The Longest Story and Title Ever (the equivalent to how long I spent in the ER) aka My Trips (yes, plural) to the Emergency Room

This week has been pretty eventful for me. John had diarrhea last weekend (I'm sure he wants everybody in the blogging world to know about that) and Bonnie threw up twice last Saturday, so on Tuesday night when I started to feel sick, I suspected a virus too. I was in such a great mood for Bunco and had such a good time eating Chinese food with the girls , but about 30 minutes before it was time to leave, my stomach started hurting. It got progressively worse by the time I got home and I thought if I threw up I would feel better, so I tried to throw up. That didn't work well, so I drank two sips of Alka-Seltzer and that REALLY made me throw up but the pain was continuing to worsen. (and no I'm not pregnant, for those of you who are thinking that's the direction this is going) After 3 1/2 hours of pain, I decided I needed to go to the emergency room. John's dad took me b/c John now has a cold and he'd taken Nyquil and I didn't think he needed to drive, so anyways, we got there and stayed there for a total of 6 hours. I thought I was gonna die before the doctor saw me. They were SO slow! A really nice nurse came in with an strong African/Jamaican dialect (very much like Dorian Flynn's)and gave me Phenergan for nausea. I told the nurse that I wasn't really that nauseated but I had made myself throw up at home b/c I thought that would make me feel better. She looked at me with confusion and concern and with that accent, she said, "You MADE yoself throw up???" I said, "I didn't MAKE myself..I'm not bulemic, I just thought about it really hard and tried to tell myself to throw up so that I would and I thought that would make me feel better." I don't know if she understood at all or not. They had taken a urine sample earlier and the doctor FINALLY came in and told me that there was sugar in my urine. Okay, I thought..what does that mean? The doctor said either I ate --and yes these were his exact words-- a "butt-load" of sugar or I'm diabetic. Well, I didn't eat a "butt-load" of sugar--just a mini ice cream sundae at Gena's with extra chocolate syrup but that wasn't THAT much sugar. I started to freak out a little b/c I started thinking.....what am I gonna do if I'm diabetic? I'm gonna die. I'm just gonna die from diabetes and my arms and legs are gonna fall off and my kidneys are gonna shut down. I just wasn't prepared for the doctor to say that. Well, they took my blood and my blood sugar was 196 (double than normal). Being that sick can raise your sugar but it shouldn't have raised it THAT high. I found out that when there's sugar in your urine, it's called "spill out" and that means that your body has so much sugar running through your body and eventually it can't handle it all, so it "spills out" into your urine, which is a bad sign. The doctor, whose real name was Dr. Marlon Florida told me to see my regular medical doctor today or tomorrow and if he couldn't see me, I should come back to the ER and not wait around. He was pretty concerned about the sugar thing. The stomach pain he determined was probably just viral. He gave me a Darvocet at 6 that morning right before I left to go home and I slept all day Wednesday. My stomach wasn't hurting at all on Friday. So, I went to the doctor yesterday and had blood work done and I find out on Monday what my blood work says. My doctor mentioned something about an ulcer but he was in such a hurry, I didn't have time to discuss my previous stomach pain with him that much.

This brings me to the second portion of the story: The 2nd trip to the E.R.

Since I was feeling better, John and I went to Applebees for lunch after my Dr.'s appt. and I got the Roasted Turkey and Bacon Ciabatta sandwich with tomato basil soup--my newest favorite lunch. Right afterwards, my stomach started hurting and I had diarrhea. I guessed that I just wasn't over the virus or something or my stomach just wasn't ready for the food I ate. At 5:00 my stomach pain returned and it felt like my chest was slightly burning and it hurt to talk or breathe. I drank Alka-Seltzer, took Pepto-Bismol and Gas-X, took a hot bath--nothing helped. By 7:00 I was really hurting and crying hysterically and I told John to go upstairs and get his mom to get me a Fleet enema (never done one of those but I thought maybe I needed one to cure my stomach pain)Something had to be wrong for me to be hurting that badly. She'd thrown all of the enema's away, so I cried some more and finally decided to go back to the emergency room. We got in quicker this time and my nurse just so happened to be one of my sister's friends from high school. I looked as ugly as homemade sin and was kind of embarassed but I was hurting so badly that I decided it didn't really matter. The doctor came in almost immediately and saw my chart from the other night and noticed that my white count was up and he pressed on my stomach and said he thinks I have an ulcer based on where and how I was hurting. He also mentioned something about GERD which I think is the same thing as acid reflux which can cause an ulcer to form. He said he was gonna give me some IV pain medication and Phenergan and he was gonna treat it like an ulcer. That pain medicine made me not even be able to hold my head up but once it went through my IV the pain literally disappeared. I have to say, it worked quicker than my epidural did! The doctor also said I needed to reduce my stress. Stress doesn't CAUSE an ulcer, but it contributes to it if you already have one. How I'm gonna do that I'm not sure. So that's the longest story ever. I'll let y'all know what my test results are about my sugar. I find out Monday about that. Please pray that I am healed soon and that they figure out exactly what all's going on.

Oh, and not that I am a believer in fortune cookies being right and all, but I'm pretty sure God was trying to send me a message that Tuesday night at Bunco---through the fortune cookie. I wish I had saved it, but it said something like "Be patient. Look for heeds and signs" You see, John and I were gonna start trying to get pregnant this month and he had been sick but he was feeling some better so we were gonna start trying that night after Bunco because that day of all days was the day I'd be ovulating. (Sorry if I'm giving TMI...we're all adults here) I was gonna rush home after Bunco but I ended up having to rush home for a different reason--my own sickness. I guess God CAN talk to you through a fortune cookie. I'm convinced I didn't just grab that one out of the pile by accident! I'm gonna have to be patient with the whole baby thing. I think I got my "signs" that this month was just NOT the right time!