How NOT to spend your Sunday

FYI – it's NOT relaxing to read the news while in the ER

I’ll tell you this for free, it blows major sand-worm wang to spend seven (SEVEN!) hours in the ER and, only at that late point – when I was abso-fucking-lutely ready to go home, be told that they wanted to keep me overnight for observation.

I had CAT scans and Matrix-esque tentacles snaked up my nose and the docs and techs found nothing amiss. K. I guess I'll go home then, eh? What. No?

We want you to stay overnight…. this was howitzer levels of triggering. Ya see, in my beautiful Amazing Bob’s last few years, whenever we’d go into the ER for anything (or have a gee-you-don’t-feel-good?-Let’s-see-if-the-docs-can-squeeze-you-in-for-a-look-see-today appointment), they’d keep him. Or so it seemed.

Lame-ass people watcing, lemme just tell you!

Not only was I slammed back to those hard, wrenching last years of my man’s life, I was feeling all OMG, it’s happening to me too now. I’m dying!

I’m not.

Jen (she’s a fucking SAINT!) very helpfully and calmly explained that the good docs wanted to be sure and careful. They were doing their jobs – making sure I’m OK. Since nothing showed on the scans (beyond my brain’s lovely meningioma garden) they wanted/needed more time to watch me and my pesky, intermittent symptoms.

Yeah. No. Couldn’t do it. I promised I’d come back today if they wanted me to but I needed dinner, my own damn bed and Coco. Also too, a glass ‘o’ the grape.

If they’d told me, say, after the one-hour-in-ER CAT scan “We don’t see anything that might be causing your spinal fluid leakage-esque symptoms so we’d like you to stay overnight for observation” I would have been less freaked. Possibly.

1. I wouldn’t have spent seven full hours cooling my heels, thinking, any second now, the doc’s gonna come in and get me sorted out.
2. Jen could’ve come home to pick up whatever I’d need for an overnight away.
3. We would’ve said YES when that one nurse asked if we needed/wanted food.

The MGH view in Winter

If they’d, after the CAT scan, moved us up to a room I’d have a damn view – sunlight, trees, green, mebbe even the damn Charles instead of just the sterile colors  of the artless ER.

As I relate this, I can’t help but think my NO, I’M NOT STAYING! freak out reaction was a bit over-the-top/dramatic. Granted, I was marinating in painful TAB memories.

A friend writes: It is better for them if you are well rested, which short of drugs, to my experience, is not gonna happen there. Truth!

Another example of Jen’s saintliness:
My blood pressure was through the roof to the point that the damned blood pressure cuff was molto wicked painful. (yeah, I screamed in pain and rage and ripped it off – not one of my prettier moments) Jen had me doing deep breathing exercises and kept at me, wouldn’t let up. Bitch.

It worked. I calmed way the fuck down, blood pressure cuff was no longer painful and, as much as I ever do, chill out happened – more or less.

Dunno what’s on tap for today but I’ve got my hospital bag packed just in case – books, sketch pad, crayons, power cord for the phone, eye drops and meds. They really SHOULD let Coco come in there with me. That'd help. It'd be to their advantage and shit.