My awful, Terrible, No Good Week

     Sorry I haven't posted since Tuesday but on Wednesday morning I woke up with the worst pain at the top of my stomach and went to the emergency room at a local hospital where several of my doctors work.

    I stayed in the E.R. for 10 hours as they did test after test and x-rays and drew blood.

    It was determined I had a gallstone blocking the duct it was supposed to slip through and they admitted me to the hospital for treatment.

    I hadn't had anything to eat or drink that morning and the procedure they scheduled for the next morning required sedation and you can't eat or drink before having it.

    So, a full 24 hours without food or drink.

    The procedure was not completed since I have a small esophagus, so they just stretched it and sent me back to my room. (That hospital knew about my esophagus, they told me, and months ago they did another probe with a child-sized implement. But they didn't this time!)

    Since they wanted to finish the procedure they wanted to finish on Friday, no eating or drinking for another 30 hours.

    (I forgot to tell you, though I told them, that whatever was done on Thursday took away all my pain. I felt fine.)

    But on Friday, they decided instead to do a cat scan to make sure they hadn't damaged my esophagus and sent me a quart of scan water that tasted vaguely of lemons to consume. So now, I was sure I could have water and food--but no--they kept me on the same no eat/no drink plan.

    I suppose, though they never told me, that they wanted to finish the procedure on Friday. What they did tell me was that my being sedated vastly lowered my oxygen level in the blood. So, I breathed pure oxygen for the rest of Thursday and much of Friday to correct the oxygen level. It was at 90 and was 98 when I finished breathing it. Still no food or water.

(I know this, in the 10 years I've been taking Zolair shots at Waterbury Hospital, my oxygen level had never been below 98.)

They also told me I had water in my lungs--which is also a side-effect of sedation. The correction is to walk around a lot. 

But I couldn't walk around a lot since I was confined to bed the whole time I was there. They even alarmed my bed so if I tried to get up and walk, it would go off and nurses would come running to put me back. Exercise, no matter how mild, also raises the oxygen level of the blood naturally, but I couldn't lying in bed (which is the worse thing to do if you have water on the lungs!)

Not that I could have walked far. I had so many wires attached to me--IVs and other things--I could have not gotten further than a couple of steps.

On Friday, I asked to be released from the hospital, but the doctor came and said he was afraid I was catching pneumonia and was worried about the damage to my liver that was possible without completing the procedure. (No one had told me of that possibility before! Don't you think I should have been told from the start?)

So, I agreed to stay another night so they might try to procedure again on Saturday. (No one told me that procedure wasn't done on Saturday unless it was life and death!) 

But Friday night was the last straw.

One of the night nurses wanted to give me a blood thinner to prevent blood clots. I had talked them out of it for two days because I have very thin blood already that won't clot except in a major injury. But  I was explaining this to that nurse when she simply stuck the needle in my stomach!

Early on Saturday I called a nurse and got the one good one on night shift and asked her to disarm my bed, promising not to get up without calling her. She did it.

So I got up at 7, took all the wires off and got dressed. I didn't want to be half-naked and talking to people who were fully clothed about releasing me or I would sign out against their orders.

I told the doctor who came all that I've told you, but she refused to sign the discharge papers.

So I signed out against doctor's orders after calling Bern to come get me.

I also had about half a gallon on ice water this morning!

The nurses, except the one who gave me a shot without my permission, were great. But they were locked in by the doctors.

A friend of Bern told her today that the reason they wouldn't release me was voluntarily releasing someone without finishing the promised treatment gets them in trouble with Medicare. Imagine That, Money was the issue!

She also told Bern I had a lawsuit against the hospital for the nurse who gave me the unwanted shot against my  will. I may tell my lawyer son about it.

I'll call on Monday to get an appointment to finish the procedure as an out-patient; even though they never told me--as they never told me so much--what the cat scan said!

But I'm free and eating and having a glass of wine as I write this!

If I ever need anything like this again, I'll go to another hospital and I'll tell my doctors at that hospital why. I'll also tell my GP about it.

Now you know about my awful, terrible, no good week....