My exciting evening

[qatarperegrine]

For the record, I didn't even want to go to the hospital in the first place.

"How is this supposed to help?" I asked Justin as he drove me there. After 10 solid years of chronic tendinitis, I know the drill. "They'll tell me to rest my ankle and use ice and NSAIDs, all of which I'm already doing. The only next step is a corticosteroid injection, but they don't do that for Achilles tendons because of the risk of rupture."

"Maybe they'll come up with something," Justin replied. "And anyway, what's the worst that can happen?"

In the movie version of my life, that sentence will be followed by ominous, foreshadowing music. There may even be a thunderclap.

So I see the ER doctor, who verifies that I have acute tendinitis in my Achilles tendon and sends me for an MRI. Then he offers me an injection of Voltaren -- another NSAID, which I took orally twice a day for years -- and I eagerly accept. My ankle is seriously swollen, and it hurts.

So the nurse injects Voltaren into my hip and then goes to get a bandage for my foot. By the time she comes back, I am sneezing, itching everywhere (tongue, throat, insides of my ears), and starting to vomit. I pull up my shirt to scratch my chest and they realize it's covered in hives. I'm feeling light-headed and jittery, and when they hook me up to a heart monitor my pulse is in the 140s. Happily, my airways are unaffected, which means that while the allergy specialist described it as a "serious allergic reaction," I was never in any danger.


When they take this left turn, you start really hoping they're heading for Emergency....

So they hook me up to an IV and an oxygen mask (because my fingers are blue) and then give me a huge dose of Benadryl, which is when life starts getting really fun. (Cf. the Wikipedia article on recreational use of Benadryl.) It's all a bit of a blur now, but I remember being very confused and having the memory of a goldfish. My inner monologue went like this: "Oh God, where am I? Hmm, it looks like a hospital. Oh yeah, I had an allergic reaction. Oh God, where am I? Hmm, it looks like a hospital...."

Occasionally I had lucid moments, though. During one of them I turned to a very worried-looking Justin and said, "I see everything once!", which resulted in a lot more hilarity than was probably strictly necessary.

The other highlight (and now we're officially entering TMI-land) was using a bedpan for the first time. If you've never used a bedpan before, it feels very very wrong to be asked to pee in your bed. The aforementioned goldfish memory problem really didn't help, either. My inner monologue switched to, "OK, I'm using a bedpan. Go go gadget urethral sphincter! Wait, where am I? Oh God, I'm in bed! I'm about to wet the bed! Stop it, urethral sphincter! Oh wait, I'm using a bedpan. ..."

They kept me in the ER till about 1:30 a.m., when my second IV drip of glucocorticoids finished. When I woke up this morning my fingers were still slightly numb, and for some reason my intercostal muscles are rather sore, but otherwise I'm fine. I went back to the allergy specialist this afternoon and was declared in normal health. And the MRI results show... healthy tendons. The ankle pain and swelling is just an edema, probably caused by a simple tear from overuse while I was hiking. So what do you know, the doctors did come up with something. I guess Justin was half right.

Comments

[kyra-ojosverdes.livejournal.com]

Yikes... exciting night.

Some people will do anything to justify their use of substances...

*grin*

[qatar.livejournal.com]

So not worth it!!

[materjibrail.livejournal.com]

AAARGH!
Instant parental panic!
So glad you seem OK now.
Don't EVER do that again, you hear me!

[qatar.livejournal.com]

In memory of that phone call from Wyoming, I considered titling this entry "Don't panic, I'm OK now, but..."

[provoca7eur.livejournal.com]

You found a good hospital in QATAR? When my eye was infected, I went to the Euro Clinic. The German woman put me on six medications, which was odd.

My Greek friend fell off his bike in the desert, headfirst, breaking his arm and he went to the local hospital and they were terrible. They waiting for almost a week to perform the surgery. When they did get around to it, it was a failure and he had to fly to Greece. So I am a bit worried about the hospitals around here.

[qatar.livejournal.com]

This was Al Ahli, the hospital that thinks it's a five-star hotel. It was my first experience there, but I was quite happy.

My experience of Qatari hospitals is that they tend to overtreat rather than undertreat. No hospital in the United States would routinely give you an MRI for a swollen ankle.

I do wish I could find a helpful rheumatologist, though, and that just doesn't seem to be an option.

[kit-ping.livejournal.com]

Um, yikes! Glad you're feeling better. It's amazing how a good hospital trip will do in any wish to start up illict drug use, though. Who needs LSD? :)

[qatar.livejournal.com]

lol. Maybe I should suggest to the hospital that they make some improvements to the ER observation room so the experience can be a better substitute for a illicit drug use. They could install blacklights, or maybe project winamp visualizations on the ceiling. (Although watching my heart monitor was pretty trippy in itself.)

[douglasperkins.livejournal.com]

if they're going to use blacklights then they should write on you in highlighter which is awesome.

[qatar.livejournal.com]

lol. Is it now.

[y-pestis.livejournal.com]

Um. You mean iTunes visualisations?

Ahem.