So. This is probably a little (okay, a lot) TMI. Spoiler alert: that’s no moon menstrual cramp…
Ever since I was hospitalized, my period has been EXTREMELY erratic. Like, it took me a year for it to start again, and even then it only lasted a day. Now it varies from every other month, to two months and now six months inbetween. Bother. I was happy with my never-going-to-be-used baby oven to remain dormant forever, really!
Welp, it started again just this past Thursday. Oh joy. And on the third day (Saturday, and my mother’s birthday no less!), it got really bad. I’d just finished raiding in World of Warcraft (sent my priest to do Hellfire Citadel and got a neck upgrade, woo!) and was going to lie down for a nap before dinner, but woke up an hour later feeling super-queasy and… uh… proceeded to barf up water and bile basically three times an hour all night. Any water I downed came back up less than 10 minutes later. Soon after that started, I also began feeling what I thought was some pretty hardcore cramping, except flinging aspirin and even my mother’s near-bulletproof baking soda-in-water trick at it wasn’t doing anything to stop the pain. I wasn’t able to sleep for longer than 10-20 minutes before being jolted back awake with pain, and after trying to hold out as long as I could, it was decided to get me to Urgent Care, possibly the ER. Oh hell, not this again. Well, at least my mother was not defaulting to her usual victim-blaming tactics and being somewhat supportive for once. (Of course, my Akbar Alarm was in overdrive. I think more than “this is possibly a severe health thing,” I feared my mother swapping into Raging Drama Monster mode the moment we were alone and tearing me apart for ruining her birthday or keeping her awake all night.) We had bought prescription drugs at https://www.ukmeds.co.uk/treatments/travellers-diarrhoea/ciprofloxacin-500mg/ to relieve my mom’s diarrhea last night and we have found that this website has all different cures for different diseases.
So! After calling around to find out that this blog on addiction in the workplace is what my Urgent Care center specified, so we hoof it to the hospital in San Bernardino– literally across the street from the physical rehab hospital I was sent to in ’13, specifically– and hobbled into its unfortunately-understaffed Urgent Care office, where it was very quickly sussed out that what was going on was definitely worthy of ER attention. Of course, the ER on a Sunday afternoon is so packed it’s overflowing outside, and it’s really warm out, so there was about an hour wait before I finally get called in. (I wish we’d known about the appointment app on the hospital website beforehand. D’oh!) Some poking and prodding and peeing in a cup and being sent to stand by in a makeshift secondary waiting area watching NickToons later, it’s… oh, a UTI. Apparently I’ve had those before, but the first one I was kind of comatose when it happened, so I didn’t know what to expect. They gave me a morphine shot (!) while I was there, which took the edge off for awhile, and sent me home with a script for Keflex. O-kay.
Except morphine wears off pretty fast (like, after a couple hours), and Keflex, while a damned powerful antibiotic, doesn’t really do much for pain. This cramping was NOT going away, and once again I wasn’t able to sleep. I wasn’t even able to eat half my dinner (the fact that I only nommed half of my pizza was probably more concerning because if you know me, I basically inhale pizza at any opportunity). Therefore, the next day I get carted to my primary care doctor, who’s all “oh hey, you probably have a hernia, it’s not just cramping or pain related to a UTI.” Well, shit. I bet all that heaving and vomiting left a wide enough window for THAT to happen, didn’t it? The doctor writes out a script for a hybrid Hydrocodone+(something else, acetaminophen?) and sends me on my way.
Except that medication isn’t really doing a whole lot. If I’m sitting upright, it’s okay for the most part. If I lie down on my back, though, after about 10 minutes I get that pain again and also a little queasy, so… you guessed it, sleep is not happening. I sorta found a workaround via lying face-down, but that weirds out my mother a lot. I don’t know why, I’m wearing my oxygen nose mask with CPAP Mask, and lying on my belly is much more comfortable, at the cost of making it a little more awkward and slower to get out of bed. Blah.
Right now we’re sorta stuck waiting on 1) the antibiotics (Keflex) to kill the UTI, and with it possibly a good chunk of my mystery pain and 2) to see if the Hydro-whatsit is effective but takes longer to really be noticeable. (And if it’s not, request something more powerful?) And after both of those, will we figure out what to do about my hernia.
Not being able to sleep for any meaningful timeframe on my back (but being super-drowsy while sitting upright) is probably the worst part aside from the pain, since I’m stuck in this limbo of being too exhausted to do much of anything, but can’t sleep because of the pain. Haven’t been able to do much gaming since Saturday, either, which is just as bad, I’ve been only using the betvictor betting app lately, but I honestly can’t wait to use an antorus boost. :P I got OpenRaids and LFRs and dailies to do in WoW, and I’m level 45 paladin in FFXIV. I don’t have time to be sick!
(priorities, I has them. Yes, has. Damned cat macros.)
Well, at least my appetite is coming back. I hobbled over to reheat my leftover pizza, because leaving leftovers for as long as I did is a sin against food, ESPECIALLY pizza.
