Well, that sucked.
Oct. 20th, 2019 08:36 pmI won't go into a lot of details, but I had a medical emergency very early on Friday.
I called a local 24-hour health line where I could talk to a nurse practitioner. She listened to my symptoms, took my details, and then strongly suggested that I should immediately make my way to an emergency room. She offered to send an ambulance for me, but I assured her that I had a driver at the ready. The main reason I'd called her was to know if this was something that could be handled at an urgent care facility rather than an emergency room. They recently converted the nearest emergency centre into a urgent care facility, and I was hoping to avoid a drive across town, but she assured me that it was an emergency.
When we arrived there, I got triaged and saw that we were somewhere around 16th in the queue, with an expected wait time of up to four hours. Obviously that wait time is just an average, and your actual wait depends on the severity of your issue. After I'd been there for about twenty minutes, they took me into the back area and drew a couple vials of blood so that they could start running some initial tests.
I am not awesome with needles, especially when I am dealing with other traumatic things at the same time.
On my way to the waiting room I made a short detour to deal with another bout of the issue that had brought me there in the first place, then planted myself next to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
atara. I had been sitting there for a couple of minutes before I noticed that I was starting to feel a little light-headed, likely from stress, the needles, and blood loss. I mentioned to her that I was starting to feel nauseous and light-headed, so she double-timed it over to the nurses' station and let them know I was having some distress. They asked her to bring me over so that they could check my blood pressure again, but when she relayed that to me, I simply responded with, "I ... don't think standing up would be a good idea just now," and I crossed my arms over the back of the seat in front of me and put my head down to make the world stop spinning.
That actually helped, as I'd hoped it would. I might even have been OK, but when she relayed my answer to them and they saw me with my head down and (I learned later) as white as a sheet and dripping with sweat, they decided to transfer me to a wheelchair. I remember them wheeling me over to the nurses' station, and then nothing until I awoke again in another room, surrounded by medical staff and machinery. Apparently I'd become unresponsive the moment we arrived at the station and passed out spectacularly. On the plus side, by doing that I effectively jumped the queue. The minute or so that I was out, and the Zen-like state in which I awoke were easily my least-stressed part of the day, but I don't recommend it as a practise.
I spent the next fifteen hours undergoing tests (some of them very uncomfortable and invasive) before sequential blood tests showed that I had stabilized, and was clear to go home.
I guess if there are two upsides to come out of this, it's that I was declared cancer-free for a type that often affects people my age, and that the whole ordeal only cost us $21 for parking.
I called a local 24-hour health line where I could talk to a nurse practitioner. She listened to my symptoms, took my details, and then strongly suggested that I should immediately make my way to an emergency room. She offered to send an ambulance for me, but I assured her that I had a driver at the ready. The main reason I'd called her was to know if this was something that could be handled at an urgent care facility rather than an emergency room. They recently converted the nearest emergency centre into a urgent care facility, and I was hoping to avoid a drive across town, but she assured me that it was an emergency.
When we arrived there, I got triaged and saw that we were somewhere around 16th in the queue, with an expected wait time of up to four hours. Obviously that wait time is just an average, and your actual wait depends on the severity of your issue. After I'd been there for about twenty minutes, they took me into the back area and drew a couple vials of blood so that they could start running some initial tests.
I am not awesome with needles, especially when I am dealing with other traumatic things at the same time.
On my way to the waiting room I made a short detour to deal with another bout of the issue that had brought me there in the first place, then planted myself next to
atara. I had been sitting there for a couple of minutes before I noticed that I was starting to feel a little light-headed, likely from stress, the needles, and blood loss. I mentioned to her that I was starting to feel nauseous and light-headed, so she double-timed it over to the nurses' station and let them know I was having some distress. They asked her to bring me over so that they could check my blood pressure again, but when she relayed that to me, I simply responded with, "I ... don't think standing up would be a good idea just now," and I crossed my arms over the back of the seat in front of me and put my head down to make the world stop spinning.That actually helped, as I'd hoped it would. I might even have been OK, but when she relayed my answer to them and they saw me with my head down and (I learned later) as white as a sheet and dripping with sweat, they decided to transfer me to a wheelchair. I remember them wheeling me over to the nurses' station, and then nothing until I awoke again in another room, surrounded by medical staff and machinery. Apparently I'd become unresponsive the moment we arrived at the station and passed out spectacularly. On the plus side, by doing that I effectively jumped the queue. The minute or so that I was out, and the Zen-like state in which I awoke were easily my least-stressed part of the day, but I don't recommend it as a practise.
I spent the next fifteen hours undergoing tests (some of them very uncomfortable and invasive) before sequential blood tests showed that I had stabilized, and was clear to go home.
I guess if there are two upsides to come out of this, it's that I was declared cancer-free for a type that often affects people my age, and that the whole ordeal only cost us $21 for parking.
