Monday, July 28, 2008
A trip to the emergency room
Wednesday of last week was a day of firsts. It was my first time in an ambulance. My first time admitted into an emergency room, my first CAT scan, my first enema… yeah, gross. Here’s what went down…
I was at work. During my lunch break I decided to just play some video games at the office instead of going to the gym. I wasn’t feeling quite like myself, but I thought it was just diarrhea. Towards the end of my lunch break, I was feeling increasingly worse, like I had something uncomfortable going on in my bowels or something. I had already gone to the bathroom once, and it didn’t help anything. The pain was steadily increasing, so I got up to go to the bathroom again, only to become instantly dizzy… to the point of nearly blacking out.
I fell to my hands and knees, smacking my shoulder and head on a chair along the way. I sat there for awhile, leaning against the doorway of the room I was in. I knew I needed help, so I tried calling a coworker on my cell phone. No answer. I was feeling really weak, woozy, and a little nauseous, so I curled up on the floor, intentionally half out in the hallway so someone would find me. I think I was hyperventilating due to the pain because my hands were tingling badly. I was contemplating who to call next when a coworker found me and dialed 911.
I told him I felt like throwing up, so he ran and found a large bowl for me just in time for me to heave up my salad and french fries. Wow that stuff was green. The paramedics soon arrived (someone later said there were like 6 of them standing around while one worked. Dude, I’m not a whale. Two is enough to carry me.) They asked me questions while I grunted out answers. My hands were past tingling and had begun to seize up. That’s never happened to me before, it felt so weird. I couldn’t move them, it was like rigor mortis in my hands.
The surrealism started when they lifted me up onto the gurney and wheeled me to the ambulance. I don’t even remember the elevator ride. I’d never been on a gurney before, whee. That ambulance was the bumpiest thing I’ve ever been in. The paramedic had the potholes memorized and was warning me to brace myself at the right moments. I managed to joke to him that Caltrans should work together with paramedics. (Caltrans refers to the California Department of Transportation, who is responsible for fixing the streets.)
In the hospital I laid in the gurney in a hallway for at least 20 minutes while they sorted out emergencies. Apparently I arrived during a large wave of emergencies. At that point I was feeling better. Whatever my problem was had eased its grip on me. They eventually wheeled me into my own room, hooked me up to some monitors and took some blood for testing. The ER doctor poked and prodded me while asking a battery of questions for diagnosis.
I recently watched all four seasons of House MD, one of the best shows ever. In this ER, I felt like part of an episode, which added to my sense of surrealism. This helped me to be one of the most patient patients they’ve ever seen. The nurses were surprised, I guess because most people are cranky and want to get out as soon as possible. I just wanted them to find out what was wrong with me.
I was told I was going to have a CAT scan, which I actually looked forward to because it looks so neat on TV. Then I was told that they needed to give me an enema by filling my bowels with a contrasting fluid, so they could see my appendix better. Oh. Okay… well… a good cleansing is good for you… right? The surrealism stopped when they jammed the tube up my sphincter and proceeded to pump a cold bag of reality into my bowels. Oh my god it was the most uncomfortable thing EVER. It was like my worst case of diarrhea times 100. I was in agony and had to wait until they were done imaging before they drained me. Holy fuck. People PAY to get this done to them voluntarily?
They were expecting appendicitis, but didn’t see any of the associated inflammation. However they instead found a huge cyst on one ovary. An average ovary is around 3cm… that thing was 9cm! They said it was likely a bleeding endometrioma, caused by endometriosis. Endometriosis is the condition of having some endometrium, which is the stuff that belongs inside the uterus, growing outside it instead. So whenever the hormones signal the uterus that it’s time for a cycle, all endometrium cells start to bleed, regardless of where they are located. They informed me that blood in the abdominal cavity is extremely painful.
After a sonogram, I was finally released at 2am. My next step is to get laproscopy done, which is where they knock you out and stick a camera through your bellybutton to see what’s actually going on inside. This will probably be followed by surgery of some kind.
Basically it was a lot of waiting around. The story-telling sounds more dramatic. But one thing is for sure… it’s a damn good thing I had on clean underwear!
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