7/25/24 - Thursday

So, we got to the ER and the place was absolutely packed. Receptionist said that was the busiest day they had an a very long time. Great. Just great. They kept taking me back and sucking blood out of me, but we sat in that waiting room for five hours. Was so very tired and was having difficulty with the breathing.  When it was my turn to go back, the doctor said I looked worse than when I first got there. No kidding. She sent me for a CAT scan and it showed three Pulmonary embolism, and pneumonia.  I had a Covid test there and results were positive. So, it shows that I have issue upon issue upon issue. That made it a little more difficult. When I got my ER room, the doctor came in and talked to me. He said he was going to give me something for my headache and I waited for the nurse to come back. She put it in my IV and about 30 seconds later my legs started to go to bonkers. Terrible understatement.  Restless legs on steroids from hell. Then it moved up into my left arm. OMG. I couldn’t imagine feeling much worse.  The nurse went to find the doctor and he told her to give me a dose of Benadryl.  He told me if it didn’t work in just a couple of minutes they would give me a second dosel. It took forever to get that dose. It did not work. I was thrashing around like a sun perch caught on a hook trying to get out of the bottom of the boat. I could not stop thrashing. I was rubbing one leg with the opposite foot and now my legs are  covered in bruises. They tried three times to get an EKG, while holding my legs down to try and keep them still. They could not do it. After an hour of this agony, they gave me my regular restless, leg medicine. However, they only gave me half of my regular dose. I knew that wasn’t going to cut it, and it did not. I was absolutely miserable. I had to get out of that bed and walk. So I walked the length of my bed. and back over 300 times for the next hour. About halfway through my hour I knew I was in trouble. I’ve never had this medicine before,  but restless leg syndrome is listed as a potential side effect. So, you can pretty much guarantee I’m going to get it. When they left, I dug around in my bag and found two, lint covered, pills. I popped both of them into my mouth , and after about a half an hour I got a little relief.. My legs were still moving, but were calmer. By 3 AM, they had found me a bed upstairs, and I was admitted. As soon as I was told I was going to be admitted, at 7 PM, I told David to go home. So, he missed all of the excitement, and I was very glad he did not see me like that. While David was with me in the waiting room, he was amused by one homeless lady with huge pants that were filthy and unzipped. She was odd, to say the least. There was another lunatic, who was obviously homeless. This was a young man who continued to sit close to us, and was extremely annoying. He kept bragging about being retarded.  At least it kept David entertained for hours.

By 3:30 AM I was in an actual bed in an actual room. I was in a very small room and the rooms were like ICU, but it was called intermittent, I think. The wall between me and the nurses was glass and had a glass door. All of the nurses were in the center, so the noise was never ending. There were two ladies in a double room next to me that kept fighting over the AC control. The nurses kept going in there and telling them to be quiet. Needless to say, sleep was elusive. I had five wires attached to me and had to take every one of them off to go to the bathroom. I had to plan ahead for that. Four of them were pretty simple, but the fifth one was a booger. I had to attach individual leads to the base every time, and they were color coordinated. Red, black, brown, white, then green. They had to be exactly in that order or the monitor would start screaming. Oh, yeah, and they also had two different ends to choose from.  One was round and the other was a little bit off round.  That made it even more fun. I never realized how much planning went into a trip to a bathroom. By the time I got myself all hooked up again, I was so twisted up, it looked like a giant spider web. It seemed like by the time I finished, I had to go to the bathroom again.