So there's Dh and I, camped out in the emergency room. The double dose of morphine has done the trick; the pain is gone and, other than feeling exhaustion from several hours of painful contortions, I'm feeling good. Normal, in fact.
This is not a good thing.
You see, I'm the sort of person who loathes going to the dr for much of anything. If it isn't broken or bleeding profusely, I tend to just take care of it myself. Actually, that includes profuse bleeding, but only to a certain point. It's taken me years to get past that, and it's something I still struggle with.
Which means I was starting to think there was no reason for me to be at the emergency anymore. We could just go home. I felt fine.
Dh just rolled his eyes when I told him that.
We stayed, of course. At the very least, we had to wait for the Xray results.
It was an interesting wait.
I did try to doze off while we waiting. I knew I needed the rest, but I didn't want to actually go to sleep, since I figured we either had a lot to come, or we'd be going home soon. That and there were a lot of interruptions preventing any real sleep.
The nurse who'd given me my second dose of morphine had done it just before her shift ended, so that I wouldn't get lost in the shuffle of shift change. Some time later, the new shift nurse came to introduce herself and check on me. My vitals were taken again. Now that the pain was going, my BP and heart rate were back to normal. The nausea and dizziness had disappeared as well. I'd gone through my first back of IV fluids rather quickly, so I was hydrated again and the new bags they gave me were set at a much lower drip. There wasn't much to do at that point. I ended up taking out my phone frequently to check my facebook, answering comments people had left on my status updates as best I could with one thumb - with the IV in my other elbow, I couldn't bend it far enough to grip the phone and use two hands - and doing a bit of browsing online. There were some weird connectivity problems that lead to my status updates being uploaded as many as 5 times in a row, or not update at all due to a lack of connection. Dh's Blackberry was fine, though, so he kept in touch with the girls and, at one point, I even borrowed it to access my own facebook and send more updates. It was the more practical way to let our far-flung family members know what was going on. Our batteries were draining rather quickly, though! *L*
We quickly learned to really appreciated the staff in the emergency room. Those people deserve to be sainted!
The way the ward is laid out, there were 5 "rooms." Three of them were against one wall while the remaining two were on opposite walls facing each other. We kepts our curtain pulled for privacy, but the curtains were about 2 ft short of the floor, so we could still see people's legs moving around. Of course, we could hear everything, too.
There was one elderly woman there that needed some rather gentle care. The nurse found out it was her birthday and offered to get her some celebratory jello. She promised to pass it on to the other staff so that when she was admitted for her longer stay, they would help her celebrate. Meanwhile, the same nurse had to try and explain to another older woman right next to me why, even though she was hungry, the nurse couldn't give her any food because of the tests they had to do. Rather heartbreaking, as the woman seemed to have difficulty understanding and was a bit confused. After a while, a guy was brought in with 3 or 4 broken ribs. He'd actually broken them some weeks ago, but kept rebreaking them while doing things like shoveling snow. *facepalm*
It was the guy in the room directly opposite me that made the evening... most interesting. Not in a good way.
At first, we noticed him because he kept calling loudly for things. A sandwich. A glass of water. Another sandwich. The nurse went past to work with the guy with broken ribs, and this guy was calling out for her, asking her to open his sandwich. Apparently, that was more important than some one's broken ribs. When he got his glass of water, we could actually hear him finishing it off in no time, then call out to some passing staff member for another. I don't know what the staff member was, but he wasn't a nurse and not someone to give patients anything. Then he was calling out for another sandwich because he was soooooo hungry! In fact, he was asking for sandwiches so often, someone finally came and told him he couldn't have any more because they were running out.
And there I was, with my stomach rumbling and growling away, wishing I could eat at all! In fact, I couldn't even drink.
Dh and I chatted, of course, and wondered what would come up on the Xray. The kidney stone possibility was still there, but I didn't think it likely. Which meant it was "something else." There aren't a lot of possibilities. Because the pain was so localized, a few things came to mind. The most obvious, of course, was a cancerous tumour. A cyst was another likely possibility. Less likely was that it was some sort of intestinal blockage. A loop of intestine might have gotten kinked or twisted. The tearing sensation I was feeling could mean... well, that something had torn or ruptured.
I don't remember how long it took, but it wasn't very long before the doctor came back with the Xray results. At least I think it was the same doctor. When he saw me earlier, I was a bit distracted by my contortions. It was some time later that I joked with Dh that I couldn't remember what the dr looked like. Just some vague notion of blonde hair.
The doctor comes in with the results and sits himself down with a very serious expression on his face. The Xrays showed no sign of a kidney stone, nor anything else. It could still be a kidney stone, but the urine test didn't show any sign of one, either. This meant they had to look into other possible causes. Then he sort of braced himself, looked at me directly and said,
"We could be looking at cancer."
To which I replied, "Oh. Interesting." Then I turned to Dh and started cracking some joke. The doctor blinked at me for a bit, then turned to his clipboard saying, "not the reaction I was expecting!" I just laughed and told him I was a very pragmatic sort. The doctor told us the next step was a CT scan of the area, and that they'd be getting it ready for me as soon as possible.
*sigh* So much for being able to eat something!
Which meant we had more time on our hands, waiting. By now it was about 11:30 in the evening, and I'd been there for 6 hours. Sleep sounded like a very good idea! Ah, but it was not to be!
Dh called the kids directly for this, then tried (unsuccessfully) phoning his parents. My own parents, I trusted my other family members inform when and how they saw fit. They need to be handled a little more delicately. Especially my father. The less stress and worry he has, the better, and at this point, we really had nothing to tell anyone besides "not kidney stones."
That meant we got to listen to our neighbour across the way some more! Joy! Not.
This was not a quiet guy, even when he wasn't talking to anyone our calling out for the nurses. There was a continuous stream of burping and farting, moaning and groaning. He kept asking the staff for stuff, as if they were his own personal servants, demanding attention from the nurse even when she was dealing with other patients.
Then he (I'll refer to him as B) started letting out a strange moan. Then another, louder, moan. Before long, he was letting out these long, ululating wails, calling for the nurse, complaining about his IV and that it was burning his arm. A couple of nurses rushed over to him and discovered his IV was no longer in the vein, but in the muscle. Dh and I couldn't help but glance at the IV in my own arm, thoroughly taped down in several places, and realize this was no "accident." We could hear the nurses talking B through what they were doing. The IV nurse got the needle in properly again, and we could actually hear the amount of tape she was using to lash this thing into place. As they were telling him to be careful with it and whatnot, B started getting all indignant at the suggestion that he might have done this himself, even by accident. They tried to be diplomatic in their answers, but really, how diplomatic can you be with something like this?
They were done in no time at all, though, and soon he was left alone. Within a minute, he was moaning and wailing again because the IV was burning. The nurses rushed back and, sure enough, the IV was no longer in his vein. The main nurse was more blunt to him about pulling out his IV, which lead to him loudly wailing and crying and "how dare you suggest I'd do something like this!" He got even more incensed when the nurse mentioned that his blood work showed that he was inebriated (like that was a surprise!), which had him protesting loudly that he'd only had a glass of wine with lunch, and how could she possibly suggest that he was drunk. Then he started calling her stupid, which she shut down rather quickly.
They ended up taking out the IV completely and leaving him without.
I'm not sure this was a good thing, because now he was free to move around. We could see which pair of legs under the curtain was him by the jeans and shoes (the only patient not in a hospital gown) and the shuffling. Other times, we saw him go by in a wheelchair, pulling himself forward with his feet, frequently brushing into our curtain on the way to his own room across from us. That had to take some doing, really, considering the layout of the place. We were also treated to the constant calling for painkillers. Very specific painkillers. We heard a lot of nurses diplomatically saying they had to ask the dr before they could give him anything. We also got to hear about all the other drugs he was apparently taking as much as 3 times a day - but hadn't taken at all in the last 10 months.
We learned more about this guy's medical history in a couple of hours than I know about most of my family put together! It was a constant litany of complaints, body noises and whining.
As you can imagine, I didn't get much sleep.
At some point, the older woman in the room next to me was gone and guy of about middle age was soon installed. I really felt for this poor guy when I heard the doctor telling him he had a 5 mm kidney stone. No whining and complaining from him, but we could hear from his voice that he was terrified, as I could also see from the few glances I got of his face in between the curtains.
We found it sadly amusing that the loudest complaints were coming from the one person who seemed not to have any injuries at all.
Throughout all this, we had things pretty quiet. Dh did go out and see if I could at least have something to drink, only to be told that, because of the CT scan, they couldn't let me eat or drink anything at all.
*sigh*
I had managed to actually doze off when they finally came to get me for the scan. With all the stuff going on around us, it felt like we'd been waiting for ages, but in reality it was less than an hour. A porter came to wheel me off down the hall where a tech was waiting for me. I was asked if I had a full bladder or not, as it turns out I needed one. Having already given a urine sample and not being allowed to drink anything, I had nothing. I was sure glad to finally be allowed to drink something, even if it meant I had to drink a lot in a short time! The porter had to leave, so the tech gave me a big glass of water (think of a disposable glass from a fast food place that can hold a litre), then wheeled me to the entrance of the waiting room that was there, so I could watch some tv. The Daily Show was on, (Do people really think this guy is funny?) so she gave me the remote so I could watch whatever I wanted. I ended up watching Ace of Cakes and ended up drinking almost 2L of water. My bladder may not have been full yet, but my stomach sure was, and it would have to do!
The first thing I noticed when she wheeled me into the room was the COLD! It was absolutely frigid in there! The machine itself heats up a lot inside, so they have to keep the room colder than normal. I was able to get myself onto the scanner bed. I had to lie flat on my back with my arms above my head. The test is a lot like the MRI, except the machine is amazingly quiet. I was surprised by the lack of noise, actually. The scans were a lot faster, too. Much appreciated, considering I had to hold my breath for them. The whole thing was over in a matter of minutes.
As fast as it was, my insides were definitely not happy with lying on my back like that! While lying on the scanning bed, it felt like something was being yanked inside me. By the time the scanning was done and I had to go back to my stretcher, things were starting to twinge and spasm a bit. Because of the cold, the tech was a sweetheart and wrapped me up in a blanket fresh from the warming shelf and made sure my stretcher was back in a slightly upright position to help relieve the pain that was starting up in my abdomen, then wheeled me back to my room in the emergency. Normally a porter does that, but the scan was over so quickly, she wasn't back from her break yet. The tech wasn't used to handling a stretcher, and this one was giving people steering problems all night. She managed to get me back without incident until the very last moment, when she accidentally backed me hard into the wall! *L*
With the nice, warm blanket around me, I felt my insides relaxing a bit, but after all that water, I soon had to get up and go to the bathroom. My dancing partner had been left behind somewhere, so Dh got a nurse to bring one over for me. After walking to the bathroom and back, however, things were kicking in again. Walking definitely was a trigger, and lying flat on my back seemed to be as well. I hoped it would go away, but it was quickly getting worse.
Dh got the nurse over and we talked about it with her. The pain was still bearable, but quickly getting worse. I wasn't yet sure if I wanted to take more morphine so soon, and wasn't sure it was bad enough to warrant it. In the end, I was given some Toradol. It didn't work as quickly, but it's longer lasting.
Now, it was back to waiting, and being "entertained" by the antics of B. By this time it was about midnight or slightly past. I was actually able to doze off a bit while we waited. The Toradol did the trip. What I appreciated most was that, while I felt no more pain, I could still feel *something* going on. This meant I wasn't going through the idiocy I did with the morphine, where I was feeling nothing at all and thinking of going home!
It was maybe an hour before the doctor came back with the results. It was definitely NOT a kidney stone. That was the only thing they could say for sure. What they could see was a large, dark mass around my fallopian tube, but they couldn't tell what it was.
Because of where it was, I was going to be transferred to the care of the emergency gynecological team (I had no idea emergency wards would need such a team!). The next step was an ultrasound, which they would do in the morning. It was about 1- 1:30 am by now, and I would definitely be staying the night.
I still wouldn't be able to eat, nor would I be able to have anything to drink again.
*sigh*
After the doctor left, we passed on what news we could and Dh packed up to head home. He'd been able to keep the girls updated by texting them as we got news, at least. This was definitely a time for us to appreciate how independent and responsible our girls are! At no point did we ever worry about them being able to take care of themselves. We just weren't completely sure how they were handling what little news we could pass on to them.
Then he was off for home, and I was left to - hopefully! - get some much needed sleep!
Not that my chances for it were very good. ;-)
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