So, as you all may know from my previous post, I am quite the walking disaster. I seem to be accident prone. This semester, I have fractured three toes and damaged my thumb (had to wear a brace on it for a week). Not quite as bad as the concussion incident, but still, I was hoping to go one semester without a visit to the student health center.
Last Thursday I had another incident. It wasn’t quite a walking disaster thing, but it was still traumatic, and so very…me.
It started when I got out of English early, and decided to stop by the library. After this, I decided to take the White Loop home. It was there I ran into my friend Barbara. I haven’t really seen her since the beginning of the semester, so we went to get coffee.
We spent a good while catching up, and plotting our trip to Disney for the following December. After our coffee had been drained, I started to feel sick. Sharp, stabbing stomach pains. I figured it was because I had just finished a latte- I sometimes display symptoms of lactose intolerance.
So I packed up my stuff and got home as fast as I could, assuming I was going to be sick. That didn’t happen. Instead, my stomach continued to hurt, and I lay in bed, waiting for it to go. Soon I started to feel nauseated, so I dragged myself down to the grocery store for some instant rice and Tums.
This helped me a little bit, with the nausea, but the pain didn’t go away. I watched the clock. Eight hours since the pain had started. At this point, it was past midnight. I called my friend Greg, and prayed he was still awake. He agreed to drive me to the hospital. I called the advice nurse, just in case
So I went to the hospital. Again. I hate the hospital when I’m sick. Especially when you don’t know what’s wrong. The doctors hand you a cup and say say here. Pee in this. That’s one of the most impossible things to do, especially when the advice nurse says DON’T EAT OR DRINK NOW. So that took a while. The nurses kept coming to the door and asking if I was okay, which didn’t make that an easier task. >.<
Have I mentioned I’m scared of needles? I never realized the extent of it until that night. The next step in figuring out what was wrong with me was to take blood from me, then put in an IV. I went into full panic mode. I was crying and thrashing, and the nurse couldn’t get the needle into my vein. I was crying like I was three., and Greg had to hold me down. They finally had to call in another nurse, a real tough one who apparently could take blood from babies without making them cry. I don’t know how that’s possible, because it hurt like hell. The doctor came in and tried to talk to me and distract me, but that made it worse. My whole body was shaking. The nurses kept asking me if I was cold, and did I want a blanket?
Next they wanted to X ray me. That wasn’t scary for me, because I’d had those before. What got me was when I was being wheeled back to my room. I was wheeled past beds full of emergency patients. There was a woman covered in bandages, blood everywhere, and paramedics and nurses running around. That’s exactly what I needed to see to calm me down. Not.
I get back to my room, only to have them put an IV in the tube sitting in my arm. This sent me into hysterical laughter. Greg could only stare at me like I was insane. Couldn’t really blame him.
The worst part of hospital trips is waiting. They told us half an hour. After a while, the came back in and told me they needed more samples. After waiting another hour, they finally came in and told me they had no idea what was wrong with me, but it wasn’t my appendix or a bladder infection. They gave me a bunch of medications and told me to go home.
One week later, I’m still alive, and still having slight pain. I’m on a special diet, which means I pretty much live off of bread. Oh, and I discovered that the nausea pills the hospital gave me are meant for Chemotherapy patients.
Zoey Delmaire Writes 