An Adventure, Part 2...

At the hospital, I was quickly deposited into an ER room.  Our local hospital has a very nice new ER, and coming in the ambulance entrance gave me a different view than last year when Greg went there for a kidney stone.

I assume I was given an IV right away, and fluids were started, but except for a very kind nurse who popped in fairly regularly, nothing at all happened for hours.  No pain relief.  No doctor.  I told Greg at one time I just wanted to go back home.  Which, of course, was ridiculous, but that was my state of mind as I waited and waited.   Around 2:30 a doctor popped into the room - apologizing that it took so long for him to get there.  I was just glad to see someone, and maybe get some answers finally - and pain relief.  After examining me, he said he suspected a kidney stone.  Really!  That wasn't on my radar at all - not that I had anything else on my radar, but this was not how I'd ever imagined a kidney stone feeling.  Mostly, I was relieved when he offered me some pain medicine, and said he was sending me for a CT scan.  

With a dose of morphine added to my IV, and the sharpness of the pain quickly smoothed off, I was much more relaxed as a tech rolled me down the hallways to the CT machine.  I still couldn't get a deep breath (I know because the machine told me a few times to take one), and it hurt to hoist myself onto and off the scan table, but the morphine made me not care so much.

Then it was back to my ER room to wait for nearly an hour and a half for the CT results. That was okay - I was feeling so much better.  All my previous agony was but a memory (for a little while).

It seems it was another couple of hours later when the doctor finally popped back into the room.  He had a sober look on his face, as he told me I had acute pancreatitis.  He expressed his surprise, as none of the typical causes of pancreatitis applied to me - no gallbladder, I don't drink alcohol, and my triglycerides were great last summer, and only slightly elevated right then - no doubt as a response to the pancreatitis.  "Idiopathic", he declared it.  This is the second time that word has been used for an unexplainable health issue over the last 6 months. I'm seriously beginning to dislike the word, but I'm also beginning to have a theory that these things could be connected, and how.  That is for another day, though...  maybe.

Then the doctor told me a nodule was found on my thyroid and it would have to be followed up on.  

I can't say I jumped to worry, exactly, but I took his sobered cue and became a bit overwhelmed at these two bits of information. He offered me a stronger pain medicine to follow the morphine.  "Dilaudid, would be better," I remember him saying.  I made a mental note for when I was next offered pain medicine.

Soon after he left the room the second time, they started making arrangements for me to be admitted to the hospital. I was told patients often spend up to a week in the hospital for acute pancreatitis, but the doctor told me his mother had spent a month hospitalized when she had it.  I seriously hoped that neither of those scenarios wouldn't be me, but knowing I was at least spending the rest of Saturday there, I gave Greg a list of things to pack up and bring to me on Saturday.  With nothing more for him to do, I sent my exhausted husband home around 6:00 am to get some sleep, with both of us imagining I'd soon be sleeping in a (slightly) more comfortable hospital bed upstairs.

Sometime during the next hour, I had a conversation with the nurse about taking Dilaudid the next time pain medicine was scheduled.  Morphine helped me not care so much about the pain, but if something could actually take the pain away and let me sleep, I was game.  A little while later, she came in with the shot.

I can't say I noticed any pain reduction before the nausea hit.  And right as the nausea started, someone came to collect me to take me to my room.  I was just starting to look for something to throw up into when she asked me if I wanted to take a wheel chair or the gurney I was on.  I told her I was sick and I didn't think I could possibly get off the gurney. Nevermind, the thought of anything with wheels nearly made me panic. I asked if I could have some anti-nausea medicine.  I don't remember what she said, but she was clearly on a mission and she started unhooking me from stuff, and getting my things ready to transport upstairs.  

I asked again, for some nausea medicine, and I might have been told they'd give me something upstairs.   When she started rolling the bed toward the door, I knew I was in trouble, and asked as firmly as I could muster, "Can I not be given anti-nausea medicine down here?"  She went and got my nurse, and I was quickly given a shot, and I prayed that it would take effect quickly.

It seemed to help a little, and wanting to be cooperative, I probably too quickly said, "Okay, I think I can do this." and we were off.  With eyes, closed (which I don't know was a good idea), and me holding my head as we cruised down the halls, somehow I managed being backed into the elevator, riding the elevator 2 floors up, then being backed into my room, to only then begin retching.  Someone saw me and rushed to give me a skinny little sick sack, and I retched (mostly dry-heaved) until my gut was sore.  Or maybe it was my pancreas.  Everything hurt again.

I don't know why, but at some point in my adult life, I developed what I've come to refer to as a pathological fear of vomiting.  I'm sorry to talk about this. It's such a disgusting word.  It sounds as nasty as it is.  But somehow I made it off the gurney onto the edge of the hospital bed, and for the next approximately 4 hours, I sat there, head in hand, balancing the arm that held my head on the little hospital tray table, trying desperately not to be sick.  Every so often I found myself reaching for a fresh sick sack from the stack that had been left for me, and every half hour or so I retched my guts out. Not that I was aware of time. And I completely lost track of how many times I got sick.  The hours ticked by, and every so often a nurse or a tech would come in and check my vitals.  Or ask if I needed anything.  I feel like I asked for some more anti-nausea medication, but none was forthcoming.  Those hours were a dark and cold blur, even after the sun rose.  It was around 11 am when I started to feel the nausea abate. The nurse (or tech - I wasn't in a frame of mind to recall who was who at that point yet) came in and finally with a bit clearer head I tried to have a conversation about whether or not I could have been given more anti-nausea medication in the night.  The nurse (or tech) told me I hadn't been there during the night - that I had only come up to the room around 7am.  Okay, yeah...  I understand.  Can we not get hung up on the details?  Having, by this time, been awake for more than 24 hours, and sick for close to half of that time, I was confused.  

Moments into what was feeling like a fruitless conversation, the hospitalist came into the room, and a little too cheerfully looked at me and pronounced that I didn't "look like a happy camper." 

Not a happy camper indeed!  For the past four hours I had been questioning the choice to come to this hospital - and I finally said it out loud. The hospitalist dropped his happy demeanor and tried to answer my question about the anti-nausea medication.  I honestly, don't remember what the answer was.  I was exhausted, but at least I wasn't vomiting anymore.  I know I was still feeling motion sickness, as I remember asking the doctor (who seemed intent on moving around) if he could stand a bit more still.  It was nauseating trying to keep eye contact with him as he just sort of meandered around.  What a wreck I must have been. In that moment it seemed enough that I said something out loud that I had been running through my mind the previous four hours - and that I stated I didn't want anymore Dilauded.

Now, I'm not sure at what point I realized my phone was missing, but around this time, I began to express my concern about it, and suggested that it probably got swept up in the sheets and blankets that were on the gurney when I was transferred to the hospital room.  I was so sick when I got transferred, it was impossible for me to keep track of anything, other than were I placed my two feet, and sat my bum.  And those things didn't move much in the four hours after I planted them.

I was assured they would find my phone. I wanted to believe them, but imagining it was in the laundry room - somewhere in the bowels of the hospital, probably tumbling in the dryer by that time, I started adding the cost of a new phone to what I feared would end up being a very expensive taxi ride to the ER.

After the doctor left, I was given some morphine and something for nausea, and I finally laid back to sleep for a few hours on Saturday until Greg came with some things for me to freshen myself up with later in the afternoon.

I wasn't yet a "happy camper", but I wasn't sick to the point of (I don't think I need to keep saying the word).  Every small kindness shown me was greatly appreciated.  And things improved from that point on.

More in part 3...