Take a deep breath. This is a long post on my OHSS peak experience.


24 March 2015 (Tue)

I got woken up by knives twisting in my abdomen in the middle of the night. I restrained myself for a couple of hours from waking hubby up to fly me to the 24 hour hospital clinic. This is Singapore; the most expensive city on Earth. The 24 hour clinic bill was not going to be funny. So I writhed in bed until the knives eased themselves back into their sheathes and I fell back to sleep. At daybreak, they danced inside me again. I woke hubby this time.

We're clean freaks. Or maybe it wasn't that painful enough. But we took the time to do the morning grooming thing.

I almost passed out in the shower.

I couldn't see a thing. Before my knees gave way, I managed to shut the tap and found my way to the toilet bowl. I slammed the seat cover down and plopped myself down to catch my breath and will the darkness away.

Then someone punched me hard in my guts.

I immediately pivoted around and slammed the seat cover back up, retching all my innards into the potty.

Water. All water. This was the first time in my life that all I threw up over 10 minutes was clear water. Since when did I drink so much water??

Time had stopped. I dressed myself with my life.

Dr Jerry Chan decided I had to be admitted for observation and commanded a drip to be put on me immediately. He was still adamant that my pain placements were not typical symptoms of OHSS although everything else pointed towards it. He had to leave the country in a few hours so the hospital shall do observation on me.

Hospital bills. Singapore. Not funny.

The first thing I said to hubby to the news that I had to be admitted was "Please check my insurance."

I entered Ward 44 with much grandiose, hurling resoundingly into the plastic bag while the nurse wheeled me across the corridors and to my designated bed on the wheelchair. The world was the bag in front of me. Water regurgitated out violently into it while my guts convoluted.

Amidst all that, I managed to comprehend all the patients and nurses alike that stared in horror and basically took a step back.

No vomit, all water. The nurse took a visible deep breath before taking the bag from me after the spectacular display.

The moment I was helped onto the bed, the nurse whipped out a piece of paper and started asking all sorts of questions for the registration. (Hubby was doing paperwork at the admission department. Probably answering the exact same questions) I was still breathless and could hardly squeak out the string of numbers on my ID. But she wasn't giving up. It was her SOP. We went through her pointless questionnaire (This same hospital have asked me the same questions like maybe 50 times since last year. Can't they pull up the information from their internal system goddamit) and I finally got a chance to catch my breath.


Hospital Stay - Day 1

The first thing they did after I sinked into the bed was to serve me lunch. I hadn't eaten a morsel the whole day but my guts were angry at me for some reason. The food might as well have been slabs of stone. The soup tasted like what I puked out not too long ago. The sweet and sour chicken was actually delicious but all I could take was 2 bites before my guts threatened to hurl again. The lychee jelly was comforting, but all I could manage was to slowly slurp down half a cup over 3 hours.

And that was all I ate.

Compression stockings they made all inpatients wear. Quite comfortable to sleep in actually. (Photo taken day of discharge)

The drip the doctor had demanded on me had still not arrived. But my mum did. She looked sick with worry. I struggled to explain OHSS in detail to her in Mandarin and failed hard at it (Found out later that it's called 卵巢过度刺激征。Very literal). Hubby was still caught in the web of admission paperwork somewhere, not that he would have been of much help with the explanation.

A young male doctor pranced in then. He brightly asked me to explain to him why I was there. Seriously. Surely there's a folder with my details somewhere in KK hospital. I certainly wasn't here for the food. Thank goodness I more or less had my breath back and managed to recount the ordeal of the past few days, wondering with every sentence why couldn't he just flip my folder.

At the end of it, I asked how was my condition. He then apologetically said he's just a junior doctor and doesn't know much. I should ask the senior doctors who will do the rounds tomorrow morning. I tried to quiz him a little more and he said he's really not the best person to answer. I later learn that this was his catchphrase. Along with "Why didn't you ask the senior doctor just now" to every single question. The nurses were way more helpful with my queries than him.

(By the end of the hospital stay, I would be so annoyed with his whiny "I don't know anything I'm just a junior doctor why didn't you ask my senior just now" answers that he is really lucky I didn't... that I didn't.)

His name? Really hard to pronounce. His name tag read something like Dr Ignoramus Chua.


So How Exactly Was My Condition?

Thank goodness for me the consultant decided to visit me soon after Dr Ignoramus failed miserably to draw blood from my arm in front of a couple of smug intern nurses. (The senior staff nurse saved the day.)

Dr Liu is an angel. And she managed to describe OHSS to my mum in Mandarin flawlessly!!

According to her, there is no actual medication for OHSS, just some drugs to suppress and calm my hormones down. It is a condition with a curve where the symptoms will peak and then I will get better afterwards. She thinks I have not peaked and that's why I'm at the hospital being observed to catch the peak. (Thankfully, looking back now, I think the violent hurling WAS the peak.)

The worst case scenario was a long hospital stay. Expect a tummy so distended with liquid that it will have to be pumped out via a tube at the side of the body. That and even more severe pain.

They had to make sure the water in my body goes out. So I had to record my pee schedule religiously.


All About That Pee

My job hereafter was to pee, pee, pee.

Easier said than done. I dreaded every trip to the loo.

By now, I amble slower than hubby's 85 year old granny. The impact of every step sent a bolt of lightning up my abdomen. Every trip to the loo was a mission to battle with the intensely crippling pain in my torso. When I finally reach the toilet located outside the room, the toilet seats were usually dirty and the floor wet. So I struggled with my balance on the wet floor, trying to clean the toilet seats with one hand, and holding on to the drip stand with the other.

By the time I was done, I would sit down breathless onto the potty. But not before placing the measuring cup holder on the seat.

A searing fire will then build up in my lower abdomen, burning fiercely while I clench my fists and piss fire.

The. Pee. Was. Gross.

Pungent thick orange liquid with white styrofoam-looking stuff floating in it. I assumed the white 'styrofoam-balls' were remains of cultured progesterone. I wasn't that enthusiastic to find out more.

As instructed, I sample-peed into a cup for them to do tests on the first time I peed there. When I tried to hand it to the intern nurse standing outside the toilet, she looked at the cocktail and panicked. She nervously and desperately looked around and in relief pointed to the nearest staff nurse to pass my pee to.

I think she's cute.

First meal there. Spoiler Alert: The food department went downhill hereafter for the rest of the hospital stay.