One Year Ago Today

It’s kind of appropriate that I’ve stayed in bed sick all day.  Today is the 1-year anniversary of one of the most astoundingly terrible days I’ve ever had.  I know, because it was so awful that the last thing I did before I went to bed that night was post about it on Facebook, for fear I would never believe it really happened otherwise.  Let’s revisit one of the worst days I ever recorded for the internet.  It will be fun!

Oct. 22 [2008]: Retrospective Itinerary

• Wake up. (around 12:00 noon.)
• Mess around on Facebook.
• Feel mild pain in right kidney.
• Take a shower.
• Feel intense pain in right kidney.
• Call girlfriend to say you won’t be able to take her to her doctor’s appointment, because you seem to have a kidney stone.
• Feel excruciating pain in right kidney.
• Call mother to take you to emergency room, then struggle into random clothing (nicest slacks, moth-eaten undershirt, flip flops).
• Feel utterly ludicrous agony in right kidney.
• Lie on the ground in emergency room parking lot until humanoid figure brings you a wheelchair.
• Fall out of wheelchair and lie on the floor under triage nurse’s desk.
• Spend a quarter of an hour writhing in pain in phlebotomist’s office, waiting for phlebotomist to arrive. Occasionally mutter “someone please help me.”
• Have blood drawn.
• Be unable to produce a urine sample.
• Get left in wheelchair blocking the doorway to the hospital while a room is prepared for you. Start to cry, just a little.
• Get admitted and taken to room. Put on gown.
• Just for fun, have another nurse draw several more vials of blood. (These will be declared unneeded and thrown in the trash a little while later.)
• Receive and IV and a saline drip.
• Receive an injection of morphine.
• Realize that morphine is love.
• Notice that girlfriend has arrived. She seems unwell.
• Pass kidney stone.
• Ask mother to take girlfriend to her doctor’s appointment. Explain that you will be fine, because your veins are full of love.
• Doze. Get IV removed. Get dressed. Sign discharge papers. Call a taxi to take you home.
• Receive call from mother, informing you that girlfriend’s doctor sent her to the emergency room.
• Have taxi take you across town to other hospital.
• Comfort girlfriend while she waits many hours.
• Comfort girlfriend while clumsy nurse awkwardly tries to plant an IV.
• Comfort girlfriend while she waits for injection of anti-nausea medication to take effect (Note: it never will; this medication is ineffective for her.)
• Wait in room while girlfriend is taken to get a CT scan of her head, to see if her weeks-long, increasingly severe headache is potentially fatal.
• Comfort girlfriend while waiting many more hours for results of scan. Notice that girlfriend’s discomfort does not seem at all lessened, despite the intravenous medications that she has received.
• Gently browbeat nurse into administering different medications. Watch tension finally melt from girlfriend’s face.
• Learn that CT scan was normal. Get discharged from hospital.
• Fill everybody’s prescriptions.
• Have mother take us home. Take girlfriend inside to put her to bed.
• Grab an empty trashcan and catch girlfriends third, fourth, and fifth bouts of vomiting, while trying not to stand in the first and second.
• Put girlfriend to bed.
• Drive to Wal-Mart to buy a mop.
• Return home. Fantasize about killing girlfriend’s cat for having tracked through the vomit.
• Mop up vomit.
• Mess around on Facebook.
• Go to bed. ( Around 3:20 in the morning.)

This occasionally now gets referenced in family lore as the Double Hospital Incident. Compared to this time a year ago, I have to say I’m feeling pretty good!