he felt comfortable that her recovery would continue upward very fast.

The surgeon was still there when the discharge nurse came in with discharge instructions. When she started explaining the medications, the surgeon interrupted and explained to my daughter that he would prefer that I dispense the medications initially because she would be mostly out of it for the first few days. She agreed. The surgeon gave her a dose of pain meds just as she was being discharged and instructed me again on how to dispense the meds, stressing that they should be spaced at LEAST four hours apart.

We left the hospital and headed home.  My house is literally two streets from a CVS pharmacy, so she insisted that we drop off the prescriptions before we got home and then my husband could pick them up on his way home. I agreed because we could  just go through the drive-thru to drop off, and that would keep me from having to leave her at home by herself.

We got to CVS and she said just go in and wait for them instead of doing the drive through. I said no, that she needed to get home and get back in bed, per surgeons instructions. It had only been 30 minutes since her last dose of pain meds, so she would be ok for a couple of hours.  This started a huge argument.  She started screaming and demanding that I go in and get the pills right then. I stopped the car and said no. The surgeon had concerns about the car ride home, he actually preferred that she be transported by an agency equipped to safely get her home.

She got out of the car, still in her hospital gown, with neck brace on, and marched into CVS to get her pills. I considered physically restraining her but quickly decided against it because one wrong move or twist of her neck and she could be paralyzed for life. I parked the car and waited, thinking she would come back to the car to wait, praying that the pharmacist would pick up on what was going on, especially since I had previously been in and warned them of her addiction and abuse.

I can only imagine what the pharmacy workers thought.  It suddenly dawned on me that she intended to take more pills RIGHT THEN – that’s why she wanted to wait for them. I got out of the car and went inside,  just in time to see the pharmacist hand her a cup of water to swallow the pain pill, less than one hour since her last dose, and three hours earlier than her next scheduled dose. My blood boiled. Things were about to get bad…

(Continued in Part 5)