sick, part IV

I donated many little bottles of blood for testing. I was awakened at 4 AM as a matter of course for bloodwork and just more crap. However, I couldn’t get them to come when I wanted them and my many tubes and monitors kept setting off alarms that they never, ever responded to. I figured out how to unhook myself to use the bathroom. I’d call them when I got back to bed and say my monitors were unhooked. That way if they wanted them hooked up they’d have to come do it and I got to go to the bathroom without having to wait for them. What a bunch of bozos they were. Yet still, I felt safe in the hospital. Like maybe I wouldn’t die, or if I came close to dying someone could stop it. Since no one had any idea what was wrong with me, and I didn’t feel sick except for being totally wiped out and having a fever I couldn’t get rid of, I wasn’t sure what would happen. And now this heart thing. My normally hands-off doctor kept ordering tests, winding up with a CT scan that I almost refused.

I entertained a continual parade of specialists. The drugs they were giving me were making me sick. The infectious disease doctor med students trolling along behind came every day to tell me he’d no idea what I had. The two students would stand quietly looking very solemn in the background as he grilled me and then say “hope you feel better” as they left. The cardiologist ordered an echo, I was hooked up to a heart monitor three of the four days I was there. I slept in a different room each night – moving on that first ward to a private room on night two, and then to a regular ward the third night. It was hard to find me.

All I could do was watch television. My fever sapped me of the ability to concentrate for more than a few moments and unfocusable vision was one odd effect of whatever I had. One of many visitors brought me coloring books, which I’d thought would be fun. But I couldn’t focus well enough to see the intricate pictures she’d brought. These were very complex draw inside the line drawings. I think I saw every episode of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Too many people were visiting. I’d said I’d love visitors, but I didn’t think when I’d said that that I’d be so frigging exhausted.

The last indignity was that CT scan that my doctor made me undergo. I knew it’d find nothing. But some test had indicated possible X (probably low crit, but I can’t quite remember). And even though X was a possible side effect of medication Y, which I had been fed intravenously in large doses, my doctor insisted that we needed to check for X with a CT scan. I pretty much lost it that last morning as I called him in tears and insisted that I didn’t want the damned scan. But the deal was I could be discharged if I had it, if I didn’t I’d have to stay another night. The nurses couldn’t believe I was going to be allowed to go home because my fever was still spiky and my heart rate still badly elevated. But was adamant. I wanted out. Since no one knew what was wrong with me, other than it was viral not bacterial (the only thing they’d settled on), I saw no point in staying. Being hospitalized did nothing for me, I was miserable away from my couch and TV, and it was pretty clear I wasn’t going to die.

A small child was ahead of me in the CT scan room. I didn’t even care that she had some kind of broken leg and threw up most of the CT-prep liquid she was forced to drink. I wanted to throw mine up too. I was mad that whoever had sent the orders for the scan had written them incorrectly and I had to wait until they found someone to rewrite them. When I got back from the procedure I started packing up all the crap I’d collected in the three preceding days waiting for my discharge. A nurse came in to take my temperature and pulse and insisted that my doctor would not discharge me in this condition. I sat on the edge of my bed waiting for the CT results. I’d made a bet with the resident that it’d show nothing. She arrived bearing chocolate. We were both right. It showed something, but it was pretty close to nothing. I could go home, she’d write me out.