Valentine's Day sucks
Being single and not being all that happy about it, I knew that Valentine's Day was going to suck. I just didn't think it would involve a trip to the hospital.
I crashed at Ian and Kiernan's last night, sleeping on their couch. I woke up early and caught a bus home at quarter after seven. Halfway home the pain started. Sharp, crushing pain in my lower back that had nothing to do with the alcohol I'd consumed last night.
Walking from the bus-stop to the house was difficult. I barely made it upstairs to the toilet where I went because I was sure I was going to vomit. The pain got worse, to the point I could barely breathe and where moving at all was agony. I didn't vomit, but became dizzy.
That's when I decided the pain was too sudden and too severe, that something was seriously wrong and that I had to go to the hospital.
I staggered to Claire's door and knocked several times. Eventually, she woke and I told her I needed to get to a hospital. She said she and Ryan, her boyfriend, would take me but she just had to use the washroom first.
While she quickly did that I went to my knees in the upstairs hall. She came out very quickly and asked if it'd be better to call an ambulance. I didn't feel I could stand, so I said yes.
She called the ambulance and I lay down on the floor, breathing hard and moaning. Ryan took down my parents' number and I told them how the pain had developed in case I passed out before the EMTs showed up. Claire sat beside me, stroking the side of my head.
After a couple minutes the pain almost completely went away, just like that. For no apparent reason.
The EMTs arrived and hooked me up to a machine to check my vitals. Everything seemed fine. They suggested I go to the hospital anyway, just to get it checked out. They said I could go with them or go in on my own. After Claire and Ryan said they'd drive me, I took that option.
We got to the hospital at about nine o'clock this morning. Claire and Ryan, great people that they are, stayed two hours and wouldn't leave until I made them. I told them I'd call when I was done. They told me they'd come get me.
At around two o'clock this afternoon, they finally got to me. It took nearly an hour and a half to finish.
The doctor was puzzled. It sounded, he said, like kidney stones. The urine test came back negative though. Which didn't necessarily rule kidney stones out. It could have been an intense spasm in the muscles of the lower back, but the amount of pain didn't make sense for that scenario.
He said to drink lots of fluids and to keep an eye on it for the next few days. The remaining pain will either peter out on its own, or it will get bad again. If it gets bad again, it might be kidney stones and I'm to go back to the hospital. They'll run further tests - ultrasound and x-rays - then.
I feel like I should wrap this up with some kind of moral or insight, but the fact is I'm too bloody worn out. This is just a journal entry.
I hate hospitals. They're scary places that I associate with loved ones slowly but surely succumbing to illness and then dying. I was scared at two points today.
The first was just before waking Claire. The pain was terrible and I had no idea what it was. I'd never experienced anything so severe. Stupid as it seems looking back on it now, it passed through my mind that I might die today. Which scared me for a second, but then I accepted.
The second was right after they had me piss in a cup. The nurse had asked me to change into a hospital gown afterward and I lay waiting in the curtained room. Again I had no idea what was wrong and feared it was going to be bad. I rationalized it all, pointing out that I was likely fine and whatever was wrong was unlikely to be serious. Then it hit me that however good the news was I would someday be back in a gown like this, on a bed like this. But unlike today, on that day far from now, I would be dying.
I came to terms with my mortality a long time ago. Like everyone else, I had to. Eight family members - three great grandparents, three grandparents, an infant cousin and a middle-aged uncle - have died on me in the last fifteen years. Two weeks before I turned sixteen I watched a car fishtail and roll over six times down the highway. I was sure I was going to die, that we were going to plow straight into the rolling car. We didn't. Shortly after, I watched the coroner pull a blanket over the bloodied and broken passenger.
You don't go through that without coming to terms with the facts that you will die and that you have no idea when that will be.
All the same, for a moment today my vivid imagination conjured a picture of how my life will end and I was afraid. It's passed now. Hell, it was only there for a minute. But still.
And the pain may come back, as bad or worse. But at least I'll have a better idea of what it is this time. That's the key. Knowing makes it easier to manage.
I crashed at Ian and Kiernan's last night, sleeping on their couch. I woke up early and caught a bus home at quarter after seven. Halfway home the pain started. Sharp, crushing pain in my lower back that had nothing to do with the alcohol I'd consumed last night.
Walking from the bus-stop to the house was difficult. I barely made it upstairs to the toilet where I went because I was sure I was going to vomit. The pain got worse, to the point I could barely breathe and where moving at all was agony. I didn't vomit, but became dizzy.
That's when I decided the pain was too sudden and too severe, that something was seriously wrong and that I had to go to the hospital.
I staggered to Claire's door and knocked several times. Eventually, she woke and I told her I needed to get to a hospital. She said she and Ryan, her boyfriend, would take me but she just had to use the washroom first.
While she quickly did that I went to my knees in the upstairs hall. She came out very quickly and asked if it'd be better to call an ambulance. I didn't feel I could stand, so I said yes.
She called the ambulance and I lay down on the floor, breathing hard and moaning. Ryan took down my parents' number and I told them how the pain had developed in case I passed out before the EMTs showed up. Claire sat beside me, stroking the side of my head.
After a couple minutes the pain almost completely went away, just like that. For no apparent reason.
The EMTs arrived and hooked me up to a machine to check my vitals. Everything seemed fine. They suggested I go to the hospital anyway, just to get it checked out. They said I could go with them or go in on my own. After Claire and Ryan said they'd drive me, I took that option.
We got to the hospital at about nine o'clock this morning. Claire and Ryan, great people that they are, stayed two hours and wouldn't leave until I made them. I told them I'd call when I was done. They told me they'd come get me.
At around two o'clock this afternoon, they finally got to me. It took nearly an hour and a half to finish.
The doctor was puzzled. It sounded, he said, like kidney stones. The urine test came back negative though. Which didn't necessarily rule kidney stones out. It could have been an intense spasm in the muscles of the lower back, but the amount of pain didn't make sense for that scenario.
He said to drink lots of fluids and to keep an eye on it for the next few days. The remaining pain will either peter out on its own, or it will get bad again. If it gets bad again, it might be kidney stones and I'm to go back to the hospital. They'll run further tests - ultrasound and x-rays - then.
I feel like I should wrap this up with some kind of moral or insight, but the fact is I'm too bloody worn out. This is just a journal entry.
I hate hospitals. They're scary places that I associate with loved ones slowly but surely succumbing to illness and then dying. I was scared at two points today.
The first was just before waking Claire. The pain was terrible and I had no idea what it was. I'd never experienced anything so severe. Stupid as it seems looking back on it now, it passed through my mind that I might die today. Which scared me for a second, but then I accepted.
The second was right after they had me piss in a cup. The nurse had asked me to change into a hospital gown afterward and I lay waiting in the curtained room. Again I had no idea what was wrong and feared it was going to be bad. I rationalized it all, pointing out that I was likely fine and whatever was wrong was unlikely to be serious. Then it hit me that however good the news was I would someday be back in a gown like this, on a bed like this. But unlike today, on that day far from now, I would be dying.
I came to terms with my mortality a long time ago. Like everyone else, I had to. Eight family members - three great grandparents, three grandparents, an infant cousin and a middle-aged uncle - have died on me in the last fifteen years. Two weeks before I turned sixteen I watched a car fishtail and roll over six times down the highway. I was sure I was going to die, that we were going to plow straight into the rolling car. We didn't. Shortly after, I watched the coroner pull a blanket over the bloodied and broken passenger.
You don't go through that without coming to terms with the facts that you will die and that you have no idea when that will be.
All the same, for a moment today my vivid imagination conjured a picture of how my life will end and I was afraid. It's passed now. Hell, it was only there for a minute. But still.
And the pain may come back, as bad or worse. But at least I'll have a better idea of what it is this time. That's the key. Knowing makes it easier to manage.
