Urgent Care Visit #5

As many of you know, I feel as though I have little to no talent at anything. I am what you might call a Jack-of-all-trades, Master of none; however, I think I have finally found something that I am TOTALLY a master at: being sick! I think that I have being ill down to such a science that even doctors don’t know what to do with me! Certainly one of these days I am going to be written up in the American Journal of Medicine with this illness of mine that they cannot seem to put their finger on. By NO means is it fun being sick, but it is kind of interesting having the doctors completely perplexed by what is going on with me.

The entire time I have been ill my labs have been completely normal except for once on the day that I like to refer to as Barf Fest 2010; and even on that day the only thing that was out of whack was that my electrolytes were funky and my sodium was low because I had been throwing up for 3 hours STRAIGHT. But, at the same time, my veins were acting like that of a person who is dehydrated, making me a “hard stick” for the nurses to start an IV or to draw blood. Today at Urgent Care, it was no different.

Today, like yesterday, wasn’t starting out all that great. I was awake almost every hour all night long, so at 8am I gave up and got out of bed and made my way to my bed-away-from-bed (aka. the couch) to begin to fritter away the hours of the day by watching America’s Next Top Model, Cycle 11—don’t poke fun, I like to watch it for the pictures, it gives me inspiration—then I remembered the flat of fresh strawberries my mom bought me before she left for Ohio, so I decided that I would sugar those puppies up and put them, some yogurt, and milk into a blender and make myself a shake. Once everything was sufficiently pureed in the blender and poured into a couple of sippee cups, I settled myself into my bed-away-from-bed and tried to enjoy my breakfast/lunch/snack. Now, understand, my sippee cups hold all of 8 oz. so we’re not talking about a whole lot of anything, so I finished off one and began on another one and about half way through the second one I began to feel queasy (to be polite), so I stopped.

With my stomach churning, I took one of my anti-nausea medications (phenergan) in the hopes that it would knock me out and help keep the nutritional value of the natural shake inside of me. It worked for a while, but shortly after my “babysitter” decided to go lie down for a little nap I couldn’t hold it back any longer and up it came. Now, you have to understand, I had been able to hold in the strawberry shake for probably 4 hours before I actually ended up speaking with Porcelain John. I’m no wiz at science or anything, but I would think that my stomach should have absorbed/digested some of that shake by then…mine didn’t. Porcelain John got every bit of the shake that I did! Knowing my body, I knew that there was nothing good coming so I started chugging water and that was, as they say, the beginning of the end. That’s when I started throwing up every sip of water. I woke up my “babysitter” and informed him that I needed to be taken to urgent care, so off we went.

Once at Urgent Care I got a P.A that I, honestly, don’t care all that much for, but my “babysitter” kind of put his foot down because he wasn’t happy with how I was being treated and the P.A’s demeanor changed quickly. They decided to go ahead and start an IV—naturally in the sorest vein in my hand—and draw some blood from there and give me some IV fluids and medications. From all of the barfing and the dry heaving I had done over the last couple of days I had managed to work myself into a pretty good migraine—not your typical one, of course—so I was given some Zofran for the nausea and some Dilaudid for the migraine. In the mean time, my labs, naturally, came back normal, but he gave me some suggestions on upping the dosage of one of my new medications so that it will help avoid the adverse side effects and then prescribed me something for the headache, should it come during the day between the times when I take the preventative medication. He also sent a voicemail message to my primary doctor letting her know that I had ended up in urgent care with my illness because my “babysitter” insisted that he do it. I asked him to do it, but he was kind of hedging to do it, but when my “babysitter” demanded it, he went ahead and did it and then suddenly became a very obliging P.A. It’s always hard to be assertive and your own advocate when you’re not feeling at the top of your game, so I suggest always taking someone with you when you’re really ill.

Then the “real” fun began. So, I’m totally loopy on Dilaudid, sitting in a wheelchair in the pharmacy waiting for my prescription to come through and I’m TOTALLY nodding off in the chair. I’m sure it had to look HIGH-larious, this chubby, raven-haired, multi-piercing-ed person in a wheelchair dozing off in the pharmacy. Finally, after 45 minutes my meds were ready and we get going. We stop at a drive-thru to get food for my “babysitter” and drive home, only to find our neighbors in full swing of having a party…LOUDLY at 8pm! I’m barely conscious, I feel like a semi-truck just ran me over twice, and now I arrive home to this?! WHAT?! I opened up my car door and screamed, “SHUT UP!”

It should be interesting to see if my doctor calls me, come Monday morning. My mom thinks that there might be a possibility that she will call me and have me come back in to the hospital, but she’s not really sure. This illness of mine has been really strange…strange presentation of symptoms…strange labs….everything has just been strange, but this is Christine that we are talking about, so that should come as NO surprise!