I received a phone call from my wife and it contained some dreaded words. "Please come home, the pain won't go away." As she got the words out between tears, I rushed home from work trying to figure out what is going on. Thankfully I only live 5 minutes from home and was able to get there quickly to try and help her out.
My wife has Crohn's Disease, so I jumped to the conlcusion that it was just a flare up. I called our primary care physican and was told they were open for walk-ins and there would be a half hour wait. At this point my wife is doubled over in pain and the only way it feels somewhat better is rock back and forth.
After a two hour wait, and me yelling at the nurses to see what the hold up was, we were seen by our doctor. He agreed and felt that it was just a flare up of Crohn's. Nothing more, here are some pills to kill the pain and to treat the disease. Off I rushed to the pharmacy, after dropping Kate, my wife, home.
After returning with drugs and some clear liquids, I found her throwing up and she was not able to keep the pain killer down. Another call to our doctor, finds us heading to the emergency room. What joy, an emergency room full of people from every walk of life and I do mean every walk of life. There were the "regulars" there, people who seem to find their way every night to the hospital, either because they are intoxicated or high on drugs, or just mentally unstable. The joy of dealing with someone with Tourette's Syndrome who every other minute is screaming Fuck it, is not something I would like to repeat.
It was not a full moon but some reason the ER was full, the other trauma center in GR was not accepting ambulances because it was filled. All of this made us lower on the list of people. I guess what they say is true: "If you don't bleed on the forms, expect to wait." So we waited, for two and half hours, with no pain relief in sight for my wife.
I don't know how it is for the rest of you, but when my wife is in pain or having problems everything else seems so insignificant. I argued and fought w/ the nurses trying to get some form of pain relief for Kate, but I guess procedure is to not give anything until they diagnose the acutal problem. So if any of the nurses and doctors are reading this I apologize for yelling at you.
We finally found the problem after many doctors and a CAT Scan, my wife needed her appendix removed. So she had surgery at 7am Wednesday morning and it was a good thing she had it first thing. The surgeon said that as soon as he removed it from Kate, the thing burst and was filled with puss. I'm sure glad it was done when it was done.
So to make a really long story short, she came home Thursday morning and is sleeping on the couch healing. God bless drugs :) So now if I can just get caught up on sleep.