BACK IN THE ER...r...r...!!! (yeah) Part one

Time was when I was told that I would have to sit for four hours, I would have been a little frustrated. Now that I have my Droid, by Verizon (are you paying attention endorsement people) I am able to work on the blog.  I am sitting in another hospital bed for the second day in a row.  The good news is that I came here under my own power today.  The bad news is that I wasn't quite so lucky the last time I was stuck in the ER...yesterday!

Let me start from the beginning.  Do, a deer, a female deer...  Wait, wrong beginning.  As I sit here writing this on Tuesday night getting ready for another day home from work tomorrow, I can't help but think, "Wasn't it last Tuesday night when I last ate something that required chewing?"  I've had a rough week, to say the least. 

It started out with me leaving work a little early on Tuesday because I just didn't feel wonderful.  No big deal.  Tough class.  Need a nap.  Right as rain!  Pip Pip Cheerio!  (Sorry when I am not feeling well I sometimes channel an English manservant)  Followed my plan, napped, even managed to go out to dinner to celebrate my uncle and cousin's arrival from Thailand.  A great time was had by all.  Then in the middle of the night "it" hit.  I felt lousy.  Call in for a sub, knew I had plans ready for just about anybody to take over, rest all day.  Then rest all the next day.  Then rest all the next day.  Then Sylvia said, "Get thee to a doctor!"  (Well it was something like that, I was hanging onto a 102 + fever for three days in a row with no food so things were getting a little fuzzy)  The doctor gave me some antibiotics that upset my stomach in more graphic ways than I wish to describe here...I will say that if anyone received a porcelain phone call, from me, collect, I know nothing about it.

With 3 days of being miserable and not eating anything added to two days of drug induced nausea I was pretty much a goner.  This is when I need to tell you that I have a chronic condition.  It's kind of wimpy as chronic conditions go.  Nothing glamorous like spontaneous combustion or anything like that.  Mine has to do with my esophagus.  The esophagus is the part of the body that makes people say, "That's the little punching bag thing in the back of your throat right?" or "Isn't that the Roman god of spaghetti?" 

I then get to proudly point to the midpoint between my chest and my belly and say, "Peek a boo!  In there!"  The esophagus is the unsung hero of the food delivery system.  We all know about the throat.  The stomach is the manufacturing plant.  Without the esophagus we would all have to talk a lot louder at the dinner table because of all the whistling bomb drop sound effects followed by the "splash" as the food landed in the tum tum.  The design is so great.  It is a tube that usually accepts food at the top and then through a complex muscular process called peristalsis the food is squeezed down to the bottom.  Let the digesting begin!

As I said, this is what USUALLY happens! My untrained esophagus (not for lack of me sending loads of food for practice) decides to occasionally clamp down on a piece of food so tight that it brings tears to my eyes, makes me double over in pain clutching my chest, and mimics (beautifully) all the symptoms of a heart attack!  When I called for advice to see how to deal with this much pain (I told them it was a 32 on a scale of 1 to 10) they said, "Come in NOW!"  To show how sick I was, I'll tell you that I said, "Ok."   The next problem was that I outweigh Sylvia by at least double and there was no way she was going to muscle me into the van.  This presented a problem since I was still lying on the floor trying to decide if being conscious was all it was cracked up to be and every time tried to sit up I went right back down.  She called my dad.  He came over in a hurry, mom in tow, and they collectively decided that I needed to go now and having me fall down our steps would be counterproductive to the healing process, so she dialed 911.

I have called 911 once.  To report that someone was being broken into.  They are quick, efficient, and professional.  They also do not do anything halfway!  We live 5 minutes from the hospital, 3 minutes from an ambulance depot, and on a good day I could hit our fire station with a rock.  When Sylvia called and said that she wasn't going to be able to get me to the van safely I am pretty sure someone, somewhere, shouted, "RELEASE THE HOUNDS!!!"  Literally as Sylvia was talking to the dispatcher I heard the sirens call.  I heard the sound of not an ambulance, but a battalion of paramedics that came screaming around the corner and slowed to a noisy electric light parade right here in front of the house.  These gentlemen came in and saw me laying on the floor (holding onto the carpet for dear life due to the fact that someone forgot to pay the anti-wobble-the-house insurance) and clutching my chest.  Shirt off!  Stickers on! 

Now I teach kindergarten.  I deal in stickers all day every day.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!  Barbie!  Unicorns!  Dirt Bikes!  Those are stickers.  With three of what the paramedics had, they could have saved the Titanic!  I got 6!  On each sticker is a metal button that hooks up to a machine called a beep beep beep machine (this is the educational portion of the blog) and they all looked relatively happy that my insides were telling the machine to beep beep at the right times.  Then they got out a sweet elixir of life.  A magic substance that I have now come to know as oxygen!  When they hooked me up to the little tube of oxygen,  the two paramedics left in the city who didn't come into our house each grabbed an edge of the house and stopped it from rocking.  Bless you!

Then the ambulance crew came in.  They brought the chips and dip.  We were going to have a party!  The paramedics transferred me to them, unhooked their beep beep machine and loaded me on a stretcher to go into the back of the ambulance.  The only way I could have been more embarrassed was if they made me wear a little beanie with a propeller on it as they wheeled my down the street.  Once (bump) I was (BUMP) into the ambulance they started on their own questions.  I explained about how I have this chronic condition that was 11 syllables long and when I spelled it for him, he decided that he didn't need to ask me if I knew what my birthday was.  We actually had a nice little chat as he wheeled me on the scenic route around the city, twice around the park if you don't mind.  And then he reached up and grabbed for HIS stickers!  Whoa there cowboy, I've already been stickered.  His response, "Yeah, it would be nice if they were compatible!" 

I do not want to be overly personal but I need to tell you at this time that I am not now, nor have I ever been, follically challenged.  I am convinced that somewhere in our lineage there was a werewolf, or an alpaca.  And while I have never been asked to take off my sweater (while wearing none) I can assure you that if you are going to try to find real estate to place a second set of stickers, you are just out of luck!  Nuts to you!  Right?  Wrong.  He pulled out a razor and started scraping away.  Now, I'm up to 12 stickers and I am glad to say that I am still beep beeping to the tune of "Guantanamera." 

As we pulled into the ER unloading bay/baked goods delivery/geriatric skateboard ramp, I realized that coming in on an ambulance has its advantages.  I went right to a room.  When I was ten I decided to see if the law of gravity applied to me, in all areas, including our roof, and I found out that there were no exceptions, the hard way.  I came into the house with what looked to be two elbow joints.  We drove to the ER and I sat for FOUR HOURS with my westward aiming arm pointing north.  It was unbearable.  Had my mom not been quite so calm cool and collected, and called the ambulance, I could have been home plotting revenge on my disappearing "friends" in four hours. 

So now I am in the hospital room and they start giving me the third degree about why I am there.  Ask Sticker boy!  He has a clipboard!  Well that was the wrong thing to think and clutching my chest was the wrong thing to do because, you guessed it, the hospital has its own beep beep machine and, once again, it does not like any stickers that did not come from the hospital.  But instead of adding to mounting numbers of stickers that are stacking up he says, "Let's get these off first." 
"Wait.  What?"
RIP OW RIP OW RIP OW RIP HEY RIP STOP RIP
"Trust me you won't like me if I do this slowly." 
"That can't happen, I despise you now."
RIP OW RIP OW RIP OW RIP HEY THAT USED TO BE ATTACHED! RIP STOP RIP "muffled whimper"

Then he puts his stickers on.  I think there were only five but I suspect I will find the sixth next time I am in advanced yoga class.    By now my insides are beeping out the rhythm of Darth Vader's marching theme so they tell me that I need an EKG.  "What?  Haven't all of these been EKG's?  Are you just toying with me?  Is there a pool to see how many stickers the human body can accept without going crazy?  What number did Sylvia buy?  I can hold out."

In comes a nurse that was wearing perfume.  I thought it was just so she wouldn't smell like hand sanitizer but turns out it has a narcotic effect and I didn't realize that she was placing 12 of the stickiest stickers ever to grace the human body.  I'm pretty sure they are the same ones that the guy stuck to his hard hat before he hung from the beam in the old commercial.  After all of this she hooked me up to her machine for a grand total of 12 seconds...presumably one for every sticker...and then she declared me alive and took everything but her stickers with her.

This seems to be a good place to stop for the night.  I have only just begun to tell my tales of woe.  (Though I hope not woefully)  For now, I am going to go get some sleep.  Looking very much like I have the chest hair equivalent of crop-circles on my person I need to relax.  Did anyone have "29" in the sticker pool?