Tuesday, June 17th - I'm Not Dead...well...mostly

This week has been a bust so far. I took yesterday off to recuperate from the weekend, and I promptly ended up with a very bad case of food poisoning, which resulted in a trip to the Emergency Room at 3:30am this morning.

For me to go to the hospital, it had to have been bad. I have only been in the hospital (for myself) once in my life, and that was for a giant splinter that I got in my foot back in 1987.

Everything was going well yesterday, I ate some lunch, took a nap, got up and checked some work email, took another nap, and then BAM...bloat, nausea, over all blahness. I tried to just let it go and hope that nature would take its course, but that wasn't going to happen. I drove myself down to Walgreens to get some drugs, and those didn't help. I tried to sleep it off, but it was one of those pains where I could find a position that would let me sleep for a little while, then I would move an inch and I would be a moaning, vomiting mess. (Trust me folks, I am not even give you a 10th of the gory details). I drove myself to CVS to get more drugs, and those didn't help, either. So, around 3:30am after taking a shower...yes, I wasn't going to go to the hospital in the state I was in (momma always said, never go anywhere without clean underwear), I drove myself to the nearest hospital and admitted myself into the ER.

Surprisingly, there was not a long wait. I suppose I have this idea of what an ER is from the tv show, but there wasn't a crazy amount of people waiting in various forms of death. I suppose if I had gone to Wishard (no politically correct way to say it: the hospital for the poor), I would have witnessed that, but luckily, Methodist is right around the corner from me. I was actually surprised I didn't see any of the residents from work there, because I am always processing taxi passes from women going to that particular ER.

Anyway, they admitted me into the ER and gave me my little dress. As soon as I sat down on the bed, I started to get this overwhelming feeling of nausea. I didn't see one of those barf buckets around, and I called out that I was feeling sick. Apparently no one heard me, because I stood up and grabbed the nearest sink. The next thing I knew, I was waking up on the floor, shaking. I have no idea how long I was out, but I crawled back into bed and just laid there. It was at this point that I started feeling better... It was very weird. They kept asking me what my pain level was on a scale of 1 to 10. I kept staying 8, and after the 10th time they asked me, I explained "For me, personally, it is actually a 10 on pain I have felt in my life, but I am telling you 8 because I'd like to think getting my foot cut off would hurt more than this." At least my sense of humor was still in tact. After that, I slept a lot and answered all the questions, and they gave me an EKG just to make sure there wasn't any heart issues. By 5:45, 15 minutes before my alarm clock normally goes off for the day, I was heading home.

I spent the rest of the day sleeping.

I will try to get the Circle City IN Pride wrap up done tomorrow, but since I have been out of work for almost a week, it might be a bit later.

Hope your week has been better than mine so far!

Sidebar: When a doctor is asking you how often you drink, no matter how much pain you're in or how honest you're feeling, you should never say "Well, I've been drinking a lot lately." Because then you have to explain that you're busy with a group that meets frequently in bars, not because you feel like you NEED to drink...lordy, I might have been in rehab!