A Typical Night in the ER

So last night the girls and I were bowling about 9:30 when I got the most excruciating pain in my back. I've never felt anything like it before. By the time I got home I realize it's not just my back. The pain felt like a knife stabbing me right under the lowest rib on my right side. I thought I was dying. I can't take that kind of pain with out throwing up. At first I suspected it was my appendix but thought the pain to be a little high for that. Kidney Stones was my next guess. Bubba took me to the ER at midnight. Mr. Rainy had to take a taxi from work to his car at the park and ride as the buses had just stopped running for the night.

The pain was really bad for about 2 hours and then while in the waiting room, it went away. It came back when I went back to an exam room. The nurse put a line in and drew blood and I had to get sick again as the pain was through the roof. Luckily it got better again and didn't come back for the rest of the night. I waited in that room for about 4 hours without seeing a doctor.

There was a guy behind curtain number 1 when I was led to curtain number 2. He had stomach pains that have been happening on and off since 1980! We heard his whole life story. How he's been tested for everything over the years. How he weighed 210 when he got married 30 years ago and now he weighs 255. It was weird to not be able to see him through the curtain but hear everything him and the doctor talked about. That had to be the chattiest ER doctor ever. I learned all about where his parents immigrated from and how he's seeing a nutritionist himself to help him eat better. On and on! It was strange. About this time Mr Rainy found us. Curtain number 1 guy left a little later and I had to get up and use the rest room. I tried to walk out and find one but nobody was around to ask. I sent Mr Rainy to find one for me. Meanwhile they bring in new person by way of ambulance. It didn't sound good right from the start. It was obvious as the room filled up with people and they were slinging medical jargon only heard on TV shows. Listening to their talk and the beeping and mechanical breathing sounds, it was clear they were trying to save her life. Then the nurse comes in and leads me to the restroom. As we pass the bed next door she says, don't look. Um, ok no problem there. When I came back they had the curtain pulled all the way around her so I couldn't see but there must of been 8 people bumping around behind that curtain.

Then they said it. Pulmonary Embolism. I didn't know exactly what that was but knew it had to do with her heart and it was bad. During this time, Mario and I are communicating with our eyes as there's no way we wanted to talk and disturb the show. It was surreal. Like you know what's going on but you just can't believe it. It all seemed fake like they were on TV but worse. The nurses and doctors were talking like normal, chatting actually and even joking. In no way at all did they act like it wasn't just normal everyday stuff. No raised voices, no panic tones, no fear, very unlike similar scenes played out on TV. If you really had no clue you'd think they were just doing a routine exam. Then you hear a loud digital female voice say, Check the patient. It was weird and random. It did it twice before they shut it off. The nurse said she was born in 1985. Mario and I both looked up at that. 85? We said with our eyes. Our son was born in 88. He's only 20. This girl was only 23 years old. I glanced at Katie to see if she was paying attention. I couldn't tell if she understood all that was going on. My problems seemed like nothing compared to what was going on behind curtain number 1. When they called her death the three of us just looked at each other. You could hear the mom in the background crying hysterically. I have no idea what brought this girl to the ER. I'll never know what she looked like or who she was but we witnessed the most intimate event in a persons life. I will never forget. Her name was Nicole and she was 23 yrs old.

My nurse shows up a little later to apologize for leaving us alone so long. I'm next on the doctor's list. I try to talk Bubba into going home but she wants to stay. We chat about this and that, listen to the announcements come over the PA system every once in a while. She laughs about the name Dr. Waffle. Dr. Waffle finally shows up at my curtain. He is not the chatty doctor our earlier stomach guy had. With a fun name like waffle you'd expect someone a bit more cheerful. He was a no nonsense kind of guy. He said I need a CT Scan and they need to get a better urine sample. It's either kidney stone or an ovary problem. Within a few minutes some cute young guy comes to my curtain and I panic thinking he's going to be collecting my urine sample! When he tells me he's taking me to my CT Scan, I started breathing again. That was easy and not too embarrassing. Thankfully I get my nurse for the other thing. Whew!

I end up getting transferred out of my room to a different room. The nurse felt bad that we were still in the same room with a corpse. I don't know why they didn't move her out instead of us. My new room was quiet and dark. In curtain 2 was an older teen with a broken arm that I had seen in the waiting room. Not sure what his story was. His arm was already casted when he came in and he wasn't in any obvious pain. I only know that a cute young doctor made a very tired looking nurse come back and redo his cast/bandage about three times. She looked frustrated and barely hanging on. I don't blame her. By this time it was about 5 am and while I'd been lying down for a few hours I hadn't really looked at the insides of my eyelids since 9 am the day before. Finally my serious, not chatty doctor came in. To help with the mood he could of told me that I will be giving birth to a 5 mm kidney stone. He also could of said take it to my regular doctor after it's born and he'll tell me what kind it is. Oh joy! Give me something to look forward to. Should I name it after Dr Waffle? But nothing he said sounded even remotely comical. The facts remain the same though and if I'm lucky this too shall pass without the help of the pain meds I was prescribed.

After sleeping half the day away, I'm still waiting for labor to kick in. I can't get over the events of the night. I'm in awe of what doctors and nurses do everyday. How they can take extreme situations and handle them like nothing. I am very thankful there are people (even Dr Waffle) out there like that. I couldn't do it.