I Was Sick

Starting on Monday, June 23rd, I was feeling bad. The best description is flu-like symptoms. As each day passed, I felt a little worse. By Friday, my sore throat was bad enough that I could only drink things (mostly sweet tea) that didn’t burn. By Saturday, I sent Karen to the store to get me some throat sprays and anything that would make the pain go away. I thought Sunday would be my recover day, but it turned out to be the worst. I was up late (no surprise there) so Monday I didn’t wake up until noon. Shortly after getting up, I had a headache (pain level 1) and noticed a pressure in my chest. Then I vomited for the first time and a little blood came out of my nose. I called Karen and told her I think I need to see a doctor.

Once Karen got home, we headed over to the Urgent Care Center, where of course Urgent doesn’t actually mean Urgent. They called me back after around 30 minutes. The nurse weighed me and took my blood pressure (187 over 131). Then she took my blood pressure on the other arm (190 over 131). The nurse said my blood pressure was super high and I need to go to the Emergency Room at the hospital right away. A doctor came in and said my blood pressure was super high (which made me laugh) and that I need to go to the Emergency Room at the hospital right away. An aide came in with a baby aspirin for me and I said, “What’s this for?” Karen responded with, “They don’t want you to pass out here!” and we all laughed because it was funny.

We headed over to the hospital but dropped Allyson off at a friend’s house first. We arrived at the hospital Emergency Room and signed in, where of course Emergency doesn’t actually mean Emergency. They called me back after around 30 minutes. A nurse took my blood pressure (167 over 124) and asked if I had a history of high blood pressure, to which I answered, “I don’t know because I haven’t seen a doctor for a decade.” I do know that when in the Army, one of their nurses told my I had high blood pressure but said it was probably a soda I had recently. Then I was wheeled back to an actual emergency room.

It wasn’t long before they started to bring me stuff like this beautiful hospital gown.

They took my blood pressure again (181 over 121). It seems to be all over the place. Then they provided me with an awesome IV. Have I mentioned how much I dislike needles? Just writing about them makes me quiver. There on the floor, that appears to be my blood.

You can see from the following video Karen was enjoying herself a little too much, maybe not.

Even while I was laying there I couldn’t help but use my new iPhone 3GS to check my email, take some photos, shoot some video, provide support to a client (seriously), and Tweet. I’m addicted to technology and the iPhone allows me to do so many things on a single device. Since I was sick, I had a reduced appetite and hadn’t eaten in 15 hours. Les, an ER person, brought me some apple sauce and a fruit cup. No Jell-O because I’m a vegetarian. Neither was organic and the main ingredient in the fruit cup was high fructose corn syrup. Les put a nitroglycerin patch on my chest. I made a joke about being a stick of dynamite.

Still residing in the Emergency Room, they take me for my first chest X-RAY. Karen and I sat for a while. They made Karen leave because they were changing the person who was in the next area. I checked my email, did some web surfing. The doctor came in and talked with me. I figured he wanted to talk about my flu symptoms (which is why I went to the Urgent Health Center) or my high blood pressure (which everyone else seemed to be worried about). Nope. He wanted to talk about the pressure in my chest. He wasn’t convinced it was related to the my sickness and said I should stay the night for observation and have a heart stress test done in the morning. After asking a few questions, I agreed I would stay.

It’s important that you realize the only reason I went to the hospital was for Karen and Allyson. Had I been alone when told about the high blood pressure I would have asked for some antibiotics and went home. However, it wouldn’t have been right to make them worry, so I did it for them. Which is why I also chose to stay the night and have the test.

Karen was still in a waiting room waiting for me to tell her when she could come back in. She sent me this picture of what food was available to her. In my naivety I would have thought a hospital would be a shining beacon of proper nutrition. It turns out that I may have been mistaken about that. As an up and coming food snob this was very disappointing. A short time later I told Karen she could return to the emergency room. She came back and visited for a little while and then said she was going to get Allyson so she could see me before the day was over. I was moved to a room while she was gone.

An aide came into my new room and took my blood pressure (120 over 80) and attached a wireless heart monitor. Karen and Allyson returned and brought me a few things I asked for – iPhone adapter, iPhone cable, USB extension cable, organic snack bars and Allyson thought it would be funny to bring my gnome. The doctor came in and asked how I was doing. I mentioned my headache and a shooting pain down the right side of my neck. He got a little more information and said he would see me tomorrow. Karen, Allyson and I visited for a little while longer before they left. Around midnight I started watching Tokyo Drift but couldn’t remain focused, so I tried to sleep. The nurse came in almost immediately and said she needed to get some throat and nose swabs. It ended up being 2am before I could fall asleep. Unfortunately, I had a headache (pain level 3). At 4am I was awoken up by some young guy who said he needed to take some blood, so I extended my arm with the IV. He said, “I can’t take it from there. I’m going to have to get it from the other arm.” I said, “WHAT?” Just the idea of another needle going in me was enough to make queasy. I extended my right arm and lied there just trying not to think about it. By the time he was done and left, my headache (pain level 4) was keeping me awake. I called the nurse and the aide showed and asked what I needed. I said I had a headache and couldn’t go to sleep. She said she would tell the nurse. The nurse came in about 20 minutes later and removed my nitro patch and left before I realized she never mentioned my headache. Apparently, a side effect of the nitro patch was headaches. I waited about 5 minutes and called the nurse again. The aide returned and I explained that the nurse never mentioned my headache and I couldn’t go to sleep. The nurse returned 5 minutes later and said the doctor didn’t leave a prescription order so they didn’t know what they were allowed to give me. They were waiting for a return call from the doctor before giving me anything. About 10 minutes later I couldn’t lie in bed anymore so I sat in the chair for a few minutes. Then I walked out in the hall and leaned against the wall. The nurse came around the corner with two Tylonol and a little water. I took them and they were gross (uncoated). Then I asked the nurse if I could pace the hall while I waited for the headache to go down. She didn’t have a problem with it.

I spent the next 20 minutes pacing the halls as my headache went down. At the opposite end of the hall was one of those little maps that says, “You are here.” 18 years ago I worked for an architecture firm and one of my jobs was to measure this hospital and put it into the computer. I recognized the map and was quite certain that I had drawn it 18 years ago. While pacing I also ran into Starbucks Debbie. That’s what I call her because she manages the Starbucks in Target and saw me many times a week before I gave up specialty coffees. Do you know how weird it is to run into someone you know while pacing the hall of a hospital at 5am?

At 6:30am I was awoken by a lady who was going to take me to get a CAT scan. I got the CAT scan and was returned to my room. I proceeded to fall asleep many times in between aides bringing things in the room like a fresh gown, bathroom stuff, changing trash bags and checking other miscellaneous stuff.

At around 8am they brought me some breakfast. I took the lid off of it and thought to myself, “You have got to be joking?” At no point did anyone document that I was a vegetarian but even the non-meat products weren’t food I would eat. I very reluctantly ate half of the eggs, most of the biscuit and had a drink of milk. There was no real butter, just butter spread and the jelly was high fructose corn syrup. The milk wasn’t organic which meant it was BGH milk. Are you telling me that hospitals have no idea that this crap is bad for people?

From this point forward, I mostly remained in a sleepy state, where I would sleep for 30 minutes, wake up and sleep for another 30 minutes. My chest pressure had not returned.

At around 1:30pm someone came to take me to get my heart stress test. Once we got in that area, I saw a woman get something from a room that was labeled, Radioactive, and exit that room with some for me. She said she was going to insert it thorough my IV and let it circulate for the heart X-RAYs. Before that started I was taken to a woman who gave me an echocardiogram.

Then I was returned to the room where they were to start the heart stress test which started with me explaining to the person there why he should get the new iPhone 3GS. He put me into a machine that took X-RAYs of my heart. Then I was moved into the next room where I was hooked up to a 12 lead monitor for the treadmill part of the test. That guy got out a needle and injected something into my IV which required me to lie down for 5 minutes because it made me queasy. A doctor came in and got me started on the treadmill. The needle guy said he was going to to have to inject me again and to not look. The treadmill test lasted for about 8 minutes. It winded me but wasn’t hard. Then I was returned to the previous room where they took more X-RAYs to compare to the previous X-RAYs.

I was returned to my room around 3pm and surprised to see Karen and Allyson there with a delicious organic sweet iced tea from Coffee Crossing. The doctor came in a little later to see how I was doing and I said I was ready to get out of there. He said he was waiting on some test results and would release me when everything turned out negative. So Karen, Allyson and I waited for 3 hours before they told me all my tests were negative and I was being released, which is good because I was getting agitated.

An aide came in 10 minutes later and removed my heart monitor. The nurse came in 10 minutes after that and removed my IV and had me sign some papers and gave me prescriptions for blood pressure, antibiotics and stomach pain. They told me to wait until the transporter got to my room so they could wheel me out. After 5 minutes I told Karen and Allyson to go on down. 5 minutes later the nurse said the transporter should be there soon even though she looked surprised to still see me in the room. After waiting another 5 minutes I just got up and walked out. I met Karen in the lobby and we left.

I fell asleep around 11pm and slept 13 hours uninterrupted. I got up, took a shower, drank some tea and Karen returned with the antibiotics which is the only one I was going to take to help get rid of my flu-like symptoms. I took my first antibiotic around 1:30pm. As of the writing of this article I still have flu-like symptoms. Most noticeably is my cough. I’m glad my sore throat is gone.