The Fear

First of all, yes, I know I've been out of the hospital for almost two months now, but you know what? It was insanity and I'd like to document some more of it:

About  80% of time spent in a hospital is boring. There is dozing, and visitors, and a lot a lot a lot of TV. There's just not much to do there and for much of the time, you don't feel like doing anything.  I have already told you about the severe lack of sleep that goes on and when I was awake, which was much of the day and night, I was watching TV.

But it is the other 20% that I want to carefully remember now. The other 20% is awful and scary and oftentimes made me want to cry. It started when I was in the ER waiting to be diagnosed. I had left work because my bad stomachache had turned into sharp pains and when I called my mom crying, she told me to head to the hospital. It was scary, though! I had never been to the hospital for myself (except for a cut that didn't even require stitches when I was like 10) and I just didn't know what to expect. I remember the Dr. telling me that it could be a few things: an ectopic pregnancy (which made me laugh), an ovarian cyst, or possibly appendicitis. For some reason, the thought of an ovarian cyst scared me more than the others, but after having a CT scan and blood work done, he came back to tell me it was in fact appendicitis.

Things moved pretty quickly after that. I used the last bit of juice in my cell phone to text someone at work, text my sister, and then text and call my mom. I've never so much as had stitches let alone surgery! And by then it hurt A LOT. I had had to drink a ton of fluid for my CT scan and that, combined with my nerves, resulted in me using the bathroom about 483290 times. And you know what hurts when your appendix is exploding/has exploded? Going to the bathroom...sitting on the toilet. Oh My God...I thought I was going to have to have the surgery right then and there because it hurt so much to move. I don't really remember the timing (the morphine was warm, though), but all of a sudden I was in some pre-Op area with people all around me having me sign things and having me take all of my undergarments off and covering my feet and hair up. Then they gave me "oxygen" and the next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital room. I have no idea how long the surgery took. I have no idea how long it took for me to wake up. These are very weird lack of memories to have. I do know that they attempted to remove my appendix laparoscopically, but it turned out to be a mess in there and they had to open me up. (Side note: wow, don't do a google image search for that.)

Most of my time after waking up was spent sleeping. (I think.) I do remember at one point wondering how people with really bad medical cases or who are in a coma after an accident pull through. I didn't want to move, but at the same time all I wanted was to be out of that bed. I was too tired to speak and even on my birthday, the blue Tiffany box my mom held in front of me did nothing. It was not a fun few days. It's also scary to have the oxygen thing around your nose. It kept making me wonder if I needed it and then when they did finally take it off, I was worried I'd have some lack of oxygen problem.

The scariest and most cliche moment in the hospital, though, was my MRI. This was before they had diagnosed my partially collapsed lung and I was still in some abdominal pain. Having to be put into a small tube is just as scary as it sounds and as claustrophobic as they make it in on TV. I had to put my arms above my head, which hurt a lot, and then they slid me in there. From that moment on I did not open my eyes once. I relied on my imagination for the next however many minutes it took. The first thing I thought of was underwater (probably due to the whooshing sound) and I just went with it. I imagined myself swimming, and seeing dolphins, and loving the blue of the water. I focused all of my energy on not thinking about the tube I was in. And let me just say that when the technician says, "Okay, hold your breath....for 30 seconds this time" to someone who had been getting winded walking to the bathroom, it's kind of a tough request. I am shocked all of my images did not come out blurred because I didn't hold my breath the entire time once.

I made it, though. (Obviously.) Maybe next time I'll tell you about the cool procedure I had done to get the fluid off my lungs!

XO,
SVR

+Title from Travis