Hospital Haziness

I have had many fears over the past couple of weeks about going to the hospital.  For one, I don’t want to be exposed to Covid.  Secondly, I don’t want to take up space and resources from those that have it.  Third, change terrifies me, and it seems like every time I end up in the ER there is some huge change happening.  And on top of all this, I have been living with the worry that I will not be getting my surgery any time soon, as all elective surgeries have been cancelled.

So, when I woke up sick at six am yesterday morning, I held my ground.  I took some Compazine and Bentyl and Xanax and tried to get the storm to pass, but sometime around 11am, there was blood in the vomit, so off I went.

I was the only person in the waiting room.  It occurred to me that perhaps others were avoiding the ER, too.  I was momentarily grateful, as my name was immediately called and I was registered right away.

They put me in a room.  A doc came in with a med student.  A quick exam, and three shots in the arm: Compazine, Ativan, morphine.  Some blood work, and Xray, and then to a chair in the internal waiting room with a nice heated blanket and two women watching soap operas.  Sleep.

Awake.

Moved to another room.  Given papers, told to leave.  Out the door and into my mom’s car and home again and then back to…sleep.

It was probably the easiest ER trip I’ve ever had and for that I am super grateful.  But then there is the leftover haze the next day, as I sit down to type my blog, and I can’t seem to remember what I had to say.  That’s the worst part, even worse than my sore esophagus.  Still…

In the past week, two people I know were diagnosed with Covid, and one had a major scare that turned out to be something else, thank God.  And that right there: “thank God it was something else,” is the problem.  It is the perfect illustration of why Covid is so scary; we will always be rooting for the lesser of two evils, and Covid is the supreme evil of the moment.

They talk a lot on the news about people who won’t wear a mask, and their arguments are pretty hypocritical at most times.  But I look around and I see way more people volunteering to do so than not, and that gives me hope. 

I have diabetes, so I am high-risk for Covid.  I’ve worn a mask since day one.  I will continue to do so well into the future.  I intend to get the vaccine when it is available to me.  When I see people eschew the science because of their so-called “personal freedoms,” all I can think is “wow…that asshole wants me dead.”

I don’t know.  Maybe it was the 20 years of Catholicism that taught me the whole “do unto others” song and dance, but I just don’t see why grown adults are behaving like petulant children.  I can’t get sick, guys.  I am sick enough.

So, my ER trip went better than expected, but only served as a reminder that this thing is serious.  And people are acting like it isn’t.  I mean, I’m not perfect.  I try to follow the rules as best I can but I have certainly slipped up.  But I’m trying.  Some people aren’t even doing that.

I know this blog was a little all over the place.  I’m a little all over the place, still floating on that hospital fog and definitely needing a couple more hours of sleep.  But if you take nothing else from this post, take this: wear your damn mask.

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Monday, Wednesday, Whatever.

I impose a Monday deadline on myself because when I was younger, I never did my homework on time.  I spent a great many afternoons in 6^th grade sitting in detention and finishing my science labs.  It only got worse as I got older.  It wasn’t until my fateful year at college that I learned to work with deadlines, and I try to impose them on myself to keep my life in order.  I am a procrastinator from way back, and it’s difficult to change one’s stripes, so I am always trying.  Thus, I imposed a deadline for my blog.  Every Monday, I will post something, whether profound or not, just something so I can hold myself accountable.  However, deadlines are made to be broken.

I have written this before.  I have also written the same excuse for this broken deadline, because it is always the same excuse…it is difficult to write with an IV in one’s arm, or as the case was Monday, one’s foot.

I don’t like to write about getting sick because I have a lot of emotions attached to it, mostly anger and rage.  Mostly failure.  Like, I know I did nothing to end up in the hospital on Monday morning.  I took my pills.  I followed my diet.  And yet my stomach rebelled, as it is wont to do, and landed me back at good old Mercy hospital.

First, there’s the waiting room, which has at best lasted thirty seconds and at worst lasted eight hours.  We were somewhere in the middle on this one.  Then there’s triage, where they try to find a vein, fail miserably, give up and put me in a room.  They send another nurse, the “vein whisperer,” if you will, and she pulls out all the stops.  Still, nothing, and they go to the foot.  Finally, they’re taking blood.  Finally, I can get some meds.  Compazine and Zofran and Ativan and Morphine…and then there is sleep.

I wake up and they tell me I can’t leave, my blood sugar is too high, because of course diabetes wants to come out and play, too.  They will keep me overnight for observation, which sounds simple but means I probably won’t be out until at least supper time.  I wake up in the night in pain, more morphine; I wake up nauseated, more Zofran.  Someone brings a breakfast I don’t touch.  Someone takes my blood.  Someone else brings fresh water, and that tastes remarkable.  My blood sugar is normal again, and if I eat, they’ll take out my IV.  I do as I’m told between sleeps.

Eventually a doctor comes around the same time as my lunch tray and tells me I can go home if I eat soup a little soupier than that they just gave me.  I wait longer for food.  I eat, I don’t throw up, so I call my nurse and tell her I want to go home.  I wait.  Three hours later, she takes the IV out of my foot, tests my blood sugar, and sends me on my way.

This is a short visit.  This isn’t the nine days I spent in June, and it doesn’t feel like October when I went back three times in a week.  This is just one day that throws me off by a century.  I wake up this morning with pain in my stomach and a faulty gag reflex and run to the bathroom, terrified that we will be going back for round two.  I take my meds and pray they stay down.  I eat a cracker.  I wait.  Eventually the pain subsides and I don’t feel the urge to puke, so I eat another cracker.  I wait.

There’s a lot of waiting.

Now, I sit at my desk which is downright buried under stuff, because of course the house looks like four child-sized tornados went through it.  Cleanup is also the thing I do on Mondays, right after posting my blog, and it is the thing I will be doing this Wednesday, despite my body being tired from retching and my brain foggy from medications.  I have to do it though, because I need that normalcy in my life.  I need that to hold onto when I lose a day, or three, to a broken gut.