...And Then I Ended Up in the Emergency Room...Again

Everyone has to start off the New Year with a bang somehow, I just chose to do it by going to the ER! Yay! The pain that I had been experiencing from the kidney infection from 2 weeks ago had never really gone away and by last night (January 4), I felt like I was dying a miserable death. I hadn't really been eating--not that I ever really do--and what I had managed to consume was just coming right back up. Laying on my left side was torturous and felt like a puss sack or something was pushing toward the midline...graphic, I know. 

When we got home from church yesterday, I tried to take a nap, but it just wasn't happening. I told my mom that I thought I needed to pay the emergency room another visit. In an effort to save $100, we looked to see if I could make an appointment with my primary doctor and there was nothing available. I even looked for something over the next week and a half...nothing. So I bundled up and off we went. 

Luckily, this time, they took me right back and got me going. My vitals were a little high, for me, (125/75 and 79) and put me into a bed. I was put into an area with multiple beds and a security guard--should I have taken that as a hint--and asked to change. I was then asked for a urine sample [insert grumbling and grousing here]. The nurse started an IV and drew a TON of blood, like 8 viles worth, and then the wait was on for the doctor. 

When he came he told me he had looked at my history as far back as 2010 and had seen that I had "some stomach emptying issues" and wanted to know what was going on. I told him about having Gastroparesis and the gastric neurostimulator, that at first I thought that Alfred--my pacemaker--was helping 70% but now I feel I'm eating my words. I think he's only helped an eensie bit. He asked if I've had pain PRIOR to getting Alfred and I said "yes, there's pain associated with Gastroparesis. It's like stomach cramps with the flu ALL the time. This pain that I'm having now is different." He was very receptive and friendly, examined me and found nothing wrong. Based on his exam and past scans and the results of my blood, it turned out not to be my kidneys--yay--so he treated me symptomatically. 

The nurse came and hooked up a bag of fluids, gave me a shot of phenergan--that sucker hurt--and did a piggyback of a pain medication that I can neither spell nor pronounce--it turned out to be the first and only IV Tylenol there is. I was checked up on a while later by the doctor and still in pain, so he gave me morphine and that helped more--definitely made me sleepy--and sent me home. 

By the time I got home I was pretty out of it, but at least feeling a little better--not so nauseous. Hopefully, come Wednesday, my primary doctor will be able to figure out or have an idea as to what is causing that pain. 

It's hard deciding whether or not to go to the ER. On the one hand, you pretty much know that the only thing that's going to happen is fluids, nausea/vomiting meds, and pain medication and you wonder if it's worth spending $100 on that. But on the other hand, you just want the nonsense to stop so $100 doesn't seem like all that much. Oh, the conundrums we face in Gastroparesisland.