Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Woke up at 6:30, go to work and feel great. Work starts at 8.

At 8:30, my stomach has started to hurt (like gas pain type hurt), and I'm walking around waiting for it to ease up. Start talking to a boss and another one of my co-managers. As we're talking, the pain starts to get worse, but I keep talking and try to ignore it. Then I eventually give in and try to sit down, only for that to make it ache worse.

I make my way toward the back, where the restroom is, still thinking of the gas thing. By the time I get there, I can barely walk and I make the mistake of looking in the mirror, where there's a white ghost looking back at me. I stand there a minute while I fight off the urge to pass out.

I push my way into one of the stalls and take a knee as I start to feel a wave of nausea wash over me. Wait a minute, it passes, and I manage to sit down, only to realize that my stomach isn't going to do what I thought it needed in the least. Stand back up, and have to turn around with another urge to vomit. At this point I'm just focused on getting my pants back up so I don't pass out on the floor with everything hanging out for the world to see.

Once the pants are on and my belt is loosely fastened, I push my way out and across the hall to the break room, where I see a table full of coworkers, one of them the co-manager that I was talking with earlier. They all give me this terrified look as I seat myself at the nearest table and lay the top half of my body across it.

Another one of the girls I work with asks if I'm okay and offers to take me to the ER, and I tell her that it hurts to even move, so there's no way I can go to the ER. I close my eyes and everything starts to go nuts as apparently I nearly passed out on the spot.

They all come over to me, make a spot on the floor to lay my head down with some padding, and pick me up because at this point I literally can't move. As I'm laying there, I hear everything that they're saying but can't respond to a word of it. I hear one person calling for a squad. I hear another calling HR (policy to let them know anytime a squad is called). I hear my co-manager ask if I want her to call my dad, and manage to motion toward my pocket where my cell phone is.

As the EMT people get there, I hear other familiar voices in the room, including the store manager, and a lot of encouraging words from my coworkers. "It's okay, we're right here with you, etc." The EMTs were asking me questions and I was doing my best to respond with single-syllable answers. My arms and legs are locked in this odd position, my arms kind of reminding me of a bit of roadkill, and my hands curved in like claws. My jaw feels stuck in place and my tongue won't bend from the U shape it's formed in. It was a struggle just to open my eyes.

We eventually get to the ER, where they begin running all sorts of tests on me, drawing blood and asking questions and whatnot. They hook me up to an IV and do some other stuff, and I'm relieved to hear them say the word "morphine." Problem is, I'm in so much pain, the morphine doesn't even cut the pain in half. At this point my dad has made it to the ER, but the best I can do is glance at him and turn my head back as the pain picks up and I can't help but cry. Hurting so bad that even screaming is impossible.

It finally starts to ease up and I can breathe again... The pain is still there but sort of fading into the background. They take me off to do a CAT scan, and the women in the lab ask if I can move myself over from the bed to the table thing they put you in. I can somewhat talk at this point, and I felt embarrassed and ashamed to tell them that I couldn't even move my legs. So they have to pick me up and move me themselves, and do the same when it's done.

Back in the ER room, I'm finally starting to be able to see things clearly and the pain is finally going away. They do more tests, etc. while I finally turn back into a human being. Eventually the ER doctor comes in to tell me what they've found... Apparently, I've developed a kidney stone (at 28!), but while checking me in the CAT and on the EKG, they've also noticed that I had an irregular heartbeat that had them concerned. So they had me shipped up to the cardiology unit.

I'll spare the rest of the details. So today, I've seen three regular doctors, 3-4 nurses, two assistants, two lab technicians, two ultrasound technicians, and a kidney specialist. And I've heard from pretty much all of them that my situation is extremely unique, for all sorts of reasons.

Not just the kidney stone thing and the heart thing, but apparently I was also potassium deficient, magnesium deficient, my blood was very acidic and my urine was very basic. They have all been looking forward to seeing what sorts of stuff they find out while observing me. And here I sit, stuck here for another day, if not more, because they want to do a 24 hour urine analysis on me to see what my body is doing.

And decided to go ahead and plan my potential new garden. Will be early next year if we go through with it :D



Blue box is our storage room and it's 12x12 feet for reference. The longest beds are 21 feet long and over 4 feet wide.