When
I have my way I am typically a pretty private person. I don’t spend a lot of
time letting everyone know everything about me, and I try not to be the squeaky
wheel type. I much more prefer to work in the background and go quietly about
my business and let others work out front. At least, that’s how I perceive
myself, I am sure others have different opinions.
But
Sunday night I found out just how wide open our lives are now that we have all
this social media stuff hanging around our necks. Albatross that it may be,
here’s how Facebook opened up my personal life Sunday night at the John
Randolph Hospital Emergency Room. But first, let me say that I believe I
received top-notch care from the staff in the Emergency Room. In fact, they
probably needed medical attention after I left at 3:30 Monday morning.
The
Facebook string started out innocently enough when my wife, Jackie, posted this
message:
“Not
how I planned on spending the rest of my weekend- at the ER with David- making
sure he is ok.”
To
bring you up to speed, I had been ill since Friday and was trying to suffer
through the weekend fighting a moderate fever, intense headaches, and a lack of
appetite. The last of those, for me, is rare. I think that’s how Jackie knew
something was serious. We tried to divine what might be the matter. Jackie
guessed bladder infection and I, in accord with WebMD, came to prostate
problem. Either way, it was Saturday afternoon before I finally contacted my
primary care physician (PCP), who put my on Cipro-whateveritis to fight the
infection. He also said to look out for a number of things that might
necessitate a trip to the hospital, one of which was a spike in my temperature.
That
happened late Sunday night when my temperature tripped the meter at 103.8. I
called my PCP and he suggested that “I pick a hospital any hospital.” Being
familiar with JRH, I choose to go there. In no time at all, I was whisked into
a triage room and that led to an ongoing Facebook “conversation” that included
no fewer than 90 entries. The majority of the entries were of the kindness
variety, such as: “Hope everything is okay.” But several others were pretty
comical, especially when auto-correct stuck its nose into the conversation.
Here’s one of those entries, by me:
“Manure
said there was a car crash.”
Which
of course I originally wrote as “My nurse said….” How autocorrect could make
such an exchange is beyond me. I almost never have use for the term manure.
As
we sat through the night for six hours several things occurred. First, one RN
came in to draw blood. He got seven vials. Another nurse hooked up an IV bag. A
third nurse came in and got to blood cultures. But that wasn’t going to be
enough, they also need a urine sample, two X-rays (no pneumonia), and a CT scan.
In
the meantime while I am being probed, prodded, prepped, propped up, and tubed,
this huge Facebook conversation is going on about me no less. Which prompted
another friend, Susan, to comment: “LOL - this is better than TV!” Which isn’t
saying much about the quality of our current TV programming.
The
conversation started at 9:34 Sunday evening. Six hours later they finally had
the results of all of the testing. And I was pretty much loaded from the meds
they gave me to get rid of my headache. Ultimately, the result was: “Why does
this man have a fever.” Apparently all the tests came back negative.
While
I pride myself in always having been a good test taker, this is one time I wish
I would have failed a test. So here I am Tuesday morning feeling not horrible,
but not great either. I don’t have much of the headache and the original
problem that drove my sickness has abated somewhat. But the problem is no one
seems to have any idea what might have caused the infection in the first place.
So
again, I would like to thank the staff at JRH for their excellent care. I would
also like to thank the many friends who took the time to keep Jackie occupied
while she waited patiently for me to run my medical testing gauntlet.
Fortunately, I made it through with no problems. Unfortunately, we still don’t
know what caused my fever.
Ha-ha
I almost said “what’s wrong with me,” but that would leave me open to way too
much ridicule as I am sure all my enemies and most of my friends out there
would have a comment about that.
No comments:
Post a Comment