fun with medicine

so, in my last blog I made some statement about being so frustrated with it taking so long to get a referral that i was just going to run into the ER clutching my chest and shouting about chest pains in order to get the process expedited.  Of course, I only made this statement in jest, but all my joking resulted in karma punching me in the face...and knocking me unconscious.

In the days after I made that blog post,  the "normal" level of "bad" that I've been feeling every day rapidly started to get worse,  so i was spending a lot of my free time lying on the couch or in the bed, shuffling around complaining about how fatigued I felt, or trying to keep my balance.  One night, Gene was watching football, so I'd set myself up upstairs in our room watching bad reality t.v. on iTunes and trying to stay comfortable, when I felt a ridiculous flutter (yes, I know the medical term is "palpitation," but I prefer flutter because it's...well....cuter) in my chest that felt like a ping pong ball being forcefully shot through my chest and up my throat.  I'd felt fluttering before (I usually feel it a few times a month, but lately I feel very light ones on a daily basis, sometimes a few times a day) but not this severe.  It only lasted a couple of seconds, and while it sort of scared the crap out of me, I decided it wasn't really that big of a deal, so I just went on about my business. A few minutes passed, and everything was back to "normal" -  I decided for some random reason that it was time to go do inventory of my makeup - I have to order some of my stuff from the states, and remembered that earlier in the day, I'd made a mental note that I was about to run out of something,  so I got up and walked into my dressing room, dug through my drawer for a minute, and headed back into the bedroom with intentions of ordering the stuff I'd just decided I needed, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in the floor.  Apparently I passed out.

I laid there for a few seconds, trying to remember what happened, but I couldn't really recall anything.  I heard Gene walking out of the bathroom downstairs (he had heard me fall, but assumed the "thud" was just a result of the dogs getting crazy in the living room) and yelled at him to come upstairs, and he decided that I was going to the ER.

The whole time we were in the car, I just kept thinking two things: (1) that I was thankful that this time I passed out on carpet, and seemed uninjured, whereas the last time this happened, I ended up with a bruised forehead and a black eye from slamming into a tile wall on the way down, and (2) I just wanted to go home and go to sleep. It was only about  8:30 at night, but I was already so tired and just wanted to get back into bed. I knew that they wouldn't do much for me at the ER, and that I'd probably get some "these things just happen" explanation, so I didn't really see the point in wasting our time, but the fact that I passed out last year, coupled with the way I've been feeling and my recent Dr visits, Gene was pretty insistent that I'd go.   I'd heard horror stories about how long it takes for a visit to the ER on base, but I thought to myself "how long could it REALLY take?" - the answer to that question, folks, is 5 fucking hours.

we got there, walked in, and there were maybe 3 other people (all but 1 were adults with babies) in the waiting area. In my head, so few people equals shorter times for visits, but apparently 3 patients makes for a very busy night at the ER. not to mention that nobody really seemed THAT sick or inured (it mostly seemed to be an infant with high fever situation), so I figured we'd be in and out in a matter of an hour or so, and that seemed pretty reasonable.  When you first walk into this place, there's no face-to-face reception person to speak to. Instead, you are greeted by a long wall of two-way mirrored glass and instructions to "STAND BEHIND THIS LINE UNTIL CALLED" - we stood there for probably 3 minutes before anyone even bothered to call us, and as I walked around the corner to the window, I thought "maybe they ARE all busy" - and knew that I was about to feel bad for thinking the ER was slow when I walked up to this window to see them all scurrying around, saving lives and shit - only to find that there were three people sitting there, and two of them were on facebook. The other one was probably one of the rudest people I've ever encountered, and she seemed none too thrilled to be checking me in. she was one of those deep sighers that I absolutely CAN'T stand (nothing says "you're an inconvenience" or "I'm in the middle of an angry birds game" more than deep sighs and eye rolls), and after she completed the whopping 4 second task of looking up my information (which, from her body language, seemed incredibly daunting), she asked me a few questions that I'm not even sure she listened to the answers to, and then handed me a clipboard of insurance information to fill out.  I did so, and then brought it back to her quickly, and she immediately handed me a urinalysis cup, gave me instructions on how to pee in it, and then slammed (literally SLAMMED) the window shut in my face.

So I went across the hall to the bathroom to fill up a cup-o-urine for what would be my third urinalysis in less than two weeks (I later discovered in conversation with other people about this that they run a "urinalysis" on EVERY woman who comes to the ER simply so they can get a sample and run a pregnancy test -  not  because they want to see what's going on with your insides, but because, ya know, if you're sick and you have a vagina,  you MUST be pregnant).  I returned back to the waiting room, stood behind the line, and after a minute or so, the great and powerful Oz called my name again, and I handed her the cup only to have the window slammed in my face again.  No "thank you," no "we'll be with you shortly" - nothing. Just a slam.

I went to the waiting area where Gene was, and took a quick look around.  It wasn't much of an emergency room if you ask me, and in hindsight, it definitely wasn't set up for people who were going to be waiting around for 5 hours - I was an accident prone child (okay, I'm an accident prone adult, too), so I've been in my fair share of emergency rooms, and I'm not saying that have to be cushy or jam packed with stuff to do, but the waiting rooms of hospitals/emergency rooms should at least have enough distractions that people can focus, even if it's for half a second, on something other than the reason they are there....anyway, here they had a t.v. that wasn't even on, really uncomfortable seating, and TWO magazines (both of which were "dude" magazines, and both of which were over a year old) - nothing really to distract you or keep you occupied while you just wait.  to the left of the waiting area was a door marked "TRIAGE," and that, of course, is where they collect all the basic stuff - they call you in there and get your vitals, ask you questions to gather a quick history, decide your priority, etc.  and triage was going pretty quickly.  In the first hour and a half we were there, I'd say that everyone - even me - got through the triage part and were spit back into the waiting room.  I couldn't really figure out what was taking so long in the back though. I'm one of those people who doesn't MIND a long wait, as long as I'm seeing progress, but if you're sitting somewhere for hours and hours, and nobody ever gets called back OR is ever released, you start to get frustrated, and that's what happened to me. nobody was being called back. nobody was being released. we all just sat there staring at the t.v. that wasn't on.

while we were waiting, I did notice a rather pleasant smell in the ER, and even though I was irritated by the wait and not feeling well, every once in a while I would smell this scent that I'd never smelled before and feel a little less irritated and a little less crappy.  I can't describe what it smelled like, but it was soothing, soft and calming, and if i could bottle it and wear it around, I would have. It wasn't constant - it seemed like I'd only get a whiff of it every few minutes, but it was incredible.  I would smell the scent, and look around and see all the babies (at that point, there were 4 of them, and that's a pretty high amount of babies for me to be around at once), and for some reason, my brain started to connect the scent to the babies.  Babies, which usually annoy/scare me started to seem very pleasant and lovable, and I even interacted with one, DESPITE the fact that she had snot all over her face (which grosses me out usually) and kept wiping her nose on the same hand she wanted to give me a "high five" with -  I even had thoughts of wanting/needing a baby. After about 2 1/2 hours of feeling this way about babies, I decided that it must be my biological clock ticking and my desire to be a mother had finally kicked in, and I was about to turn to my husband and say "I think I want to have a baby" when I heard a familiar noise. It was the "PSSSH" sound of one of those timed air freshener things, and as the sound hit my ear, my eye directly went to right above the entry way door where the dispenser of sweet-angel-baby-smell was. I couldn't figure out how I sat there all that time and didn't notice it before, but  I felt a little relieved that I hadn't (a) actually gotten the words "I want to have a baby" out of my mouth and (b) that I still haven't jumped aboard the baby train yet......but I AM a little disappointed that babies don't smell like that.

about 4 hours into the waiting, they finally called my name.  They took me to a little room in the back where they hooked me up to a monitor for my vitals, and I then proceeded to wait 45 more minutes for the doctor.  The machine took my blood pressure every 5 minutes or so, and it bounced back and forth from being borderline normal and a little bit high.  when the doctor came in, she was very nice, and we again discussed my history, and she decided to run an ecg.  It came back relatively normal (did I mention it was run by the bitchy receptionist?), and she kind of flip flopped about admitting me to the hospital for the night.  she left to call the internal medicine guy who was working the hospital that night, and he told her to send me home, and he would see me the next day for a follow up.  We got home around 2 that morning, and I had to be back on base at 8:00 for a dental appointment, followed by an appointment with the internal medicine dude around lunch time, which was then followed by 6 hours of work at the clinic.  At my appointment with internal medicine, everything was relatively normal.  He heard my murmur and my blood pressure was a little high again, and we briefly discussed different things that could be going on.  he agreed with my primary care's initial decision that I needed an echo, and that pretty much put me right back where i was before passing out.  waiting for an appointment.

I finally (after much irritation, a cancellation, a switch of doctors, a trip to Cambridge in the rain) got my echo done last week along with a repeat of an ecg and the joyous experience of wearing a portable heart monitor for 24 hours, which wouldn't have been so bad except the sensors were incredibly itchy (and hurt like hell to pull off) and this thing had three gigantic tentacle-like arms that the nurse didn't bother to tape down anywhere to me, so I walked around Cambridge for a few hours (it was one of Gene's last days here, so we were trying to spend time together that included more than the two of us just sitting on the couch watching Master Chef Australia) looking like I had octopus legs trying to fight their way out of my dress - never mind the fun sensor/electrode thingy that was bright yellow and green and easily visible out of the top of my dress - but I finally got frustrated and went into the bathroom to figure out how to look less like an octopus, and ended up wrapping the cords around my body so they stuck closer to me - it still wasn't perfect, but I looked a little less freaky (or a little less like a person with a bomb strapped to them) walking through the streets of Cambridge.

So now I'm back to waiting. It's been about a week and some change since I had all these tests run and I'm waiting on the results.  I'm a realist and understand that it sometimes takes time for doctors to get a chance to sit down and look at results and such (like the time I had blood work done, and it took well over a week to get the results for tests that were completed in 24 hours),  and this probably takes even longer because the specialist had to look at them FIRST, send them on, etc....so I'm giving them until mid-week before I start calling bugging them.

I still generally feel cruddy, and just want some answers and maybe a solution. I've been told by every doctor I've seen that the way I feel might just be "normal" for me, and that it's possibly the way I'll just have to live, and I just don't feel that it's acceptable. it's not normal for someone to feel lightheaded constantly or to feel so fatigued that they could literally spend an entire day in bed in a deep sleep. it's not normal to have headaches every single day, to randomly pass out, or to feel discomfort in your chest this frequently.  I just want relief from this, even if it means being medicated. I can live like this, but it's not really "living," if you catch my drift.....

FIX ME, Y'ALL!