I recently had a conversation with my mom about my sister who had to go to the hospital with the same condition I was inflicted with a few years ago. We spoke about the differences and the similarities of the condition, and it brought about the retelling of my story leading up to my hospital stay. We shared it through both my experience and hers. Mine as the patient hers as the chauffeur and mother.
In 2006 is where this memory takes place. I had recently arrived home from traveling for a year in Australia close to Christmas in 2005. In Australia I had met my boyfriend Bernard, at the time, and he made his way over to Calgary to visit and stay with my family. During his visit I was struck with some episodes of very uncomfortable stomach pain. Stomach pain so intense that it would render me stuck in the foetal position or throwing up from the pain until it passed, and it always eventually passed. This happened on several occasions before Christmas, and I just shrugged it off as food poisoning or something like it.
On the last day of Bernard's visit the pain came back but this time it didn't pass, I decided that I should go to the emergency room and get checked out. What a great last day in the country, sitting in a waiting room in a country where waiting for health care to be provided can take years. After a few hours of waiting hunched over in pain, I decided I would go to my regular doctor who after 4:30 had a walk-in clinic. Not much was happening for me in the waiting room, so I thought I would try something else.
The walk-in doctor diagnosed the stomach pain as an ulcer, I didn't know better to think any differently and I walked out of the doctor's office with ulcer medicine thinking life was going to better once this medicine kicked in. That night we went out with friends for sushi to celebrate the last day Bernard was in town. I actually ate some food and thought, "see life is already better"
We finished the evening and went to bed early as I had to drop him off at the airport very early the next morning.
The night was restless, my stomach was still hurting, I don't know if I slept or not. I woke up very early and before I got in the car to drive to the airport I threw up the sushi from the night before, I tried drinking some water, that came back up too, and I proceeded to drive in extreme pain to the airport. Bernard and I gave hugs and kisses and he told me to not stick around, and to go home and crawl into my mom's bed so she would know if I needed help. I drove back and climbed into her bed, shortly after I told her that I needed to go to the hospital. The pain was too great to bear anymore. She proceeded to get ready...it seemed like hours and I was waiting impatiently as people in pain usually do. "why was she taking so long? didn't she realize how much pain I was in? this is an emergency, there's no time for brushing your teeth in an emergency!"
I was so thirsty I would try to drink some water and then it would instantly come back up. Sitting was uncomfortable, standing was uncomfortable, lying down was uncomfortable, I felt like I was dying the most painful death anyone could ever die. Torture victims had it easy compared to this. My insides were my enemy and my mom was the slowest driver in the world!!!
We arrived at South Calgary Urgent Care, because the emergency room at the actual hospital was a joke. We signed me in, and there we proceeded to wait what seemed an eternity, but was probably only half an hour. I think they understood the pain I was in because sitting was no longer an option, lying on the floor with my head against the cool tile was the only relief I could find. My mom says she sat near me, not knowing where to look. People were watching and I was quite an embarrassing sight, what could she do?
She held her hands, trying not to look like she belonged with me, and waited for someone to call my name so the crawling on the floor would stop? I was pretty much incoherent at that point, and I certainly couldn't hear anything past the pain. Fortunately we both didn't have to wait long. Who knew crawling on the floor moaning gets you great service? My suggestion is try this and see what it brings you. I had a bed, I had a room, I had a nurse that could not find a vein to take a blood sample, and so to add more pain on top of the pain already endured I was poked several times with a needle.
Finally someone came back with the correct diagnosis and I was given my favorite of medicines, morphine, to stifle the pain. Pancreatitis caused by a gallstone. now that they knew what it was they shipped me off to the hospital where I hung out on a stretcher because they had no beds, and was finally placed in a room in the cardiac ward with three women over 80 the next day. That hospital stay is another story to come.
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