Random Thoughts in My Head

Just shortly after dinner Friday night, I was spending a quiet night “in” watching a movie in preparation for an early evening  since I have to be at work early on Saturdays.  Around 9:30pm I started to feel some unusual rumblings in my abdomen and asked Michael to pause the video so I could go to the bathroom.  Skipping past the graphic explanation, after discovering that most of my stool was blood, we decided to go to the ER.  And that was the beginning of a very long ordeal….

In short, I spent a long time waiting around, hungry and tired, for a procedure to only be told they couldn’t find anything and that I should come back in four weeks.

The long version:

We got to the ER and waited about a half an hour before getting back to a room.   That alone made me think that I was not in bad of shape as I thought, since if I were actually bleeding internally I would think I have most likely been admitted immediately.  We got put in one room, have a bit of back and forth with a couple different nurses, a doctor came in and talked to me momentarily, then they moved me to another ER room, the same doctor and another nurse came back to talk some more and then finally after about an hour said they wanted to admit me so they could run a procedure the next morning. In all this time I had used the bathroom more than ten times, all with the same results. But they didn’t seem to be panicking about that and so I decided that it must not have been too urgent.  I did not want to stay the night and was pretty firm in telling the nurse about my preferences.  The nurse said it would be better if I stayed, I could see that Michael wanted me to stay, but I knew that I would not get any rest at the hospital; even if they put me in a quieter room than the noisy ER room that I ended up spending a couple hours in I knew I would not get any rest and I was already tired and about ready for bed.  I also knew that what prep they needed me to do for the procedure could be done at home. In short, they weren’t really doing much for me and overall seemed less than concerned about my immediate health.  I figured I was not critical or they would have done more than just give me an IV, right?

After the doctor came in for the third time  and tried to reason with me about why I should stay and allow myself to be admitted, as well as the surgeon who was going to do the procedure coming in and assuring me the procedure would get done “first thing in the morning”,  I ended up giving in to the request to be admitted since I figured I could manage another six-to-eight hours awake doing the prep needed for the procedure.  However, time seems to move very slowly in the ER or maybe just the people move slowly except in case of traumas, either way I didn’t even get into my own room until around 2am (4 hours at hospital at this point) and then they didn’t get the me the liquid to drink until nearly 4am (6 hours at hospital at this point).  All this time I had been asking over and again when they would be giving me the stuff I had to drink for my procedure, to different nurses and aides, since it was a gallon of less than pleasant fluid that was going to make me pretty uncomfortable and the longer I waited to get started the longer it would take to get done.

Shortly around 4am they finally brought my fluid to me, plus an enormous  cup with an equally large straw.  I got though the first half a gallon of it by about 6am and though I was hungry and thirsty I also felt very full from it so I rested my head and dozed on and off for about 45 minutes. Around 7am I gave up trying to sleep since I was awoken about every 10 minutes by something: beeping monitors, people in the hallway, a nurse that came to see if I needed anything.  So I resumed drinking the foul fluid, much more slowly this time, and awaited to hear when the procedure would be done.  Finally shortly after 7am and a shift change a new nurse stopped in to check on me and when I asked about the procedure, she said she would go ask the doctor.  She comes back after about 30 minutes and tells me I have to wait another 24 hours since they are going to do the procedure on Sunday morning instead. I had a full blown hissy fit at that point; I’ll admit it was not my finest moment. In my defense I was so hungry I was feeling shaky and tired since I’d been up for about 24 hours at that point, plus I had had little other information given to me in the time I had been there I told her point blank that was not okay and that I was going to leave and just come back later in the week to do the procedure since there is no way I’m staying for another 24 hours without food or water, since once again, I’m obviously not in critical condition if they can make that kind of a judgment call without the doctor even seeing me.  That seemed to get her attention; she said she would go find out if they could maybe do it around noon or early afternoon.

The nurse came back after a very short time and said she was sending the new shift doctor in to talk to me since the guy who was going to do the procedure had already left. It was not even 8am yet! I was fuming at this point.  I was physically exhausted too, which made things even worse.  The new doctor came in and talked to me and she is the bright part of this story.  She said she could not do that procedure, but there was another surgeon on-call, a visiting doctor, who should be able to do it, but she would have to check with the surgeon to make sure she could do it.  As it turns out that other doctor was in surgery for several hours which delay the reply.  Once we heard back from her we found out that sadly she did not do those kinds of procedures, but the doctor on the floor had called the fellow who had already left and convinced him to come back later that day, provided I got all my fluid down.  Go awesome floor doctor! She also ordered some IV fluids with sugar in it to help with my blood sugar dropping, something that really made a difference in how I felt.  She spent the most amount of time actually talking to me about options and also said she wanted to order a nuclear study to help with diagnosis.  I’m glad she was as helpful as she was because overall  that time between 7am and around noon was really, really hard for me.  Several times I nodded on and off while I tried to relax and rest, but I didn’t really sleep.  My adrenaline would get pumping every time someone would come into the room, hoping it was good news, but only being told “we’ll get back to you” or even worse, them disappearing for hours at a time.

Finally around 11am things got back on track.  I was told they would come in get me to do the nuclear study which took an hour, to see if they could use that to determine the cause of the problem.  After that was done, around 2pm the nurse came in to tell me that if I could get the rest of my fluid finished they would do the procedure that evening.  I took that as a challenge and told her it would be done by 6pm;  I finished it by 5pm! Take that! Oh, and GAG!!

Michael had come to see me in the morning and stayed with me for a while.  I can’t recall when or why exactly he left, but I do recall that once I found out I needed to finish that foul fluid I asked him not to come back until 6pm when I thought I would be done with the fluid and might be heading back for my procedure.  Before he came back I do recall I asked him to bring me some things from home and he did.

At 6pm they finally said they would come and get me in 5 minutes for the procedure, 25 minutes later I was finally being wheeled out of my room. They told Michael they expected the procedure to last an hour and a half and they were close; I think I was back in my room around 8:30, discharged by 9pm because there was NO WAY I WAS STAYING ANOTHER NIGHT. I was home by 9:30 and in bed by 10:30.

And that is my “ER visit turned colonoscopy” horror story.