Saturday Night Fever...

Ok, so there was no disco, no Barry Gibb...or evenTravolta in a white polyester suit (Although, I may have seen Donna Pecso, but then again it could have just been a CPR dummy), but there was actual fever, not to mention numerous other things and I did somehow manage to boggle the minds of an entire ER staff...Some of them might still be banging their heads on the walls...

Hello boy and girls and I think six ducks of varying ages in a remote Utah location. It's been a while, and this time the Sci-Fi Immersion program had nothing to do with it...not really at least...unless one can catch something from the future via a Sci-Fi TV on DVD streak. Read on for that tale, but first, there are a few things I'd like to stop and take notice of. #1 - Yes, this is post #69, and I should be doing something hellaciously wicked with it. I tried. I 've been thinking about it since I saw that it would be post #69. Alas, there was illness and I was sidetracked. These things happen...and they really like to happen to me...all the time, even if I'm already in the middle of 15 things going on all at once, all of them annoying (guess where that line came from and win...not a friggin' thing!). I didn't come up with anything, so post #69 remains even Tatum-Free (check BEG's 69th post on 'Plural'...it's been a while, but it's crazy with Tatum!), but read on for my post #69 story of how I spent all day Saturday and well into the night boggling the over-educated minds of an entire ER staff and only got to stay sick in return...It was sort of an 'I went to the ER and all I got was this lousy t-shirt' kind of tip only there was no t-shirt...I do expect a hefty bill coming in the mail though...any time now...

So, last Monday I started to feel kinda crappy. This was your general sneezing, itchy eyes, stuffy nose kind of crappy and I really just assumed with the wack-o weather we've been having lately, that it was just my allergies kicking in. Thank you mold!

As the week progressed though, I started to get worse. I started to get other weirdo symptoms that would come and go and I thought by Wednesday that I had gotten a UTI. I fear this because I had Polynephritis back in September and I certainly did not enjoy it. I wanted to nip it in the bud right away, but my insurance from hubby's newest job (oh, yeah, he doesn't work for the Japanese anymore...too many whores looming about I think) wasn't set to kick in until Saturday.

I called up the doc's office to find out what I should do. They said to push fluids and what not and take it easy. They made me an appointment for this coming Thursday...although I don't know how they thought I'd ever be able to make it that long.

Anyway, Thursday and Friday I pushed fluids. I really hate cranberry juice and as I've learned once again...not really a fan of water. But I digress. I also started to get really tired and bitchy. This wasn't pleasing anyone around me.

Friday night, hubby brought home pizza and we settled in to watch some BSG. Pretty quiet. Pretty low-key. Only, I get this sharp pain in my chest and my arm went all funny. I shook it off. I am only 26 years old and my heart has always been fine. I won the family lotto in the heart dept and basically I am the only one with a good heart...well, so far as health goes...when it comes to anything else..it's kind of black and icky, but still we move on...

Around three, Saturday morning, I sat upright in bed, wide awake. My head was pounding. I couldn't see a thing and I was freaking out, like a panic attack. Then there was some projectile vomitting and frezing to near death. I drank about a quarter of a can of coke, felt better and went back to sleep.

Saturday morning, I woke up completely exhausted and feeling like I was going to die. I took a shower, thinking it might help. It did not. I took my temperature. No fever...although I was sweating buckets and still feeling like death was coming for me. I continued to push fluids and feel like crap, gaining a seriously bad pain in my right side as well. This went on until around two when I took my temp again...and there it was a fever of 101.9! Creepy!

Hubby was at work (where else would he have been?) and I didn't really feel like going to the ER down the street where people have been known to die for what seems to be no apparently good reason and I really didn't think I should be driving the car anyway so I called my mom. She came to get me and hauled my ass back out to Waukesha to the ER out there.

The entire way there, my chest hurt and my arm was all funky again. I started to consider the notion that maybe I had had a heart attack. Mom took this opportunity to remind me that Gramps (her dad) had a heart attack when he was 28. This only really helped to freak me out more and then I recalled the VH1 'Behind the Music' of John Mellacamp and how he'd had that massive heart attack and only thought he had the flu. Here's where I started to think I was really going to die.

By the time we got to the ER, my blood pressure was all out of wack and the place was totally packed. I had to hang out in the waiting room. There was a massively bad car accident and many people vomitting (the sounds of yacking noises could be heard everywhere around me). I was literally in the waiting room for so long that I declared that if I was still waiting there on Monday I was going to steal a wheel chair and roll down the hill to my actual doc's office.

Finally, they stuck me in a room. A crappy one with no bathroom. Last time I got a room with a bathroom. This pissed me off especially with the fact that I had to pee every 27 seconds with all the fluids I'd been comsuming.

First, since I thought I had a UTI or something that had progressed to something worse, they made me pee in a cup. They also took six tubes of blood, did an EKG cause of my heart wackiness, and checked my pulse, blood pressure and temp about a thousand times before the tests came back. When there were results, there was no UTI. The EKG was fine as well. All they did come up with was the fact that my white count had practically doubled. Instead of 9,000 it had jumped to 19,000. This was apparently cause for great concern, although right now, I have no idea why.

The doc and many nurses that had joined up in the search to find the reason for this were beginning to baffle. This was not cool as just down the hall, the car accident guy was dying and then he did. They were already defeated in one case, having lost a patient. I somehow became their mission to prove they're a good ER staff as I was pretty much the only one left in the ER at this point. There had also been a shift change and although maintained my fist doctor, two more were added and there were new nurses.

It was around this time I got an IV and it was decided it could be my appendix, so they ordered a cat-scan and also a pelvic exam. At the mere thought that it was my appendix and that if it was I would have to stay in the hospital, I started to freak out. I don't like the hospital. I had no plans to camp out any longer than the ER visit that seemed to never want to end.

The nurse came to fetch me to take me to another room for the pelvic exam where I was alas without my underwear, up in stirrups and had one of those obnoxious hospital blanket that's not really even a blanket thrown over me. Next thing I know, four new nurses and another doctor barge in and declare I have to get up because they think they should do the cat-scan first. A nurse ran interference with the so-called blanket and the door just in case another team of experts wanted to barge in while I was putting my clothing back on. At this point the mormon tabernacle could've barged in to look at my cooch and I wouldn't have cared. I was like 'I've been to summer camp!' the blanket cover is not necessary!

So there I was, wandering around with a pack of nurses down to a cat-scan in just underwear, a hospital gown and my argyle knee socks. I was a sight to be seen. Had the cat-scan. Then I got the very non-pleasure of having my pelvic exam, the first I've had done by a man doctor. At that point I wasn't even caring about that. Instead I was thinking about re-arranging the furniture in my room to better suit my liking and since it didn't seem like I was leaving any time soon.

I had been cat-scanned and tested for every STD known to man, not that I thought that I had any. Married. Have no real reason to think I was catching anything.

The cat-scan showed nothing, other than the fact that I have a large ovarian cyst. Not alarming. It's been there for about five years (this was the last cat-scan I got the pleasure of having). It is bigger now and this is what they attributed the pain in my side to since they found no infection of any kind anywhere in my abdomen. Also, no STDs as previously assumed.

It was around this time they called my actual doctor and got him out of bed and basically just anyone on the staff who wanted to started coming in really just look at me in some kind of terrified awe since they couldn't seem to locate any cause for my white count having doubled in size. Also, since every time the original ER doc came in he looked completely defeated, the head ER doc was brought in on the case.

They started checking like every inch of skin on my person, checking my nail beds and drawing fluid from my knee, thinking there was a joint infection. They even slapped one of those 'INFECTIOUS' caution signs on my door on the chance that I was contagious.

I was like a human pin-cushion. They also seemed quite interested in continuing to take my blood pressure, pulse and temp every ten seconds like it was all they could think of to do. They messed with the thermometer so many times in my room over the duration of my stay, it actually stopped working altogether and they had to bring in a new one from elsewhere in the hospital.

Finally, the original ER doc came in, completely defeated and said, "Chest x-ray.", thinking at this point I might have pneumonia or lung cancer or some shit! So I got to march with my team of experts down to x-ray in my undies, gown and argyle socks. There were three chest x-rays, which they declared to be completely healthy. I think they expected worse than what they got considering I am a smoker.

I drew the line at the mention of spinal tap. I wanted no part of it, especially since I already seemed to have had a complete physical with the exception of say a mamogram and said spinal tap and they had come up with nothing. I swear, I was checked for everything from mad cow to prostate cancer, not that either were bound to happen not having a prostate and all and not being a really big meat eater and there was absultely nothing but the white count that was mysteriously doubled in size. My blood pressure had even settled and my temp had even returned to normal I had been there so long.

I demanded to be freed, which they did tried to fight me on. I wasn't having it and possessing the capability for logic that I do, I reasoned that they apparently couldn't help me. I was cranky-tired, hadn't had a cigarette in like 8 hours and really wanted a beverage that wasn't water and contained some kind of caffiene. So they were defeated.

They pulled the IV, which was really starting to bug me and they gave me a paper that basically said to see my doctor this week. Duh! I already have that Thursday appointment coming up on my way out of town to see BEG for her birthday. The paper also said I shouldn't have caffiene, smoking or sexual activity. I was like, "Fuck that!". My lungs are extraordinarily clear for a smoker as they've told me, so fuck it, I'm smoking and the caffiene...unless they want the bodies to start piling up around them, there will be mountain dew. Also, I will be fucking my husband since they couldn't find anything wrong with my female parts!

Upon my re-dressing, I actually declared something to the affect that when I got home, I was getting myself a Travolta style bubble suit. Not so attractive, but it would keep the germs and bugs out!

It's now Tuesday. I'm still hella tired. Still have the cyst pain...hoping the fucker will just rupture and get it over with already cause at least I've been through that before and since it's not infectious, it should be no big deal. So who knows? Maybe actual doc can find something on Thursday!