*Lets out a huge sigh of relief*
You know, sometimes I find myself feeling like I am in a rut and wishing that something exciting would happen... and then it does, and I immediately regret it.
It started out like any other Friday (meaning I wake up, grumble about having to go to work, go to work... you get the idea) except that this particular Friday N tells me that he's been awake all night with unbearable stomach pain. Now, for him, stomach pain is not all that unusual because he has Celiac Disease and eating gluten will immediately make him sick and unhappy. It is, however, unusual that it keeps him awake all night due to the severity of said stomach pain. That little fact put me on edge due to a couple of things:
1) N really isn't one to complain all THAT much about feeling sick, so he must be feeling really lousy
2) A friend of mine recently had to have her appendix removed after symptoms much like those N was describing (namely, what felt like very very very bad gas pain, except that it wasn't going away with rest, medication, etc.)
There wasn't much I could do, however, except go to work and hope things were OK. I told him, however, that if the pain got worse at all, he should go see a doctor (being worried about it being appendicitis and all.)
At 10 a.m. N calls me and says that he needs me to leave work, come home and take him to a doctor, because he is in too much pain to drive. I come home and take him to a walk-in clinic (because we would have felt dumb going to the ER if it were indeed bad gas pain.) I then sit in the waiting room for 2 hours while N is poked, prodded, tested, etc. and I am totally in the dark about what is going on. As it turns out, though, the doctors were not much more enlightened -- their diagnosis being along the lines of "Well, we don't know what's wrong, except that it's not just gas. Something is wrong, but we don't know what it is." They then proceeded to send us to a Radiology Group for further testing.
At the Radiology specialists N was told to drink a concoction of Water, Country Time lemonade and Barium over the course of the next hour and a half. When he finally finished with that, there was a half hour wait until he was admitted for his CT scan, and then a half hour after he was finished with that before they told us anything... and what they told us was precisely nothing. It was, again, along the lines of "well, it COULD be appendicitis... but we really can't tell yet." They, then, sent us over to the ER (conveniently located across the street) to be checked out further over there.
At the ER N got admitted with a "very urgent" status because of POSSIBLE appendicitis... from then on things moved a little faster, and we got a little more information about what was happening, which was a refreshing change. After the doctors finally located the results from all the testing that happened at the previous two locations the surgical resident (a girl who was not more than about 12 years old) determined that it WASN'T appendicitis, but they had to then figure out what it WAS, the final diagnosis being Diverticulitis.
So while the final diagnosis turned out to be non life-threatening, they still insisted on keeping N in the hospital overnight, as he was not allowed to eat/drink anything for the next 18ish hours and they wanted to keep him hydrated (through an IV,) medicated (antibiotics and morphine through an IV) and under observation until he could eat/drink again... which turned out to be the next day around noon. When he was able to eat/drink without causing more pain he was discharged with the orders to take antibiotics for the next week, and to make a follow up appointment with a doctor at the end of this week.
So, all in all, it turned out to be ok, but not the kind of excitement I was hoping for. I'm just hoping that my reasonably healthy, not-quite-30 year old boyfriend doesn't have a heart attack when he recieves the medical bill. I'm not up for ANOTHER trip to the ER anytime soon.
Love (and good health!) to all of you...
It started out like any other Friday (meaning I wake up, grumble about having to go to work, go to work... you get the idea) except that this particular Friday N tells me that he's been awake all night with unbearable stomach pain. Now, for him, stomach pain is not all that unusual because he has Celiac Disease and eating gluten will immediately make him sick and unhappy. It is, however, unusual that it keeps him awake all night due to the severity of said stomach pain. That little fact put me on edge due to a couple of things:
1) N really isn't one to complain all THAT much about feeling sick, so he must be feeling really lousy
2) A friend of mine recently had to have her appendix removed after symptoms much like those N was describing (namely, what felt like very very very bad gas pain, except that it wasn't going away with rest, medication, etc.)
There wasn't much I could do, however, except go to work and hope things were OK. I told him, however, that if the pain got worse at all, he should go see a doctor (being worried about it being appendicitis and all.)
At 10 a.m. N calls me and says that he needs me to leave work, come home and take him to a doctor, because he is in too much pain to drive. I come home and take him to a walk-in clinic (because we would have felt dumb going to the ER if it were indeed bad gas pain.) I then sit in the waiting room for 2 hours while N is poked, prodded, tested, etc. and I am totally in the dark about what is going on. As it turns out, though, the doctors were not much more enlightened -- their diagnosis being along the lines of "Well, we don't know what's wrong, except that it's not just gas. Something is wrong, but we don't know what it is." They then proceeded to send us to a Radiology Group for further testing.
At the Radiology specialists N was told to drink a concoction of Water, Country Time lemonade and Barium over the course of the next hour and a half. When he finally finished with that, there was a half hour wait until he was admitted for his CT scan, and then a half hour after he was finished with that before they told us anything... and what they told us was precisely nothing. It was, again, along the lines of "well, it COULD be appendicitis... but we really can't tell yet." They, then, sent us over to the ER (conveniently located across the street) to be checked out further over there.
At the ER N got admitted with a "very urgent" status because of POSSIBLE appendicitis... from then on things moved a little faster, and we got a little more information about what was happening, which was a refreshing change. After the doctors finally located the results from all the testing that happened at the previous two locations the surgical resident (a girl who was not more than about 12 years old) determined that it WASN'T appendicitis, but they had to then figure out what it WAS, the final diagnosis being Diverticulitis.
So while the final diagnosis turned out to be non life-threatening, they still insisted on keeping N in the hospital overnight, as he was not allowed to eat/drink anything for the next 18ish hours and they wanted to keep him hydrated (through an IV,) medicated (antibiotics and morphine through an IV) and under observation until he could eat/drink again... which turned out to be the next day around noon. When he was able to eat/drink without causing more pain he was discharged with the orders to take antibiotics for the next week, and to make a follow up appointment with a doctor at the end of this week.
So, all in all, it turned out to be ok, but not the kind of excitement I was hoping for. I'm just hoping that my reasonably healthy, not-quite-30 year old boyfriend doesn't have a heart attack when he recieves the medical bill. I'm not up for ANOTHER trip to the ER anytime soon.
Love (and good health!) to all of you...