Time to update you lovely folks.
When last we met, I had endured a positively wretched Thursday where I felt very ill, my legs had once more stopped working, I couldn’t even get my sweaty butt into my computer chair until the sun went down, and spent most of the day asleep.
I pondered calling 911 because my legs were so weak, but to be honest, I was not really coherent enough to make that sort of judgement call.
Well, the next day, Friday, I was feeling a lot better. My legs were still weak but I could at least get around my room okay and I had an easier time stringing thoughts together.
Which allowed me to focus on my OTHER symptoms.
Namely the fact that my lungs felt enormous and abraded and I was having trouble breathing fully and was feeling dizzy and faint.
Oh, and my hands and feet kept falling asleep.
Those were the same symptoms that prompted me to go to the ER to get myself checked out a long time ago, and that’s when they discovered I had pneumonia.
Pretty bad case of it, too. My blood oxygen level was so low that the triage nurse called another nurse over to see it (never a good sign) and when the other nurse saw it they exchanged a “holy shit!” look (a VERY VERY bad sign and they immediately went to get a doctor to see me.
Well that’s one way to cut through that ER red tape.
I ended up being admitted and put on oxygen and heavy antibiotics for eight days.
You can see why this time, I was going to err on the side of caution. So I got Julian to take me to the ER at around 1:30 pm or so.
Thus began my ordeal. Didn’t leave until 12:20 AM, or almost 11 freaking hours later.
No surprise, the place was packed on a Friday, and the problem with erring on the side of caution like I did is that your triage priority is going to be, quite justifiably, very low.
I mean, there were some obviously very ill people in the waiting room with me, and those are just the ones who can afford to wait.
I am sure cases that were even more urgent were coming in via ambulance.
Luckily, I had prudently brought my tablet with me and was able to get on to the local WiFi, so the hours flew by fairly quickly.
There were the usual stations of the cross : triage, then an EKG, then bloodwork, then some X-rays of my lungs, and then a nice long wait before they actually let me in to the ER proper and stick me in an outpatient bed.
Then more waiting, but better, because at least I was lying down. Though sadly, I found I could not sleep. Too stressed and drained.
Two sucky things that suck more together.
Final verdict : no pneumonia, but the doctor, Doctor Woods, saw that my left leg looked a little red and swollen, so she put me on IV antibiotics and ordered me to come back the next day for an ultrasound and more antibiotics.
Which brings us to today.
More after the break.
The saga continues…
Today also sucked.
What I thought was going to happen was that I would go for my ultrasound at 3:30 pm, then afterwards I would mosey over to Emergency and get my second dose of IV antibiotics and then go home.
But there was more to it than that.
For one thing, when I got to Emerg, I was told to go wait in the waiting room with everyone else, like I had just been admitted.
This seemed wrong to me, and it was. I was supposed to have been admitted straight to the ER and gone to the IV room with the comfy chairs.
Luckily, eventually a nurse came along and corrected that after I had been cooling my jets in the waiting room for like 45 minutes.
Then the IV happened, and I talked to a doctor, and he wanted to get an X-ray of the wound on my left heel, and blah blah.
Ended up stuck there till around 7:30 pm.
This was especially bad because I hadn’t eaten lunch yet. I had stupidly thought I would be back soon enough that it didn’t matter.
And that was triple espresso bad because I had barely eaten at all for the last three days. Between sleeping all of Thursday and being at the hospital for all of Friday, and a sharp lack of appetite besides, I had barely eaten at all for three frigging days.
Luckily, I managed to force myself to eat enough not to FREAKING DIE.
But I was not taking any chances when I got home. Thank GOD I had gotten my appetite back by then, because I ordered myself a staggeringly huge donair from Donair Dude so I could get my meat and veggies on.
Plus a muffin I got from McD’s. And a 591 ml of Diet Pepsi.
That should keep me going for a while. Plus that big crazy meal got things moving on the other end too, which was also much needed.
Because when you don’t eat….
And now it’s 11:20 pm on Saturday the 16th of September, 2023, and I am still worried about my health. I can feel that my lung capacity is reduced and even small amounts of movement leave me wheezing, and so even if it ain’t pneumonia, something ain’t right.
But at least some of my energy is back, and my appetite came back, and I don’t feel nearly as incoherent as before.
So who knows. I might yet live.
But I have to go back for my third and final dose of antibiotics tomorrow, and when I do I am going to grab someone’s elbow and tell them how bad I still feel and how I am still worried I got something nasty eating away at me, and I am gonna get some damned attention paid to THAT instead of letting this phantom leg infection end up being the shiny object that lures them away from the thing they STILL HAVE NOT FIXED.
What do I have to do to keep these people focused?
Hot-glue a fidget spinner to my fucking forehead?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.