very exciting hospital visit.

[solipsistnation]

So, 11:00, stomach cramps hit. I had a bagel and some tea this morning for breakfast-- nothing too weird, so I was surprised when I got what felt like terrible indigestion and quickly turned into stomach cramps.

I headed home for lunch, noting that the cramps were painful enough that standing and walking was difficult. When I got home, I ate a little bit of relatively innocuous rice, although I didn't have much of an appetite. I lay in bed for a while, then moved to the couch. Not eating much lunch turned out to have been a good idea, since at about 1:30, I suddenly felt like it would be a really good idea to head for the bathroom and did so as quickly as possible, arriving just in time to empty my stomach.

Back on the couch, feeling pretty shaky, I emailed Al and let him know that I wouldn't be back into today. Then I sat. It was very very uncomfortable, and getting moreso all the time. I drank a very little water. At 2:30, with no sign of the pain abating, I called my doctor. He could see me at 4:15. I sat on the couch feeling really unpleasant until 3:45, and then stophittinyrslf and I headed off to the doctor's office.

He poked me and asked questions and so on, and determined that it wasn't my appendix, but that the center of my abdomen was really tender and painful when poked. It felt to me like a brick had taken up residence there. A painful brick. I was in pretty bad shape-- I couldn't really sit up or stretch out on my back, and even inhaling hurt my stomach, so I was breathing shallowly and trying not to move. "Well," said my doctor, "you're really in pretty bad shape. I need some tests run, but we can't do them here, so I need you to head over to the emergency room at Memorial Hospital."

Off we went, then, to the ER at UMass Memorial, a location with which we became very familiar last month sometime during the whole concussion incident. Luckily, it wasn't very busy, and we'd only been there maybe half an hour when they called me in.

In the ER (once I was naked and en-gowned and wrapped in nice warm sheets on the rolly bed), they took lots of blood, installed an IV cathether for ease of injecting things, and then the doctor came in to talk to me. He was about 2 sentences in when he was paged for something that was apparantly a little more life-threatening, so off he went. A nurse came in to do more tests and so on, and then I was left alone for a while.

Meanwhile, the pain began to abate.

By the time the doctor returned, asked me two questions, and was paged and had to run off a second time, the pain was pretty much gone and I was feeling okay. The doctor returned and had a nurse shoot me up with Pepcid (the acid reliever... yeah, I'm not buying it either, but they thought it was a good idea), and I asked her to call stophittinyrslf in so we could keep each other company, and (after I inadvertantly startled her with the IV) we had a nice time talking. I started to get hungry. We hung out. Finally he returned, made sure I was feeling okay, and gave me instructions to take acid reducers and generally take it easy for a while, to check in with my doctor, and to come back if it got worse.

So here I am, home, having eaten a bagel and some fake turkey and feeling kind of shaky. By now I have no idea if I'm just still hungry (at this point, although I've had a couple of meals, one of them hardly counts any more) or actually feeling gross still. I just ate something, so guess I'll find out. We stopped at the Living Earth on the way home to get food, and I'm attempting to resist my very strong desire to gorge myself silly on noodles and fake sausages and licorice and all kinds of yum.

One possibility the doctor mentioned is that it might have been a gall bladder attack. Eek.

Anyway, here I am. Hooray my innards.

Comments

[invader-haywire.livejournal.com]

If you notice that your back hurts as well... it might be your gall bladder/gall stone. But more than likely you would be sick for a couple of days.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Hm, no more back pain than usual... It's been pretty good, actually, although I really need a new chair at work.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

Hope it isn't too serious and that you get well soon.

[twwombat.livejournal.com]

Why are we all falling apart this month?

Hope it all works out for you...

[xinie.livejournal.com]

I know why *I*'m falling apart. Maybe y'all are just having sympathy falling-aparts. ;)

[quaintance.livejournal.com]

Feel better!!

[friode.livejournal.com]

giving the patient an antacid seems to be a standard emergency room substitute for understanding what the hell is really going on.

reading this left me wondering if going to the emergency room to begin with might have been more clever. I donno. Most insurance tends to want to charge you more for an emergency room visit than an outpatient visit, but paying for an outpatient visit in addition to an emergency room visit doesn't exactly save money either.

If you're feeling hungry in the emergency room, it's not unreasonable to tell the doctors/nurses that. They tend to have food available that they can give to patients, although depending on the patient's condition they may or may not be interesting in giving you food; on the other hand, if you politely inform them you're hungry when they don't want to give you food, you're not even remotely close to being the most obnoxious patient they have to deal with.

[amymarr.livejournal.com]

I'm not a doctor, but it doesn't sound like a gallbladder attack to me. I konw, I've had them. The pain starts in your back, not in the front, and the abdomen doesn't get tender either. Anyway, I hope you're feeling better.

[bouncingleaf.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Mixed report on whether or not your symptoms matched mine for gall bladder problems:

yes
* Unlike amymarr, I've had the pain start in the front.
* Hurling, once or twice.
* Fades on its own in an hour or three, usually.
* Shallow breathing due to the pain, once, but I could see that happening with any severe pain in that general area.

no
* Similar to amymarr, not so much for the abdomen pain. Mostly right below the ribcage.
* And my experience was also that it was more on the right side of my body (gall bladder territory) and not so much the left side (stomach territory), so your feeling that it was stomach cramps doesn't line up here either.
* The food trigger isn't a match. It was almost always some sort of high-fat meal that set me off. (The gb is used more when digesting fats.) Though on the other hand it was a relatively lowfat meal that sent me to the ER.
* No back pain. Although most of my pain was concentrated in the front right under-the-ribcage part, there was usually a duller pain in a band around my back.

Maybe ask your regular doc about an appointment to rule it out? They can do an ultrasound and see if there are stones.

But here's hoping that it turns out to have just been Breakfast Gone Wrong, and that your insides resume being content.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

If you mean that the pain was centered right below your solar plexus, then you've described the location better than I did, although it was centered rather than on the right side more...

The night before, I'd had rice (which was low-fat) and a chocolate thing from the Bean Counter (which, um, was not).

No back pain at all, though, nope.

I still have no idea what it was, but I've felt pretty blechy since then anyway... :/

[trixiegnosis.livejournal.com]

When I have a gall bladder attack, lying on my right side makes it markedly better. And it's really hard to figure out exactly what kind of hurt it is. ( I know that sounds weird.) I hope that you are all better now.