Maybe y’all have missed my big mouth – or fingers – this past week. Or not. Well, all of the above have been sort of out of commission since last Saturday.
I got up last Saturday morning, traipsed into the bathroom, and seconds later I put a 4″ crack in the side of the bathtub: with my head. One minute I was fine, the next I was waking up on the floor with a decided headache! Nurse Jenny was there, checking to see if it was OK for me to try moving. It wasn’t. Or, I couldn’t, quite yet. It seems my blood pressure had bottomed out suddenly and the brain (no snide comments, now!) needed blood, and there wasn’t any to give……When I managed to turn over I looked, and sure enough, I had really cracked a fiberglass bathtub! And did I ever feel it! Sheesh!
I managed to get back to bed, and after resting a bit, tried to finish what I had started, but down I went again. OK, my personal nurse checked my BP again, 70 over zip. A few minutes later, they were loading me into an ambulance, and off we went to the local ER. They wanted to admit me, whereupon I put in to be transferred to Ft. Stewart, Winn Army Hospital. OK, they got me transferred, and on the way over there – 60 miles – I started getting nauseous. They put me in ICU, whereupon I proceeded to lose my last year’s meals – all at once.
This day was going from bad to worse! By the time the vomiting started we were already 12 hours into this mess. Now, the Army doc wanted to get me out of there, as WACH is not a level II facility. At this point they were thinking everything from cardiac to gastric. Gastric, for sure, jeez, I coulda told ’em that! All you had to do was look at the basin I was worshipping, with all the greenish-yellow guck in it! So, here comes an ambulance crew, we’re off for another agonizing ride. With my former EMT partner as my paramedic. That was one surprised dude when he came into the room and he found out who his patient was. So we left FS behind and they took me to Savannah Memorial, further still from home. I had wanted to go to FS to avoid a hospital bill, and I wound up in a major hospital, in ICU, anyway. Some days you just lose.
After 3 more days in ICU, chained to a bed with IV’s, cardiac monitors, and not wanting to get up anyway, they finally cut me lose Wednesday night. And to tell the truth, I didn’t rush right back to the computer anyway. Still a bit funky……
Today, I feel much better, and I have a good BP. The diagnosis? On top of the dropped-out BP, which came roaring back to more than 200/90, pancreatitis. Not surprising, really, as I’ve had it before, and it is one of those things that, once you have it, you have future tendencies to have recurrences. One thing good that came out of my first episode of this accursed thing, back in 1994, was that I had a better feel for my own patients with pancreatitis. Now I knew why they were writhing around on the stretcher, hollering! That is one painful thing! Yikes!
Well, enough of my moaning. I’m gonna post this and kick back in the recliner for a while. See y’all later.
Joe