A few weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night with terrible stomach pain. I don't just mean regular pain. I mean the kind that makes you long for the day when your benchmark was giving birth without pain medication. Yes kids this was worse than that. I considered dialing 9-1-1 but the phone was pretty far away and I wasn't moving an inch. Sounds pretty lazy of me I know. That's me. Lazy Colleen. Anyway eventually it lessened and I was able to sleep. I debated going to the hospital still but if you can sleep through it then it's not really worthy of a 4:00am ER visit right? Famous last words I know.
So I ended up there at 11:00am instead. There were about 25 people waiting which is down right deserted for this city. I figured I'd have a 4 or 5 hour wait if no emergencies came in while I was there. Well apparently the triage nurse thought I was the emergency and as my butt hit the waiting room chair ready to settle in for the long haul of catching every cold and flu known to mankind and watching a stream of people come and go I heard my name called. I had a bed and an IV before I was even officially admitted as a patient. Guess I should have come in at 4:00am. Sigh.
Because of the stomach pain I was given about as much morphine as I wanted. As I learned this is self limiting because you eventually pass out and can't ask for more anyway. In my case this was every time I got a dose. I'd wake up a few hours later when it started to wear off. I'll never make it as an addict I guess. Such a lightweight.
Lucky for me the third time I came too I woke to find my 80 year old neighbor starting to strip in front of everyone. And when I say everyone I mean the entire ER. She even sang quietly to herself while her diamond earrings bobbed around......and I had the best seat in the house. "Nurse. Morphine....Stat!!" Oh the flashbacks.
Remind me to do myself in before I get to that point....or better yet just put me in a backwards onesie so I can't undress myself. Blah.
As with many things in my life these days I am having to be patient. I was discharged later the same day without many answers as to what caused my pain. I've been waiting for my "urgent" CT scan for two weeks now. Not that I really want to have a second one so soon. For those of you who read my February post called Bacon: a cautionary tale you'll recall how happy I was to have an increased risk of brain cancer from this technology that was supposed to help me feel better. Now I suppose I have double an increased risk....whatever that equals. Isn't health care wonderful? Since I'm waiting for the scan to be scheduled anyway I guess I can use my time to think about naked ER patients. If you hear me crying you'll know why.
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