My trip to the ER.
Sunday, 26 January 2003 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59"I Want To Live. I Want To Experience the Universe And Eat Pie."*
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So, I'm sitting in a wheel chair in the ER because my blood pressure was 169/126 when I got up this morning. I felt like the top of my head was coming off, and I was vibrating all over. My temples were throbbing, and I could feel the pulses in my hands and arms. It was a singularly unpleasant experience.
Well, I waffled around for a while, wondering if I was going to have a stroke while I tried to decide what to do. And of course it was snowing, had put down about three inches, so me driving myself was out of the question. Finally I called 911 and an ambulance came for me. They took my blood pressure in the ambulance, and it was a little lower, then again right after I got out (lower still) and finally again in triage, where it was high normal. I, of course, started laughing at how absurd it was, that all I really needed was to go someplace where they would take care of me and voila! I was cured!
It's sad, though, pathetic, that I'm feeling so desperately in need of looking after that my body has taken to jerking the alarm button to get some care-taking–
Jerking the alarm button? That's a really screwed up metaphor. How do you go about jerking a button, anyway? Maybe it's a good thing I haven't been writing much lately.
I can still feel my heart just pounding though, still feel far less than good.
I'm not sure if it was the ER nurse or the triage nurse–ER, I guess, the second one I saw, but she was so nasty about me being here, that I shouldn't have taken an ambulance, that I should be able to feel my heart pounding (what?!), and some remark about how nobody should be out on a day like this, that everybody should just stay home. I glanced around the virtually empty ER room (one woman with a couple of kids) and wondered what the hell she was talking about. I should've stayed home, just risked a stroke, because it's snowing?
I need to calm down, relax, stop micro-managing. I can't make everything better, I can't make anything better, I can't fix the world. The best I can do is bail, and I can't bail twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes I just have to sleep, have to rest.
I just can't deal with it when Pat is unhappy or upset, and apparently I'd rather tear myself up inside rather than deal with that. Agonize over Dark Shadows episodes, about buying peanut butter, about finding a blank tape to move Superman episodes onto–
And now I'm crying, feeling like a bad, bad person for calling an ambulance–$900?! I don't have $900. I don't know what I'm going to do.
I am my mother's daughter. I came to the hospital prepared–a big notebook to write in, a couple of pens, a couple of zines, a book of puzzles, socks, underpants, moccasins, the cell phone (though it has very little charge), my I.D. and insurance card.
Well, life is short, too short to be bored. (Actually, life is short, but it's also long in all the wrong places, like plane rides and staff meetings and headaches.) I've got words to write, and see no reason to waste my time watching CNN and kibitzing on other people's pain (which, really, I can do perfectly well and write at the same time).
I know a couple of people at least have been reading what I've been writing here, that I've touched a person or two. That's good, right? That makes this worth writing, doesn't it?
I don't remember how I first envisioned this whole thing working, who I thought I would read it. What I remember most vividly is how warm the day was, and how good it felt, how happy and high on creativity. I think I thought everyone in the world would read it–friends who know me, and strangers who don't, and let us not forget people who do know me, but who wouldn't recognize me because of the changed names.
Only now I can't write about issues that come up with those friends. At least one has quit reading after I wrote about some issues one of our conversations brought up, convinced that I was talking about her and only her, and I very seldom hear from her anymore, and I notice she's hiding from me online. How many friends can I afford to lose, anyway?
My family doesn't know about this, thought, so as long as I do change the names, I feel like I can write about them with impunity. Anyway, except for my parents, most of the people I'm writing about are dead.
Anyway. I've been looked at by a doctor, given a short scrip for klonopin (ah, yes, an old friend, and a good one) and told in no uncertain terms to see my own doctor, pronto. And released.
My cousins are coming to pick me up. It's still snowy out, but in a melty kind of way. If klonopin is still the same friend it's always been, I should be sleeping the rest of the day. I'll get back to you when . . . you know, ever.
*Urgo
-:- -:- -:- -:-
So, I'm sitting in a wheel chair in the ER because my blood pressure was 169/126 when I got up this morning. I felt like the top of my head was coming off, and I was vibrating all over. My temples were throbbing, and I could feel the pulses in my hands and arms. It was a singularly unpleasant experience.
Well, I waffled around for a while, wondering if I was going to have a stroke while I tried to decide what to do. And of course it was snowing, had put down about three inches, so me driving myself was out of the question. Finally I called 911 and an ambulance came for me. They took my blood pressure in the ambulance, and it was a little lower, then again right after I got out (lower still) and finally again in triage, where it was high normal. I, of course, started laughing at how absurd it was, that all I really needed was to go someplace where they would take care of me and voila! I was cured!
It's sad, though, pathetic, that I'm feeling so desperately in need of looking after that my body has taken to jerking the alarm button to get some care-taking–
Jerking the alarm button? That's a really screwed up metaphor. How do you go about jerking a button, anyway? Maybe it's a good thing I haven't been writing much lately.
I can still feel my heart just pounding though, still feel far less than good.
I'm not sure if it was the ER nurse or the triage nurse–ER, I guess, the second one I saw, but she was so nasty about me being here, that I shouldn't have taken an ambulance, that I should be able to feel my heart pounding (what?!), and some remark about how nobody should be out on a day like this, that everybody should just stay home. I glanced around the virtually empty ER room (one woman with a couple of kids) and wondered what the hell she was talking about. I should've stayed home, just risked a stroke, because it's snowing?
I need to calm down, relax, stop micro-managing. I can't make everything better, I can't make anything better, I can't fix the world. The best I can do is bail, and I can't bail twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes I just have to sleep, have to rest.
I just can't deal with it when Pat is unhappy or upset, and apparently I'd rather tear myself up inside rather than deal with that. Agonize over Dark Shadows episodes, about buying peanut butter, about finding a blank tape to move Superman episodes onto–
And now I'm crying, feeling like a bad, bad person for calling an ambulance–$900?! I don't have $900. I don't know what I'm going to do.
I am my mother's daughter. I came to the hospital prepared–a big notebook to write in, a couple of pens, a couple of zines, a book of puzzles, socks, underpants, moccasins, the cell phone (though it has very little charge), my I.D. and insurance card.
Well, life is short, too short to be bored. (Actually, life is short, but it's also long in all the wrong places, like plane rides and staff meetings and headaches.) I've got words to write, and see no reason to waste my time watching CNN and kibitzing on other people's pain (which, really, I can do perfectly well and write at the same time).
I know a couple of people at least have been reading what I've been writing here, that I've touched a person or two. That's good, right? That makes this worth writing, doesn't it?
I don't remember how I first envisioned this whole thing working, who I thought I would read it. What I remember most vividly is how warm the day was, and how good it felt, how happy and high on creativity. I think I thought everyone in the world would read it–friends who know me, and strangers who don't, and let us not forget people who do know me, but who wouldn't recognize me because of the changed names.
Only now I can't write about issues that come up with those friends. At least one has quit reading after I wrote about some issues one of our conversations brought up, convinced that I was talking about her and only her, and I very seldom hear from her anymore, and I notice she's hiding from me online. How many friends can I afford to lose, anyway?
My family doesn't know about this, thought, so as long as I do change the names, I feel like I can write about them with impunity. Anyway, except for my parents, most of the people I'm writing about are dead.
Anyway. I've been looked at by a doctor, given a short scrip for klonopin (ah, yes, an old friend, and a good one) and told in no uncertain terms to see my own doctor, pronto. And released.
My cousins are coming to pick me up. It's still snowy out, but in a melty kind of way. If klonopin is still the same friend it's always been, I should be sleeping the rest of the day. I'll get back to you when . . . you know, ever.
*Urgo