 |
| mmmm, fluids. |
Until you try to move your body.
Unthinking, you tried to flip over and glance at the clock, but the pain in your abdomen is so intense, so deep, that any movement feels like ripping. You are frozen, stuck-your breath is shallow, your body quakes. Your hands shake and your body sweats.
This is a pain you have never felt before. You whimper and consider the objects at hand that you might bang against the wall to attract the attention of your housemate. You are afraid.
In your old car, the one with the leather seats, sometimes during the summer you would forget to put down a towel, and your thighs would stick to the warm hide. This is what it feels like, except with your intestines-pulling and ripping away from something hot and painful, sometimes sticking, pulling and stretching and tearing again with each inhalation. You force yourself to breathe, and unfurl, even as your body wants to curl into itself in agony.
Eventually, slowly, you turn onto your back. And then your side, and then you sit up. Glance at the clock. Realize this is not a dream. Force yourself onto unsteady legs, feeling nauseous and hot and shaky. Go to find help.
The tears come, because in the quiet dawn it is all too much. You call the nurse hot line and the doctor on call. They ask you a barrage of standard questions. You are asked to rate your pain: 10 when you woke up, 6 now. The fact that you are even calling the nurse hot line at this point is a testament to the lessening of your pain. A half hour ago, you would have had to call 911, because you couldn't have made it down the stairs.
They tell you to "come in." You get dressed, your housemate gets dressed, and you drive into the city in silence. It is dark and the freeway is nearly empty.
You make it to the emergency room and your housemate cruises into the ambulance bay, backs up, parks in police only parking, backs up, and finally parks directly in front of the sliding glass doors, the nose of the car nearly touching the glass. At each turn, the security guards half rise from their seats, ready to enforce parking rules in an empty lot. Up and down, like traffic puppets. You walk in and check yourself in to the ER.
As you wait, a young man harasses the intake nurse, badgering her for information about his girlfriend, who he insists "IS FAMILY" and apparently has a head wound. The same security guards warily circle and observe his behavior and as the nurse calls your name, they have moved in tandem to confront the man. You hear raised voices as they take your vitals in a small vestibule that smells like takeout Thai food.
They take you to a large room and measure your vitals again. You explain your symptoms, again. You've never been in the ER of a large, urban hospital (for yourself, anyway) and it occurs to you, as you shiver on a gurney amidst cabinets of scary looking equipment (gauze, suction hoses and buckets, intubation tubes, something called a cut down kit) that this is where people come when they are shot. You and your aching abdomen feel like ER impostors.
You are prodded and a nurse comes in to insert your IV. You offer up your one good vein, and as she tightens the rubber tourniquet and slaps your skin, you worry about the size of the needle. You already feel like throwing up and your last IV insertion was painful. The nurse sticks you, and you feel the needle thread up your vein....until it stops. The room spins a little. "Come on, come on" the nurse whispers, and keeps pushing. The room spins a little more. You feel a trickle of blood drip down your arm, and the course gauze against your skin and the nurse wipes it away. Wipe wipe wipe. Finally, she's in-you can feel her relax. She tries to take blood, and tightens the rubber band on your arm; it digs into your flesh. She flushes the line and secures it to your skin. You both exhale.
She cheerfully explains that because this is the vein they always use for blood draws, there is some scar tissue she had to "push through." You smile even as the room starts to tilt again, because all of this talk about blood and veins is making you sick.
They offer you some Zofran, which you take, because you don't want to vomit into one of the large teal basins they keep stacked in the cabinet. Another line, crossed-you remember that when your family member was dying, they would give him Zofran after the chemo. Throughout all of your IBS/IBD adventures, you refused to take the "cancer drug"-but your family member is dead, and it's 3 in the morning, and you don't care. The medicine works quickly.
You put a gown on over your yoga pants and are thankful you remembered to wear a sports bra, so you're not waving your boobs all around the ER. You pee in a cup, and wait. You wait for blood results, and you wait. You wait for a pregnancy test so they can send you to CT. All of this waiting makes you feel less guilty for peeing on the floor a little when you filled your cup in the bathroom down the hall, pulling the IV behind you and trying not to pee on your gown. It is an ER after all, and you're sure the floor will see much worse fluids before the shift is over.
The nurses, and doctors, are unfailingly kind. They bring warm blankets and offer you pain meds, which you stupidly decline. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you're afraid that if they offer you the meds, and you take them, then your pain will go away and they will never believe you had it in the first place. You enjoy not wanting to hurl and absent-mindedly rub small circles over the tender spot on your side.
They tell you there is blood in your urine. Kidney stones?
Finally, they wheel you into CT. The nurse who fetches you is almost courtly in his demeanor; there is something old fashioned and respectful about him. He straightens your blankets and makes sure you are comfortable. As you pass through the corridors, you joke about getting the one gurney with the squeaky wheel, like the one grocery cart with the squeaky wheel, and his laugh is quiet and musical. He offers you a purple gloved hand to help you raise yourself up and leads you to the machine, carefully depositing you and securing your legs against a bolster. He and the tech make small talk.
Someone injects you with dye, and sends you in and out of the giant whirring donut machine as they take detailed pictures of your abdomen. The dye courses through your veins, igniting them, making your lips tingle, making you taste pennies in your mouth. The dye makes you hot, like your entire body is blushing. Your hands, above your head, drip with sweat. When it is over, the tech flushes your IV because the dye is "sticky" and she doesn't want it clogging the line. You think of the dye floating through your body, coating your organs like a sticky BBQ sauce. You wish she could flush it out of your whole body, not just your IV.
You wait for the results. Feeling guilty that you dragged your housemate to the ER, you try to make jokes, but she passes out asleep against the case containing a day's worth of discarded needles. You have a lady nurse, and then a male nurse with old-timey mutton chops. Another male nurse with tattoos on his arms tells you about his service in the military, and how he travelled the world, ticking off the various countries on his finger tips. He is from another state, and says when he is sick he wants his mom more than anyone else. You smile, and he says, "Dudes need their moms more than anyone! In the military, everyone is so hard. You just want your mom. It's like, you're soft, you're my mom, you'll take care of me." Even though you are probably roughly the same age, you immediately want to mother the muscular ex-military nurse and make him a lasagna.
You wait, and feel thankful for the kindness of the nurses and the fact that you have medical insurance. You wonder how much this trip is going to cost you.
There is a shift change, and nurses and doctors flood the hallway outside your room, talking animatedly about dates and patients and motorcycles. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a young woman walk by with a giant bandage on her head, telling the nurse to discharge her to her waiting boyfriend, who you assume is the guy who tangled with security hours before. It feels like a completed ER vignette. She stalks by in high heeled galoshes, even though it is not raining.
You wait.
Five hours after you have first been admitted, a new doctor comes in to tell you the results of all of your testing are unremarkable. Seeing your face, he tries to make you feel better by telling you that 3/4 of cases involving abdominal pain go unresolved. Again, you feel like you have failed ER 101. You are still in pain and there is no reason. There are also no more chances for painkillers. You are discharged, less nauseous but still in pain, with no explanation for your sudden, scary pain.
The sun is up now; you decide to walk over to your gastro's office in the adjoining building and see if you can talk to his nurse. She sees you and says the doctor may want more testing. She describes all the ways Crohn's can make your guts feel like yours feel. On her computer, she scrolls through your test results from the ER, when you see this description:
31 yr old female presenting with UQR pain. Calm, rational, appropriate demeanor. Seems mildly distressed.
You rub your side, again. The pain is still there, present with the slightest touch. Calm, rational, and appropriate: the title for your new memoir. Unfortunately, you feel anything but.
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