Monday night I started feeling ill, my roommate even noticed how pale and clammy I looked. Spent the whole night in agonising pain. At some point, I decided I'd go to the clinic in the morning, and ask my roommate to take me. Well, morning comes and it's pretty obvious that the clinic isn't going to be able to help me. So my roommate accompanies me on the bus, through the med school, through the hospital, to the ER. [Note to Fairview University: finding your ER sucked monkey balls. Please, please, please find a way to make it easier]
And then once in the ER, I spent nine hours there. NINE. Mostly so they could figure out if I was dying- and if I was, how quickly I was. Yeah, so they tuck me in the hospital room, and then give me morphine and saline. And then things get a little murky. They did give me magazines to read (trashy ones; I now know all the gossip on Jon and Kate), and then told me my bladder was swollen to the size of Lake Tahoe (I could have told them that- hello, pain!), but they weren't totally certain that was all that was wrong with me, because I was also hurting on my right side. And they wanted to do a pelvic exam to make sure nothing down there was also breaked, and I properly freaked out and holy cow were they nice about it. They didn't give me a xanax, but they gave me something like it, and I went to happy place.
Then the happy place was gone because they walked into the room (and WOW was I looped up on meds) and were like, 'ok, we're here to take you for your CT scan!' and I properly flipped out on the poor transport guy, who went and got the doctor, who was nice enough to explain that they wanted to make sure I didn't have a kidney stone or something, since y'know, there was pain. Well, as it turns out, no kidney stone, but the doc comes in and is like, 'oh yeah, your appendix. It is breaked'. At this point, it's been five hours since I've been in the ER, and I'm just glad they've given me something to justify everything they've been doing to me [I tried, very looped-up-ily to protest the CT scan]. So then the surgeon comes to talk to me, and tells me that she looked at the CT scan and saw that the tip of my appendix was very inflamed. However, she wasn't certain whether my appendix was inflamed because it was broken, or whether it was inflamed because my bladder swelling to the size of Lake Tahoe was fucking with everything else inside. So she said she'd have to consult her surgeon supervisor and then get back to me.
My roommate came, at some point, though I'm not sure when. At some point too, they gave me more morphine for the pain that was coming back, so everything got all fuzzy and happy all over again.
Two freaking hours later a different surgeon guy comes in and tells me they're not doing the surgery, that they're fairly confident that my appendix is not going to explode all over the place or anything and that YAY! I can go home. So then ER doc comes in, tells me he's giving me lots of meds, that he's pretty confident the infection has spread to my kidneys, so he gives me meds for my kidneys, meds for the bladder swelling, and vicoden.
Wow. So he basically said, 'Hey, Rien, let's send you to a happy place for a few days, shall we?' and then I went home. I got home at 5:30pm. I got to the ER around 8am. And now I have happy meds, meds that turn my pee orange (freaked me out the first time it happened), and meds that make everything better. One of the meds, the one that turns my pee orange, says to avoid meat and dairy while on it. The other med says to avoid direct and artificial sunlight while on it. And the vicoden just says come to a happy place.
Also, last point! IF you and I are ever in a situation where adhesive might possibly be used on me? Don't let it be. I am allergic. No matter what. If it's got any sort of 'stick' to it, it will harm my skin. Even medical tape, which is only supposed to stick to itself, and not skin, will leave nasty red welts on me.
(case in point: where they attached the gauze pad after pulling my IV out- she used cloth, medical tape and today I woke up and pulled it off to find welts. Also-also, the stuff they used to secure the IV- yup, I've got a nice red patch on my skin from that- that one actually took a thin layer of skin with some of it- which you can kindof see in the picture, but not really.)
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