ER

Please visit Shelly because she’s awesome and renting here this week!

You may or may not have noticed that I’ve been a little quiet for about 36 hours (that’s not a very long time which is why you might not have noticed). I have been and it was because I spent last night in the Emergency Rooms of Sydney and Prince of Wales (POW) Hospitals.

At about 15:05 Monday that lower right abdomen pain suddenly exploded into the most excritiating pain I’ve ever felt. I stretched across my whole pelvis region and it felt likemy insides were exploded and imploding and cramping together all at once. It was pretty bad. I called Dave because I didn’t know what to do and at the time it seemed like both the uni doctors and the hospital was so far to walk. He told me to go to the doctor so I staggered down through the pain and tears to the uni health services.

When I got to the uni health services they saw my tears and asked if I was okay. I said I’d never had such bad pain, she asked where the pain was and I said my lower abdomen, she said “Oh, that pain.” and I said “NO! Not that pain.” They put me on a bed in the back and then tried to get me to give a urine sample. There was nothing coming out! It had to be the first time ever that no urine has been excreted from me when on a toilet. Also the act of sitting was so painful that I was wretching and thankfully they laid me back down before I vomited. The doctor checked me out there and gave me a rectal and vaginal exam. I wasn’t particularly bothered by it due to the horrific pain inside. She sent me to the hospital, she thought I may or may not have appenidicitis.

The ambulance ride over was weird. The female ambulance officer was quite narky, she was making fun of the women at the health service. Apparently she doesn’t like doctors. I’d never been in an ambulance before. It was bumpy, which was very pleasant for my insides. Even though POW hospital was right next door we went to Sydney because all the other ERs were very busy.

At Sydney they read what the GP at uni had written, they put an IV drip into my arm so I’d be rehydrated and be able to give them a urine sample, I told them all the things that had been happening in my gut lately and they poked and prodded my sore tummy. By this stage the pain wasn’t as excrutiating, it had subsided somewhat but even now it’s still tender. Hubby came and kept me company and I had an X-ray, had to have it redone because I forgot to take my bra off. I was there for about five hours in which time they determined that I had a slight fever and my white blood cell count was a little above average and I didn’t have an infection and that I really needed to be checked by a surgeon to say that it was definitely not appendicitis. Two of those hours were waiting for an ambulance to transport me to POW where they have registrars on call. If I didn’t have appendicitis they thought I might have had a ruptured ovarian cyst, in which case I’d need to be seen by a gynocologist which I would also need to go to POW for.

At POW they were much busier than Sydney. I had thought at Sydney, “This really isn’t like the TV show ER at all.” It was much more similar to TV at POW, especially when myself and two others had to wait for beds on our ambulance trolleys for an hour or two. The surgeon eventually came down and found a bed and prodded my tummy. He said it was very unlikely to be appendicitis because I wasn’t sick enough and it had been going on for several days now. Then they were going to send me back to Sydney. The male ambulance officer was fairly ticked off about this, he was telling the female doctor that it was a complete waste of time and resources. We were waiting to see what would happen. The female doctor came in and asked me whether I wanted to stay or go back to Sydney. To be honest the business of the POW ER was fairly off-putting. I didn’t want to try to sleep through that. There were supposedly more beds at Sydney so I said I’d go back. Probably an hour later hubby had gone on ahead to meet us at Sydney, I was actually in the ambulance and the female doctor came and asked me again whether I wanted to stay or go. She said they had a quiet bed for me in the back of the ER, by that time I was so tired and I knew that if they sent me back to Sydney and Sydney thought I had an ovarian cyst then the next day I’d have to go back to POW. I stayed at POW.

The overnight nurse was really good. He gave me a phone to try to track down hubby and tell him what was happening. He gave me water and a softer mattress. He tried to give me a fresh drip but my previous one had finished some time ago and some blood had backflowed into the tube. Some of the blood had clotted in the needle that was in the back of my hand so when he tried to put the drip through it wouldn’t flow. He tried to push it through with saline – oh my gosh that hurt! If the initial pain I’d hadthat brought me to hospital was a 10 out of 10 for the worst pain ever felt in my life, this hand thing was a 7. They asked me that a lot. “How’s the pain now? If you were to give it a score, 10 being the worst pain you’ve ever felt in your life and 0 being nothing, what is it?” He took the needle out of my hand and I was supposed to drink water. I drank all the water I had and listened to my iPod and went to sleep.

This post is getting really long so I’ll continue later…