On Sunday, Ness was still having her migraines. We went to CVS and grabbed up some Excedrin Migraine medicine because a combination of Ibuprofen and Tylenol just wasn’t doing shit for her headaches. It worked in 15 minutes. That was awesome. She was able to keep her food down and I was relieved, because I don’t want to see her shut down like that. But the migraine came back on Monday and the Excedrin conquered it again.
Ness went to work this morning and had another migraine. By the time she got off work at 4, her migraine was still there and the Excedrin wasn’t doing shit for it. I wanted her to go to the doctor, but she couldn’t go until Friday. But if she’s been having them everyday, waiting until Friday wasn’t going to help any. She was in so much pain, and from what she says it was the worst one yet, I immediately got ready to take her to the hospital. I’ve been suffering from a cold myself, so I figured one of us should be at least comfortable, and I know that my cold won’t be going away anytime soon. So hopefully, the people at the hospital would be able to help her.
When we arrived at around 5; we had to make a stop at IHOP to grab her insurance card from her dad, I realized that we arrived at the busiest time of the day. But I’m used to long waits at the hospital. I live in a town where our hospital is shit. I once had a severely broken leg and waited 5 hours just to get an X-Ray, even though I was the only patient in the whole ER.
A couple hours after we arrived, Ness’ headache started to ease up. She was called back so she could get registered and she grabbed my hand and made me come with her. I thought that finally we were getting somewhere; she had finally registered and had her wristband. But her dad came walking into the ER and we waited, and waited some more. It wasn’t until about 9:30PM-10PM that they took her back for a CT Scan and her Dad and I joined her in her curtained off room.
The whole time we were there, sitting in the waiting room, I observed people. I guess you could say I was being creepy, but I do that everywhere. One older man was sitting in a wheel chair next to his wife. He was waiting on test results, but they didn’t have any beds available, so he had to wait in the waiting room. He looked like he was in some pain, but when his wife would look at him, or glance at him, he would smile or hide the fact that he was in pain.
There was also this lady there, she was kind of annoying because she wouldn’t stop talking, but she made a phone call to her son. The way she talked to him about things, I realized that she was divorced and the wounds from it were still fresh. The reason she talked to everyone she could was probably because she was lonely.
There were two sisters there, both older, waiting for their mom to be brought in by ambulance. Their mother had Alzheimer’s and had had low blood sugar. Their mom’s friend had ridden in the ambulance with her. She didn’t speak much English and maybe that’s why she had come. Their mother wasn’t speaking in English and she had been translating in her own broken English. The sisters didn’t sit next to their mother’s friend, and when the one lady would talk to her, she would get frustrated, or annoyed, and would just leave her again. Snobs. Rich snobs. The complained to their husbands, when they arrived, that they should have taken her to a better hospital, one in “their” neighborhood, that would have given them better service. The way they said “their” made me think it wasn’t so much the service they were getting, but the people around them. Such as myself. When they had sat across from Ness and me, I glanced at them to smile, but they gave me a weird look and didn’t even care that I had acknowledged them. Thanks.
I don’t know why I happened to notice those things. I was bored and needed to pass the time. I didn’t feel like reading Good Housekeeping and I couldn’t find a newspaper around.
At any rate, they gave Ness some drugs, she felt better. She has a couple of prescriptions to fill that should help her loads when she gets another migraine and she’s to follow up with her doctor. At least she’s feeling better, keeping down food, and can finally go to sleep at a normal time.
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July 18, 2007
Yuck. Nothing over-the-counter has ever done ANYTHING for me. May I recommend taking 5 Alieve next time? (My doctor assured me that although 5 is way over the recommendation, it won’t hurt me if I don’t do it often.) The deal is this: she takes 5, waits an hour. If the migraine isn’t gone, then she takes 5 more. (Never take more than 10.) That has never failed for me.
July 18, 2007
Oops. I meant to say nothing over-the-counter except Alieve.
July 18, 2007
I’ve had my fair share of hospital waiting room disasters…
1. When I was much younger, 12-14 range, I had teo hand fulls of sand thrown in my eyes at a playground by a kid (who I saw years later on his bike and used all the restraint I possessed NOT to run him over in my car). My mother first took me to the local volunteer fire department in town. They washed my eyes out the best they could but they still had a lot of sand in them, at least I could open them for brief periods so I could walk semi-unattended.
Then I got to the hospital (next town over, still not a big town or big hospital) and I waited… and waited and waited… for hours I waited, I want to say it was 3-5 hours but my memory is hazy. Finally, I got to see THE eye specialist (there was only one!) and he flushed my eyes some more and gave me some drops to use to help them tear up and get the rest of the sand out.
2. When I was a Senior in college I was having back problems that was originally (mis)diagnosed as Sciatica. So I got pain killers from the medical center and went along my way. Well a month later, things were not better, and again I was told it was just Sciatica and would clear up. More pain killers more pain. FINALLY, I was able to convince someone I was in real pain and needed proper medical attention. Thank god for college insurance when your school also has one of the leading medical schools in the country. Instead of a 3 month wait, I was in to see the specialist later that week. He was the first person to actually LISTEN to what I had to say about the duration of the pain (7+ months at this point) and what sort of pain, the fact that it NEVER went away, etc).
He gave me a prescription for really hardcore muscle relaxers and painkillers (oxycodone, and I don’t remember what else) and he scheduled an MRI for the following week.
When I finally got the MRI it showed I had a slipped disc in my back. Actually, my lowest three discs are all damaged in some way. But the lowest one was pressing on my sciatic nerve and veins on the right side of my back.
Thus causing my considerable, constant pain!
As much as I was initially against surgery, it was really the only thing that could be done. The disc was pushing against the nerve, and the two above it were also out of whack as well.
So I had back surgery. And have felt amazing ever since. But I will NEVER forget the night I spent sitting on the hospital waiting room for 8 hours waiting to see someone about my back. Imagine trying to sit down when your lower back is in incredible pain and nothing helps. Not standing, not lying down, nothing. I severely bent the arm of the chair I was sitting in trying to break it off out of frustration and pain during my long, long wait.
I literally had two friends drag me out of bed and throw me in a car and take me to the E.R. And I thank them for it ever, ever so much.
Sorry to write a novel on your comments, maybe this should be a post of its own for on site. LOL
July 18, 2007
I’m glad she got some prescription medicine, I find OTC medications really really don’t work on migraines.
July 19, 2007
@Erin: I didn’t even think of Aleve when we were looking over the medicines at CVS. But then again, I’m allergic to it so it probably wouldn’t have crossed my mind anyway.
@Peroty: I have tons of hospital waiting room stories. Way too many to write about, and most lasted at least 4 hours, with broken bones, and 8 hours when I was in excruciating pain. I didn’t know what was wrong at first, just that my stomach was cramping, worse cramps than I’ve ever experienced, and it also felt like it was on fire. It turns out that my gall bladder was about to explode, but yet they made me wait 8 hours.
@Mandy: Usually, there isn’t any medicine, OTC or prescription that can help my migraines. I’m allergic to so many that I can’t even try half of them, and the other half don’t even begin to touch the pain.