ER Fun

When­ev­er moral­i­ty is based on the­ol­o­gy, when­ev­er right is made depen­dent on divine author­i­ty, the most immoral, unjust, infa­mous things can be jus­ti­fied and established.
–Lud­wig Feuer­bach, The Essence of Christianity

Self-respect is the cor­ner­stone of all virtue.
–John Herschel

Okay, so it was­n’t cramps. Or it was, but not a month­ly sort of cramps.

Not that we real­ly know what it was that had me dou­bled over and scream­ing, yes, scream­ing in pain. sam­bear cut the char­ac­ter cre­ation process short to take me to an urgent care cen­ter last night. The pain kept get­ting worse and worse, so by the time the doc­tor came into the room we were in I was sob­bing. He said, “Why is she here? Call 911, she needs the ER.”

So there was a very bumpy ambu­lance ride to the ER, fol­lowed by hours of pok­ing and prod­ding that includ­ed a CAT scan and an ultra­sound. The scan and lab work did­n’t show any­thing. They did a preg­nan­cy test despite the real­ly obvi­ous fact that I was still in the midst of the month­ly bleeding—nope, still not preg­nant. They saw lots of ovar­i­an cysts and uter­ine fibroids, but noth­ing that should have caused the kind of pain I had. No signs of kid­ney stones or gall­blad­der prob­lems or appendicitis.

Demerol + phen­er­gan via IV is good stuff. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, every time it start­ed wear­ing off the waves of pain came back—as it is now.

I hat­ed the ER doc­tor. Seri­ous­ly. I got a strong, “Women whine” vibe off him, espe­cial­ly after he looked at the med­ical his­to­ry and list of meds I take normally.

I’ll take the info to my doc­tor on Mon­day or Tues­day or when­ev­er her office is open next. I’d rather deal with her anyway.

I’m try­ing not to think about the med­ical bills. Come Tues­day, I’ll try to find out if I qual­i­fy as “med­ical­ly needy” under the state Med­ic­aid guide­lines. The month­ly income lim­it for a fam­i­ly of two (me and shad­owkatt is $356. As I read it, the guide­lines say that if my med­ical bills exceed my income by enough to “spend down” to that lim­it or below, I qual­i­fy. I don’t know if they can make it start as a 2/1 or if it would start as of 3/1.

I did get a scrub shirt from the ordeal because the urgent care cen­ter took away my t‑shirt and put me in a hos­pi­tal gown. And a pre­scrip­tion for Vicodin that we need to go fill. When we final­ly got out at about 5 am, we weren’t in any con­di­tion to go look­ing for a drug­store that was open.

curiousmay9 and sam­bear are bet­ter to me than I deserve. They stayed with me and took care of me and even made me laugh. Our very own avatar of Athena also brought food and cof­fee for the bear, which was a Very Good Thing.

My achieve­ment for the night was calm­ing myself down enough to ward off an incip­i­ent asth­ma attack. Yes, I real­ize that seems sil­ly, but I’m proud of it. I’m try­ing to focus on that rather than the shame of mak­ing all that noise. Seri­ous­ly, I’ve very sel­dom made ANY noise dur­ing pain or cried oth­er than silent­ly where nobody would know. It’s one of those things I was raised to require of myself that I would nev­er ask of my child.

Edit: It was a burst ovar­i­an cyst.