A very long entry about my hospital experience
Ugh. I feel gross. I really, really want to brush my hair so that I can wash it but every time Gonzalo goes out of the house for a little bit and calls me to see if I need anything, I can't bring myself to ask him to go to my house and get my brush. His sister only has one of those ones with thick, close-together bristles that would either take hours to use or just make my hair worse. I showered yesterday but I can't wash my stupid hair right now without brushing it because it's been like five days and I feel so fucking gross with this rat's nest sticking out of my head.
I just don't want to be sick anymoreee. I haven't thrown up since being in the hospital, and I actually ate an almost normal sized meal of half a tlayuda yesterday (thank you Gonz for the home delivery) but I just feel too crappy to get out of bed and get something to eat. Gonzalo made us eggs in bed this morning but I could only take a few bites.
At least I slept almost the whole night last night for the first time! In the hospital I couldn't sleep because I couldn't move the arm with the IV in it and I am not good at staying in one position for very long while I'm trying to get to sleep, plus the nurses (about half of whom were men, by the way) were clacking away on the stupid typewriters across from me the whole night. (By the way, that made me kind of sad; almost everything there is done by typewriter - the only place I saw a good computer was when they gave me an ultrasound.) Plus, sometime in the middle of the night they brought in this guy who went "Ay.... ay.... AYY........ ay...." loudly, every two fucking SECONDS punctuated by an occasional desperate "tengo sed!" or "mi pierna..." ("I'm thirsty" and "my leg..."). I am not exaggerating at all, he did this from the time they brought him in until the time that I left. Like, at least 14 hours. I couldn't believe they didn't sedate him just to shut him up. Like, yeah, your leg hurts a lot and that sucks, but jesus christ, it's the emergency room. We're all in pain. Callate.
So basically, I didn't sleep.
And the first night back here I had my usual hallucinations instead of sleep that I always get when I'm really sick. I'd forgotten to ask Gonzalo to get me some Gravol and figured I'd just man up and deal with it but it was a long, weird night.
I can't believe how much my kidneys hurt. I have to drink three litres of water a day, which makes me burp a lot from all the sipping, and every time I burp, or cough, or laugh, or move, I feel a sharp pain in my right side/inside. Sometimes I can't even sneeze because the buildup to the sneeze hurts so much that I stop. I asked them if I had a stone or something, because it doesn't ever hurt to pee (that's actually why it came on so suddenly and strong, I didn't have any painful-peeing symptoms so I didn't get checked out until the vomiting/shaking started) but it just hurts inside, and they said it's because the infection is in my kidneys and not my bladder.
By the way, it's really fun doing 95% of all this in Spanish.
Ok, so I started out writing about how I got into the hospital, but I ended up writing about the whole hideous experience. So be warned: The following is long, unpleasant, and filled with gross details.
Last week I was having some serious back pain. Way worse than normal, and one night I couldn't even sleep because of it. We'd gone out for drinks at La Chiva with Lauren, Dave, Sarah and Chris to celebrate the last night of the "flu strike" (all school in Mexico was cancelled until the 7th because of the H1N1 flu). After Gonz and I went to sleep in my house, I basically tossed and turned trying to find a position that my back would let me sleep in. I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I got back, the same thing that happened to me at the Bloc Party concert in Mexico City happened: The pain got overwhelming, and I suddenly couldn't see anything. I blacked out and fell down and I woke up a couple seconds later to Gonzalo freaking out. He wanted to take me to a doctor but I said I just wanted to try to sleep so we went back to bed.
Warning: Cathlin, if you're reading this, skip this paragraph, it involves your phobia. At this point I still thought it was because of my back. The next day he took me to see his dad, who's a pediatrician, and he asked me if I'd had any pain peeing and I said no but told him about my history of back problems. He said he thought I might have a herniated disc. So the next morning while I was in class, Gonzalo made an appointment with a spinal doctor for after my class. I wasn't feeling so hot during the class, but still figured it was because of my back pain. He picked me up after class and we started driving to the doctor district. However, about fifteen minutes into the drive it became clear that the problem was a little bigger when I started throwing up my morning's chilaquiles out the window. (I felt kinda bad, his dad's pristine white Nissan looked like Big Bird had taken a gigantic poop on the door. And had been eating nothing but salsa.)
Immediately after vomiting, I started shivering. Now, one of Gonzalo's flaws is that he is very, very bad at dealing with situations like this. When he gets scared for someone he loves about something he can't control, he freaks out. I mean, he totally loses his shit. So for a bit while he was driving and I was shivering, I was trying to calm HIM down while he yelled about taking me to the emergency room and that he couldn't let me die and stuff. I convinced him to take me to the doctor's appointment, since it was a doctor either way and I'd remembered how shitty the emergency room in Victoria had treated me. But eventually my shivering turned into pretty violent shaking and I wasn't making any more decisions from then out.
We made it to the doctor's and he was still having a panic attack about how white I was and how I couldn't stop shaking. By that point I was starting to think that something was pretty wrong as I could barely speak through the convulsions; my jaw was locked. I managed to walk with him into the doctor's office, where nobody except the receptionist was, and I sort of stone-collapsed onto the couch. The next fifteen minutes or so is a bit hazy as the shaking started to really hurt and I was starting to panic a little myself about how it wouldn't stop. The spine doctor, the receptionist and Gonzalo were trying for a minute to figure out what to do, and I just couldn't figure out what was causing me more suffering, my sudden raging thirst or how cold I was. Gonzalo says I yelled out something kind of rude in Spanish at the doctor about why he couldn't at least give me something to calm me down. The receptionist gave me water which I sucked down like my life depended on it, and they took me to Gonzalo's car to take me to the hospital, which was luckily just up and across the road. The doctor rode in the back and when we got there, I don't know if Emerg in Mexico just moves faster (I doubt it), or if it was because a doctor was with us, or what, but they got me immediately into an examination room. I guess that "Patients are taken in order of urgency" sign that I glared hatefully at for four hours in Victoria General did me some good this time.
By the time I got into the examination room, my shaking had calmed back down to just shivering. I lied on the examination table with Gonzalo next to me, holding my hand, as we both answered the new doctor's questions. I was surprised at how quickly he figured on it being a kidney problem, though looking back it seems more obvious as I know quite well where the kidneys are and I was just so wrapped up in my history of back pain problems that I never considered anything else.
They wheeled me into the emergency room, where I was to spend the next two days. I put on the classic blue gown (this one had a unique burlap bag-esque touch), got awkwardly into bed and felt weird about the whole situation. At that point I really didn't feel like being in a hospital was necessary. I'm sort of a reverse hypochondriac, I never think anything serious is wrong and have never gone to the doctor for a flu or cold or anything. I've read so much about people flooding emergency rooms for coughs, and demanding prescriptions for antibiotics when it's really just a virus and you have to wait it out, that I pretty much always think it's a virus and just try to tough it out. It didn't help that the first time I did think something was wrong, two doctors told me to go home and sleep it off before the third one figured out it was freaking pneumonia and oh yeah, maybe coughing up blood isn't NORMAL. And then in Victoria when I knew something was seriously wrong (long, ugly story) they were total jarks about it and sent me home, and it took a long, painful time to "tough it out", still never knowing what was wrong.
Anyways, the doctors and nurses (half of whom were men, remember - that was so strange) at Xalapa CEM were 90% really nice. And the one guy that wasn't really nice was more of a tough-love, stop whining you know this is to help you get better kind of guy. They took blood and made me pee in a cup and ultrasounded my kidneys, throughout the course of about seven excruciatingly boring hours until they figured it out. By the way, I think I'll take this paragraph (edit: and the next... and then some more) to complain about my two least favourite things about the whole nightmare experience in the hospital, so please feel free to skip it: The IV, and the boredom. Oh sweet jesus was I ever bored. But it's not bored like, 'ugh waiting for this bus sucks', or 'oh man when is this class gonna end'. It's, you have absolutely nothing to look at but this fluorescent light on the ceiling. Nothing. And, what's so infinitely worse, is you have nothing to think about but your pain. And your nausea. And whether they've figured out what's wrong with you. And why your heart is beating so fast. And how much you want to brush your teeth. And how much you smell and how gross you look. And when you're gonna get out of there. And how you want to pee but getting up with your IV is such a pain in the ass you want to wait a bit longer, which of course makes the time go even slower. And whether anyone's going to come and poke at you some more, and how you wish they would because it might make time go faster. And of course, how bored you are. Hours, and hours, and hours. No TV, no iPod, no phone, no books, no magazines. Just the ceiling. And your brain's too tired and sick to think of anything interesting to pass the time but somehow you can't sleep. For two straight days I was in this white hell zone. If I'd transferred into a private room, I could have had books and things to pass the time, but far less medical attention and it was crazy expensive - it was going to cost $500 just to get into the room, and I didn't trust my travel insurance enough. So I stayed there and experienced the single longest two days of my life.
About the only thing there was to do was watch the saline dripping into my IV. Oh god, the IV. I'm actually pretty sure the boredom wouldn't have been nearly as bad without the IV. It was definitely more of a psychological thing for me. I mean, it did hurt, especially when they put it in or fiddled with it, but it didn't hurt all the time. Mostly it just gave me the mega-creeps. I'm okay with needles; even when I was a kid I never had problems getting vaccinations or anything, and I've been donating blood as often as I can since I was 17. But having this giant needle inside one of the fragile little veins in my HAND was just so utterly awful to me. Slowly pumping clear, foreign liquids into my bloodstream at all times. And if I moved, what then?! Would the needle break through into the other tissues in my hand and start pooling saline and paracetamol into the little hand muscles under my skin, and then would it just build there like a big bubble of unholy Western medicine gone wrong until I started screaming bloody murder from the pain and sight of my elephantiasized left hand? What if it broke through to an artery and the oxygen-depleted vein blood started mixing with the fresh artery-flowing blood and my body started sending it to my organs and I had a complete bodily shutdown from improperly oxygenated blood?! WHAT IF, OH GOD WHAT IF AN AIR BUBBLE GOT IN THERE?!
That was the kind of stuff I thought about while I was lying there. You'd think that being somewhat biologically knowledgeable would appease those fears instead of make them more creative. I swear, I've never been afraid of anything medical or doctorly until that IV. That thing was my fucking nemesis.
But oh sweet baby jesus, the potential Air Bubble Of Doom, was that ever my biggest fear. That one I actually let get control of my brain enough to bug the nurses/doctor about it. Three times. If an air bubble got into my bloodstream I was going to have a heart attack and die. That was it. So the first time I saw a bubble in the upper tube, I asked a nurse about it and she said when it got to this nifty part right here, it would get sucked out. So I breathed easy. Then when Mine was with me, I saw a really weird-looking section that was blood, a BIG ASS BUBBLE-LOOKIN' THING, and some yellowish turning into saline. And it was on the wrong side of the tracks, headed steadily towards my hand. I asked Mine what she thought and she told me it was no problem, just coagulation or something. But I decided to start having my heart attack before it even got inside me and made her get a nurse to make sure it was okay. The nurse didn't show up. It creeped closer. I looked around wildly for someone to come and see this armageddon in the making and make it stop. It creeped ever closer. I saw my life flash before my eyes as it slid silently under the bandage on my hand. The nurse showed up. I tried to play it cool. "There's no way a bubble could get inside me right I mean that really really looked like one it had some blood around it but it was like a clear part and yeah so I'm totally gonna die right?"
I didn't die, but I did start questioning my sanity around this IV. That thing was slowly unscrewing something in my brain.
When Gonzalo's dad came to check on me after that, I asked him if there was any way an air bubble could get inside my hand, and Mine told him I'd been worrying about it a lot, and he looked at me like I was an idiot and said no. So I shut up about it, but the fear didn't leave until they finally took the godforsaken thing out of my hand.
And of course, you can imagine how these fears contributed "irrational, terrified unwillingness to move left side of body" to my lack of sleep.
I guess I also spent too much time mentally filing away my gripes so I could write about them later, so I'll try to just finish. Some fun facts to highlight how awesome it all really was (warning: the third one is TMI, the fourth is disturbing and the fifth is really sad; and Cathlin if you're still reading this by any chance skip the first one):
- The IV took care of my internal hydration, but I was still incredibly thirsty all the time and for the first eight or so hours they wouldn't let me drink or eat anything. I didn't want to eat, but I was unbearably thirsty. Finally Gonzalo and his dad came in and brought me a big bottle of water, because I guess nobody argues with a guest wearing an ID and a lab coat. It was great, but in the middle of the night after a particularly big swig I started puking up large amounts of liquid onto the floor. The male nurse (the tough love one I mentioned) that was taking care of me that night was super unimpressed that I had been drinking water. So he put it on the floor out of my reach and I was only allowed to ask for occasional sips. Ironically, when I left, they told me I had to drink three litres of water a day.
- The entire two days that I was there, I ate a quarter of a granola bar, two bites of papaya, less than half of a piece of french toast and a half a cup of jello. So I was hungry, too, but I'm not even going to bother writing about it because I barely noticed it next to everything else.
- I was physically able to get up and use the bathroom, as awkward as it was to do so carrying my IV with me. But one time, late at night, they made me use a bedpan despite all my protests. Humiliating. I sort of squatted over it on the bed with my sheet over top of everything, and asked for paper afterwards so it wasn't too messy, but jesus christ. At least it was at night and most of the lights were dimmed. And most importantly, the only people around were patients who couldn't give a damn what I was doing, and medical personnel who'd seen it a zillion times before.
- At around 2 or 3 am, I heard terrible screaming and sobbing coming from outside of the emergency room. Someone was crying like I'd never heard before. It made shivers run down my back. It wasn't from pain. Nobody cries like that unless someone they love is seriously injured... or dead.
- The second day, they put an old man in the bed beside me. I couldn't understand his Spanish at all through his mumblings so I never knew what he was there for. But twice I saw him confusedly rip out his IV. The first time I almost sympathized; hey, I wanted the fucking thing out too and wished I lacked the sense to keep it in. But after the second time the nurses had to rush over to scold him and put it back in, they had to strap down his free hand so he couldn't do it again. It was attached with bandages to his bed on the side I was on and I watched him struggle weakly to free his hand, staring blankly at it, pulling at it, trying to get his IV'd hand over to help free it. He would sit up in bed and his gown would fall down around his stomach and he'd just look around, bemusedly. I left a couple hours after he came in, but I never saw family or anyone come in to see him.
So yeah, not a fun couple of days. And in the worst luck, I was there during the only two days a week that Gonzalo has school, so most of the time he couldn't be with me. Mine, our mutual cleaning lady/cook that Liz and I really bonded with over the year, came in both days to see me and stayed for hours in the waiting room when they kicked her out, just to have a couple chances to come in and see me. It made me kind of sad to see how upset for me she was, though; she has such a big heart and is so concerned for the people around her. One time the first evening, after she left to get me some juice, with that trembling, pained frown on her face, I started crying. I was just so overwhelmed from being there, and hurting, and being so incredibly thirsty, and not being able to sleep, and still not knowing why I was in there, and knowing that Mine would get me juice but that they wouldn't let her back in. Tough-Love Nurse came over and asked what was wrong, and I said I was thirsty, and he just said that he understood but that crying wouldn't help.
The only good thing I guess, was that because of Gonzalo's dad's kind-of-a-big-deal doctor status, they pulled some strings and I got put in a special place in the ER with a side wall for the first day and night, and I think I got more visitor time than was normally allowed. Gonzalo left his class early on Friday night to come stay with me, and didn't leave my side until they finally kicked him out around midnight.
The second day, I was lying around trying to calm my heart rate after a new intravenous dose of paracetamol and wondering when the nurses were going to notice the old man trying to get loose again, when Gonzalo Sr. showed up and told me they were releasing me. I felt a wave of relief, followed by a wave of extreme need to get the IV out of me NOW. But they told me they couldn't take it out until my bills were all paid, so then began the agonizing waiting game of when Gonzalo and his dad would get back from temporarily paying my bills. This took forever. It turned out that it was because Gonzalo Sr. was using his doctor status to make the bills as low as possible, which was nice of him. But I swear I would have thrown down all the pesos I had just to get out of there a minute sooner.
When they finally took the IV out, it was the most pleasure I've ever gotten out of pain. I still couldn't use my left hand for a good hour afterwards because it freaked me out so much, so Gonzalo had to help me into my clothes and waited patiently as I scrubbed my stinky armpits with the used gown (he's a sweetie). Doctor Dad said bye and we went and bought all my meds, then he walked me to the car like an old woman. On the passenger seat there were roses waiting for me and for the zillionth time I couldn't believe how amazing he is. I was the grossest, smelliest freaking hobbit around, and he was still kissing me and telling me how happy he was to finally be with me outside again.
We drove home and he set me up in his sister's king bed (she was out of town) and I've pretty much been there ever since, with my baby staying and sleeping faithfully beside me, not letting the slightest little cough or tiny noise of discomfort go untended. Getting me anything and everything I could possibly need, refilling my water bottle and bringing me yogurt, turning the fan up or down depending on whether I put on a blanket or take it off. And watching season 3 of Heroes with me, spooning with his hand in mine so as not to touch my hurting sides.
This is love.
...I feel better.
I just don't want to be sick anymoreee. I haven't thrown up since being in the hospital, and I actually ate an almost normal sized meal of half a tlayuda yesterday (thank you Gonz for the home delivery) but I just feel too crappy to get out of bed and get something to eat. Gonzalo made us eggs in bed this morning but I could only take a few bites.
At least I slept almost the whole night last night for the first time! In the hospital I couldn't sleep because I couldn't move the arm with the IV in it and I am not good at staying in one position for very long while I'm trying to get to sleep, plus the nurses (about half of whom were men, by the way) were clacking away on the stupid typewriters across from me the whole night. (By the way, that made me kind of sad; almost everything there is done by typewriter - the only place I saw a good computer was when they gave me an ultrasound.) Plus, sometime in the middle of the night they brought in this guy who went "Ay.... ay.... AYY........ ay...." loudly, every two fucking SECONDS punctuated by an occasional desperate "tengo sed!" or "mi pierna..." ("I'm thirsty" and "my leg..."). I am not exaggerating at all, he did this from the time they brought him in until the time that I left. Like, at least 14 hours. I couldn't believe they didn't sedate him just to shut him up. Like, yeah, your leg hurts a lot and that sucks, but jesus christ, it's the emergency room. We're all in pain. Callate.
So basically, I didn't sleep.
And the first night back here I had my usual hallucinations instead of sleep that I always get when I'm really sick. I'd forgotten to ask Gonzalo to get me some Gravol and figured I'd just man up and deal with it but it was a long, weird night.
I can't believe how much my kidneys hurt. I have to drink three litres of water a day, which makes me burp a lot from all the sipping, and every time I burp, or cough, or laugh, or move, I feel a sharp pain in my right side/inside. Sometimes I can't even sneeze because the buildup to the sneeze hurts so much that I stop. I asked them if I had a stone or something, because it doesn't ever hurt to pee (that's actually why it came on so suddenly and strong, I didn't have any painful-peeing symptoms so I didn't get checked out until the vomiting/shaking started) but it just hurts inside, and they said it's because the infection is in my kidneys and not my bladder.
By the way, it's really fun doing 95% of all this in Spanish.
Ok, so I started out writing about how I got into the hospital, but I ended up writing about the whole hideous experience. So be warned: The following is long, unpleasant, and filled with gross details.
Last week I was having some serious back pain. Way worse than normal, and one night I couldn't even sleep because of it. We'd gone out for drinks at La Chiva with Lauren, Dave, Sarah and Chris to celebrate the last night of the "flu strike" (all school in Mexico was cancelled until the 7th because of the H1N1 flu). After Gonz and I went to sleep in my house, I basically tossed and turned trying to find a position that my back would let me sleep in. I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I got back, the same thing that happened to me at the Bloc Party concert in Mexico City happened: The pain got overwhelming, and I suddenly couldn't see anything. I blacked out and fell down and I woke up a couple seconds later to Gonzalo freaking out. He wanted to take me to a doctor but I said I just wanted to try to sleep so we went back to bed.
Warning: Cathlin, if you're reading this, skip this paragraph, it involves your phobia. At this point I still thought it was because of my back. The next day he took me to see his dad, who's a pediatrician, and he asked me if I'd had any pain peeing and I said no but told him about my history of back problems. He said he thought I might have a herniated disc. So the next morning while I was in class, Gonzalo made an appointment with a spinal doctor for after my class. I wasn't feeling so hot during the class, but still figured it was because of my back pain. He picked me up after class and we started driving to the doctor district. However, about fifteen minutes into the drive it became clear that the problem was a little bigger when I started throwing up my morning's chilaquiles out the window. (I felt kinda bad, his dad's pristine white Nissan looked like Big Bird had taken a gigantic poop on the door. And had been eating nothing but salsa.)
Immediately after vomiting, I started shivering. Now, one of Gonzalo's flaws is that he is very, very bad at dealing with situations like this. When he gets scared for someone he loves about something he can't control, he freaks out. I mean, he totally loses his shit. So for a bit while he was driving and I was shivering, I was trying to calm HIM down while he yelled about taking me to the emergency room and that he couldn't let me die and stuff. I convinced him to take me to the doctor's appointment, since it was a doctor either way and I'd remembered how shitty the emergency room in Victoria had treated me. But eventually my shivering turned into pretty violent shaking and I wasn't making any more decisions from then out.
We made it to the doctor's and he was still having a panic attack about how white I was and how I couldn't stop shaking. By that point I was starting to think that something was pretty wrong as I could barely speak through the convulsions; my jaw was locked. I managed to walk with him into the doctor's office, where nobody except the receptionist was, and I sort of stone-collapsed onto the couch. The next fifteen minutes or so is a bit hazy as the shaking started to really hurt and I was starting to panic a little myself about how it wouldn't stop. The spine doctor, the receptionist and Gonzalo were trying for a minute to figure out what to do, and I just couldn't figure out what was causing me more suffering, my sudden raging thirst or how cold I was. Gonzalo says I yelled out something kind of rude in Spanish at the doctor about why he couldn't at least give me something to calm me down. The receptionist gave me water which I sucked down like my life depended on it, and they took me to Gonzalo's car to take me to the hospital, which was luckily just up and across the road. The doctor rode in the back and when we got there, I don't know if Emerg in Mexico just moves faster (I doubt it), or if it was because a doctor was with us, or what, but they got me immediately into an examination room. I guess that "Patients are taken in order of urgency" sign that I glared hatefully at for four hours in Victoria General did me some good this time.
By the time I got into the examination room, my shaking had calmed back down to just shivering. I lied on the examination table with Gonzalo next to me, holding my hand, as we both answered the new doctor's questions. I was surprised at how quickly he figured on it being a kidney problem, though looking back it seems more obvious as I know quite well where the kidneys are and I was just so wrapped up in my history of back pain problems that I never considered anything else.
They wheeled me into the emergency room, where I was to spend the next two days. I put on the classic blue gown (this one had a unique burlap bag-esque touch), got awkwardly into bed and felt weird about the whole situation. At that point I really didn't feel like being in a hospital was necessary. I'm sort of a reverse hypochondriac, I never think anything serious is wrong and have never gone to the doctor for a flu or cold or anything. I've read so much about people flooding emergency rooms for coughs, and demanding prescriptions for antibiotics when it's really just a virus and you have to wait it out, that I pretty much always think it's a virus and just try to tough it out. It didn't help that the first time I did think something was wrong, two doctors told me to go home and sleep it off before the third one figured out it was freaking pneumonia and oh yeah, maybe coughing up blood isn't NORMAL. And then in Victoria when I knew something was seriously wrong (long, ugly story) they were total jarks about it and sent me home, and it took a long, painful time to "tough it out", still never knowing what was wrong.
Anyways, the doctors and nurses (half of whom were men, remember - that was so strange) at Xalapa CEM were 90% really nice. And the one guy that wasn't really nice was more of a tough-love, stop whining you know this is to help you get better kind of guy. They took blood and made me pee in a cup and ultrasounded my kidneys, throughout the course of about seven excruciatingly boring hours until they figured it out. By the way, I think I'll take this paragraph (edit: and the next... and then some more) to complain about my two least favourite things about the whole nightmare experience in the hospital, so please feel free to skip it: The IV, and the boredom. Oh sweet jesus was I ever bored. But it's not bored like, 'ugh waiting for this bus sucks', or 'oh man when is this class gonna end'. It's, you have absolutely nothing to look at but this fluorescent light on the ceiling. Nothing. And, what's so infinitely worse, is you have nothing to think about but your pain. And your nausea. And whether they've figured out what's wrong with you. And why your heart is beating so fast. And how much you want to brush your teeth. And how much you smell and how gross you look. And when you're gonna get out of there. And how you want to pee but getting up with your IV is such a pain in the ass you want to wait a bit longer, which of course makes the time go even slower. And whether anyone's going to come and poke at you some more, and how you wish they would because it might make time go faster. And of course, how bored you are. Hours, and hours, and hours. No TV, no iPod, no phone, no books, no magazines. Just the ceiling. And your brain's too tired and sick to think of anything interesting to pass the time but somehow you can't sleep. For two straight days I was in this white hell zone. If I'd transferred into a private room, I could have had books and things to pass the time, but far less medical attention and it was crazy expensive - it was going to cost $500 just to get into the room, and I didn't trust my travel insurance enough. So I stayed there and experienced the single longest two days of my life.
About the only thing there was to do was watch the saline dripping into my IV. Oh god, the IV. I'm actually pretty sure the boredom wouldn't have been nearly as bad without the IV. It was definitely more of a psychological thing for me. I mean, it did hurt, especially when they put it in or fiddled with it, but it didn't hurt all the time. Mostly it just gave me the mega-creeps. I'm okay with needles; even when I was a kid I never had problems getting vaccinations or anything, and I've been donating blood as often as I can since I was 17. But having this giant needle inside one of the fragile little veins in my HAND was just so utterly awful to me. Slowly pumping clear, foreign liquids into my bloodstream at all times. And if I moved, what then?! Would the needle break through into the other tissues in my hand and start pooling saline and paracetamol into the little hand muscles under my skin, and then would it just build there like a big bubble of unholy Western medicine gone wrong until I started screaming bloody murder from the pain and sight of my elephantiasized left hand? What if it broke through to an artery and the oxygen-depleted vein blood started mixing with the fresh artery-flowing blood and my body started sending it to my organs and I had a complete bodily shutdown from improperly oxygenated blood?! WHAT IF, OH GOD WHAT IF AN AIR BUBBLE GOT IN THERE?!
That was the kind of stuff I thought about while I was lying there. You'd think that being somewhat biologically knowledgeable would appease those fears instead of make them more creative. I swear, I've never been afraid of anything medical or doctorly until that IV. That thing was my fucking nemesis.
But oh sweet baby jesus, the potential Air Bubble Of Doom, was that ever my biggest fear. That one I actually let get control of my brain enough to bug the nurses/doctor about it. Three times. If an air bubble got into my bloodstream I was going to have a heart attack and die. That was it. So the first time I saw a bubble in the upper tube, I asked a nurse about it and she said when it got to this nifty part right here, it would get sucked out. So I breathed easy. Then when Mine was with me, I saw a really weird-looking section that was blood, a BIG ASS BUBBLE-LOOKIN' THING, and some yellowish turning into saline. And it was on the wrong side of the tracks, headed steadily towards my hand. I asked Mine what she thought and she told me it was no problem, just coagulation or something. But I decided to start having my heart attack before it even got inside me and made her get a nurse to make sure it was okay. The nurse didn't show up. It creeped closer. I looked around wildly for someone to come and see this armageddon in the making and make it stop. It creeped ever closer. I saw my life flash before my eyes as it slid silently under the bandage on my hand. The nurse showed up. I tried to play it cool. "There's no way a bubble could get inside me right I mean that really really looked like one it had some blood around it but it was like a clear part and yeah so I'm totally gonna die right?"
I didn't die, but I did start questioning my sanity around this IV. That thing was slowly unscrewing something in my brain.
When Gonzalo's dad came to check on me after that, I asked him if there was any way an air bubble could get inside my hand, and Mine told him I'd been worrying about it a lot, and he looked at me like I was an idiot and said no. So I shut up about it, but the fear didn't leave until they finally took the godforsaken thing out of my hand.
And of course, you can imagine how these fears contributed "irrational, terrified unwillingness to move left side of body" to my lack of sleep.
I guess I also spent too much time mentally filing away my gripes so I could write about them later, so I'll try to just finish. Some fun facts to highlight how awesome it all really was (warning: the third one is TMI, the fourth is disturbing and the fifth is really sad; and Cathlin if you're still reading this by any chance skip the first one):
- The IV took care of my internal hydration, but I was still incredibly thirsty all the time and for the first eight or so hours they wouldn't let me drink or eat anything. I didn't want to eat, but I was unbearably thirsty. Finally Gonzalo and his dad came in and brought me a big bottle of water, because I guess nobody argues with a guest wearing an ID and a lab coat. It was great, but in the middle of the night after a particularly big swig I started puking up large amounts of liquid onto the floor. The male nurse (the tough love one I mentioned) that was taking care of me that night was super unimpressed that I had been drinking water. So he put it on the floor out of my reach and I was only allowed to ask for occasional sips. Ironically, when I left, they told me I had to drink three litres of water a day.
- The entire two days that I was there, I ate a quarter of a granola bar, two bites of papaya, less than half of a piece of french toast and a half a cup of jello. So I was hungry, too, but I'm not even going to bother writing about it because I barely noticed it next to everything else.
- I was physically able to get up and use the bathroom, as awkward as it was to do so carrying my IV with me. But one time, late at night, they made me use a bedpan despite all my protests. Humiliating. I sort of squatted over it on the bed with my sheet over top of everything, and asked for paper afterwards so it wasn't too messy, but jesus christ. At least it was at night and most of the lights were dimmed. And most importantly, the only people around were patients who couldn't give a damn what I was doing, and medical personnel who'd seen it a zillion times before.
- At around 2 or 3 am, I heard terrible screaming and sobbing coming from outside of the emergency room. Someone was crying like I'd never heard before. It made shivers run down my back. It wasn't from pain. Nobody cries like that unless someone they love is seriously injured... or dead.
- The second day, they put an old man in the bed beside me. I couldn't understand his Spanish at all through his mumblings so I never knew what he was there for. But twice I saw him confusedly rip out his IV. The first time I almost sympathized; hey, I wanted the fucking thing out too and wished I lacked the sense to keep it in. But after the second time the nurses had to rush over to scold him and put it back in, they had to strap down his free hand so he couldn't do it again. It was attached with bandages to his bed on the side I was on and I watched him struggle weakly to free his hand, staring blankly at it, pulling at it, trying to get his IV'd hand over to help free it. He would sit up in bed and his gown would fall down around his stomach and he'd just look around, bemusedly. I left a couple hours after he came in, but I never saw family or anyone come in to see him.
So yeah, not a fun couple of days. And in the worst luck, I was there during the only two days a week that Gonzalo has school, so most of the time he couldn't be with me. Mine, our mutual cleaning lady/cook that Liz and I really bonded with over the year, came in both days to see me and stayed for hours in the waiting room when they kicked her out, just to have a couple chances to come in and see me. It made me kind of sad to see how upset for me she was, though; she has such a big heart and is so concerned for the people around her. One time the first evening, after she left to get me some juice, with that trembling, pained frown on her face, I started crying. I was just so overwhelmed from being there, and hurting, and being so incredibly thirsty, and not being able to sleep, and still not knowing why I was in there, and knowing that Mine would get me juice but that they wouldn't let her back in. Tough-Love Nurse came over and asked what was wrong, and I said I was thirsty, and he just said that he understood but that crying wouldn't help.
The only good thing I guess, was that because of Gonzalo's dad's kind-of-a-big-deal doctor status, they pulled some strings and I got put in a special place in the ER with a side wall for the first day and night, and I think I got more visitor time than was normally allowed. Gonzalo left his class early on Friday night to come stay with me, and didn't leave my side until they finally kicked him out around midnight.
The second day, I was lying around trying to calm my heart rate after a new intravenous dose of paracetamol and wondering when the nurses were going to notice the old man trying to get loose again, when Gonzalo Sr. showed up and told me they were releasing me. I felt a wave of relief, followed by a wave of extreme need to get the IV out of me NOW. But they told me they couldn't take it out until my bills were all paid, so then began the agonizing waiting game of when Gonzalo and his dad would get back from temporarily paying my bills. This took forever. It turned out that it was because Gonzalo Sr. was using his doctor status to make the bills as low as possible, which was nice of him. But I swear I would have thrown down all the pesos I had just to get out of there a minute sooner.
When they finally took the IV out, it was the most pleasure I've ever gotten out of pain. I still couldn't use my left hand for a good hour afterwards because it freaked me out so much, so Gonzalo had to help me into my clothes and waited patiently as I scrubbed my stinky armpits with the used gown (he's a sweetie). Doctor Dad said bye and we went and bought all my meds, then he walked me to the car like an old woman. On the passenger seat there were roses waiting for me and for the zillionth time I couldn't believe how amazing he is. I was the grossest, smelliest freaking hobbit around, and he was still kissing me and telling me how happy he was to finally be with me outside again.
We drove home and he set me up in his sister's king bed (she was out of town) and I've pretty much been there ever since, with my baby staying and sleeping faithfully beside me, not letting the slightest little cough or tiny noise of discomfort go untended. Getting me anything and everything I could possibly need, refilling my water bottle and bringing me yogurt, turning the fan up or down depending on whether I put on a blanket or take it off. And watching season 3 of Heroes with me, spooning with his hand in mine so as not to touch my hurting sides.
This is love.
...I feel better.