Adventures in the ER

If you don't enjoy reading about vomit, blood, almost passing out, and needles, then stop reading now. Just a warning!

Last night sucked.

Really sucked.

I was laying in bed on Thursday night feeling just fine and playing around on the computer. Over the course of about 15 minutes, my stomach started to hurt. Like painful hurt. It kept getting worse and worse. It was unlike any pain I'd really ever had. Then the nausea started. I tried to sleep it off, but couldn't. I tried pacing, didn't work. I tried everything. Finally, for the first time in my adult life, I told Josh that I think I wanted to go the ER.

We got to the ER around 1:30 -2:00 AM on Friday morning. Since we're living with my parents temporarily, we were fortunate enough to be about 2 minutes from the hospital. Luckily, it was a relatively slow evening there! I got back pretty quickly, but not before I lost my dinner all over the front lawn of the hospital. Not pretty. And it only got worse from there.

They got me back in a small room to suck out all my blood for tests and to put an IV in me. Because I'd been tossing my cookies, I guess I was starting to get dehydrated and it was difficult to find my veins (then again, it's ALWAYS hard to find my veins.. ugh) They ended up putting it in through my hand. Fun stuff. Oh and the best part, because I was throwing up, they told me I couldn't have anything else to drink. Fun!

They got me back into a regular ER room pretty quickly and then began the litany of tests. They pumped me full of nausea and pain meds and a drip bag to keep me hydrated. By this time, my nausea was full blast and I was throwing up consistently every half hour or so. It was awful. I don't ever remember being that sick before in my life. I was running a fever and just felt terrible. Anyway, they wanted to do a CAT scan for the stomach pain so I had to drink a bunch of that nasty lemonade-y contrast liquid. Yeah, you try that when you're throwing up. The nurse said to drink it over the course of about 15 minutes. Well, two hours later, I was still only halfway done with it and had thrown up probably 3/4 of what I'd drank. Not fun. They told me they were also going to put contrast in me via the IV for the CAT scan, but.... I needed a bigger IV. So, lucky me, I got stuck again. This time in my other arm.

Sometime during the course of the night I went to the restroom. As I was coming out, my IV ran dry and blood started filling the IV tubes. I looked down and saw it, looked at Josh and said "I'm going down"... and down I went :) Fun times!

Praise the Lord, all the test results came back ok. All my blood work was good (except my white count was elevated, most likely due to the virus), the CAT scan was clear, the X-ray was clear... So they pretty much decided it was just a really bad virus. It's kind of embarrassing that I went to the ER for a stomach virus, but it was pretty much the worst virus I've ever had that I can remember. They finally let me go home around 9:00 AM this morning. I'm feeling MUCH better now. I'm still pretty weak, have a horrible headache and feel slightly nauseated, but nothing like before.

I just have to brag on Josh for a minute too. He was awesome through the whole thing! Never complained once. He stayed up all night with me and sat in the AWFUL chair in the room. Every time I had to throw up (which was WAY too many times) he came over and rubbed my back. He was just awesome. I'm so blessed to have such an awesome husband!

So that's the story of my adventurous night at the AMH ER! Everyone was super great there. All the nurses, doctors, and staff. I hope to never have to repeat it though!!