So yeah, I was pretty sure I was dying the night before last.
We’d spent the day with Joe’s family, re-settling his mother back home, and generally doing our damnedest to keep her horizontal as she’d just gotten out of the hospital. And aside from twisting a bit oddly to talk with her in the car so she wouldn’t have to herself on the way home, I don’t recall doing anything particularly strenuous.
But by that night, I was in constant pain. My upper back was sore, I mumbled “WTF?” to myself and The Man incessantly, but was soon whining it, and by the time Joe’d dropped off to sleep at around 1am, I had stabbing pains in my chest with every breath, was yelping out loud, and was beginning to consider going to the hospital.
But Joe had just dropped off (although if I’d really shook his ass n said “Let’s go,” he would have gotten up). And I wanted to drop off, too. I was sleepy, almost comfy despite the increasing pain in my back and chest, and I literally, genuinely hate sitting in the emergency room. No matter what you’re there for, it takes hours to get through and nine times out of ten, it turns out to be something incredibly stupid and embarrassing you could have cured yourself with, say, a good strong laxative (never mind). Sigh.
Having decided that, I drifted off to an uncomfortable sleep.
And woke up yesterday morning in utter agony. Couldn’t get a deep breath at all, constant grinding pain up around my shoulder blades that speared through my chest and out the front, to the point where I seriously was beginning to fearfully wonder about things like heart attacks, blood clots that had broken free and were impishly floating around my chest cavity and, of course, the Big C itself: lung cancer.
I mean, I DO eat two packs of cigarettes a day, and have done so for at least twenty years. I know I’m not SuperGirl and I fully understand that it will catch up with me at some point.
So, two hours after Joe left for work, I called his ass back and we went to the emergency room. By now I was weak, dizzy, in agony, yelling in pain with every movement, distinctly short of breath and mentally planning the first internet funeral.
It took an hour to make it to the Triage counter and then after that, things moved briskly. So briskly in fact that I began to get some pretty good stinkeye from the other patrons and was well beyond the mental planning stage of that World’s First Internet Funeral and was joking out loud about it with Joe, who um….didn’t think it was a good idea. Lol.
Apparently what was going on with me looked serious enough. In the hour following seeing the Triage nurse, I had an ECG, saw a doctor who said my heart looked fine and that we should concentrate on my lungs, and was thus hustled away for chest Xrays. In the next hour, I inhaled some radioactive stuff (“You’re not pregnant are you?” smiled the tech) and had a 40 minute nap in what looked like a ride at MarineLand after having more radioactive stuff shot into my arm, apparently to facilitate an adequately luminous glow to my lungs.
“Oh yeah,” I thought, fearfully beginning to snuffle and leak around the eyes. “I’m toast. This sucks.” There was no way they’d spend all this time, energy, and nuclear equipment on little old me without some pretty serious cause. I knew it. I was fucked. So, we began to mentally pull for “blood clot,” since we’d heard they can be dissolved with asperin, as opposed to invasive surgery that would leave me with horrid incisions and scars impossible to hide from the camera.
Hey, I do porn, here, remember? My tits and their surrounding tissues are tools as important to my work as a stethoscope is to a doctor’s. It’s an Official Issue.
By now I was ensconced in a wheelchair and had my very own orderly to shove it around and still wasn’t breathing very well. But I had managed to procure a blankee and was pretty comfortable, despite that and the fact that I was obviously dying of some horrible disease.
In the next hour, they took blood from me and in return, gave me 6 pills in a little cup, then fitted me with some dangly stuff hanging from a needle buried in my arm, in preparation for an IV. “Yep. Toast.” I thought, and hoped I’d last long enough to outlive my dad, so he wouldn’t have to deal with the loss. We were told that the next step was diagnosis, as soon as the results of all this work came back and to piss off for an hour. So off we went to a fabulous cafeteria that had everything from sushi to mashed potatoes. “At least when I’m admitted for my final days, I’ll have something decent to eat,” I thought.
The pills were kicking in by now and my, my, my…. If this was the sort of ride I had to look forward to, then this whole “dying” thing might not be so bad. Lo and behold, I could breathe again! Tension around my upper torso eased and I could actually yawn, cough, and (best of all, of course) smoke an entire cigarette!! Wow, neat!
After a light meal of a lovely thick cream of mushroom soup for me and crappy fajitas for Joe, back we went to Urgence. I was feeling improved enough to be something close to my usual chatty, gossipy little self and observed that considering everything that had been done to me, at least I could console myself that I hadn’t wasted a hospital visit or health care resources (not to mention Joe’s entire work day — he’d picked me up around noon and by now it was almost seven). Obviously something was up with me, and it’s always best to know, right? To catch these things early, while they can still be treated? Although I did add snidely that there were several other people around us who didn’t exactly really seem to need to be there. People do abuse the health care system most terribly.
Sigh.
Finally the big moment came. By now I fancied I was getting looks of sympathy from the other patrons, as opposed to the “Why the fuck does SHE get to go through so fast?” looks I’d been getting before, and my name was called to get a verdict. Bravely seating ourselves and gearing up for whatever horrible news they were about to tell us, a little brunette doctor who looked all of 22 told us everything looked fine and that it was definitely a muscular issue.
“WHAT??” I shrilled. And I do believe I threw a few OMG’S in there, too. Yep, I’d pulled or strained or twisted something in my upper back that was basically restricting my torso and causing that suspiciously impaired breathing action and by the way, how were the meds doing?
“Fine, I feel great!” I stammered like Porky Fucking Pig. I was utterly flabbergasted and felt a giggling fit coming on. Joe’s mouth was already twitching, and the doctor no doubt thought we were nuts, although she was kind enough to bestow a prescription on me for more of those fabulous painkillers. And basically, at that point we were done, except for needing another nurse to yank out the arm jewelry dangling out of my vein. I felt incredibly stupid, and was already mentally swearing up and down that this was IT, goddamnit: until I actually started puking up gouts of blood and maybe a few mangled fetuses, this was my last trip to Urgence. “People who abuse the health care system,” indeed.
My embarrassment and paranoia kicked back in and I was pretty sure I was getting Stinkeye Syndrome again, especially when my name erupted three more times over the PA system. Only the third call got me freed of the IV line hanging off me. The first two calls were to go for more Xrays, and then to get more meds because they were pretty sure no one had done these things yet. “No, really I’m fine. The doctor said I’m done, I can go,” I told them. “Then what the hell are you doing here?” their bemused faces replied.
By now, the absurdities were killing me, and I was certain we were on Candid Camera (or maybe TV’s Just For Laughs sketch show, where they set up local Montrealers to go through silly hidden-camera situations) and was bubbling with shocked, embarassed laughter. Now that he’d learned I wasn’t dying and he wasn’t going to have to be a common-law widower by 38, Joe’s amazing 8-hour long run of patience ran out and all he wanted was the couch. So home we came to supply him with one.
But once again….oh…my…god. I’m still embarassed as hell, but man, I have totally gained a whole new appreciation for being Canadian. When I imagine what it would be like to spend 8 hours sucking up medical resources somewhere without a public health care system, only to find out I’m suffering from a goddamn backache, I shudder. Wow. “Here’s a bill for $138 000 and by the way…it’s a backache.” Yowch.
Just thought I’d share that little saga with you…partly in praise of my amazingly patient honey, my country’s killer health care system and because I thought it was funny as hell (in retrospect). Now I return you to your regularly scheduled porn.
Mina xoxoxo
