Best day ever. Not.

Why do people ask a million questions when they see you can't breathe?

I went to the ER Monday. 

After several hours of feeling lightheaded and being unable to breathe, I gave in. I walked my sorry butt into Grady Memorial Hospital. It was really more like two step, pause, hold on to wall step, pause, hold wall... And then I sat in the waiting room. FOR OVER TWELVE HOURS. I kid you not. I was there so long, my breathing returned to normal. I considered leaving, but figured it would eventually start again, and surely it wouldn't be much longer, right? Right?

I was all cracked out from not eating, sitting in a freezing room, and being force fed CNN. Which, by the way, plays the same crap. All. Day. Long. The same stories, every fifteen minutes. Different reporters, same stories. No changes. No new angle. No updates. What'd they do, film it all at once? If I had a long stick, I would have jabbed the tv's eyes out. Or just turned it off.

The ER waiting room is a strange place. There are no plugs in which to charge things that need charging. things like telephones. There were people in there for happy hour. Seriously. They were just socializing. 

Things I overheard:

"What are you in here for this week?"

"Girl, how you been? It has been a month of Sundays!"

A hacking sound, from the bathroom, followed by a plea for housekeeping. 

"Oh, yeah, I'm uh, at a restaurant around the corner from your house. Yeah, a Mexican restaurant. You know. Just down the street."

(Dooood! No, you are in the fucking ER at Grady. Why you wanna lie like that? No, don't look at me. I am soo not interested. I just heard you lie to a girl, remember?)

To girl sitting on the floor: "When are you having your baby?"

She was actually sitting on the floor. Which, if you don't know, hospital floors are about the most dirty thing. Ever. 

The entire thing was the strangest sociological phenomenon I've seen. 

Eventually, I was taken to the ninth circle of hell. I mean, a holding room, to wait for a stretcher. I froze there for another two hours before being escorted to a lovely stretcher along the hall. 

I never thought I'd be on a stretcher in the hall at Grady. 

See, the people that usually line the hall here are not, shall we say, the people you'd want to be your next door neighbor. They are off their meds, coming off whatever high they were on, and slightly drunk. They are in pain, dirty, and stinking of rotten body odor, blood, vomit, and piss. They yell. A lot.

I was wheeled into a room, attached to a telemetry unit and a blood pressure machine about 4:30 or 5 in the morning. The door was closed, and the lights were out. Suddenly, sleep seemed less like a far away dream and more like a real possibility. Until the blood pressure machine went off, squeezing my arm more than any spygmomanometer (You like that? Turns out, the blood pressure cuff has an actual name. Just don't ask me to say it.) ever has. Eventually, the pressure subsided and I slipped toward a much needed sleep. I was jolted awake moments later by the dang bp cuff. It released, and I slipped towards sleep. The shit of it is, it went off again five minutes later. The hour progressed like this. Every five minutes the machine would turn on with it's peculiar hum, the cuff would inflate beyond comfort, and release me to sleep. I thought about killing people.

And my sweet nurse. She is a new nurse (Yay! Someone got a job!) and she destroyed my arms. I had blood drawn once in the waiting room. She drew blood, realized she should have started an IV, blew two veins before jabbing me with the most painful IV ever- in the same place I'd previously been jabbed while in the waiting room. I look like a heroin addict. But only around my elbows.

I was warmly welcomed on the telemetry unit just before shift change at 7 in the morning. I waved maniacally to a fellow nursing student as I was rolled by the nursing station. He looked at me in confusion. 

The barrage of doctors, nurses, tests (more blood work/ pin cushioning, yay!) and meals prevented me from sleeping more than about two hours. And then, sometime after lunch, visitors! I surprised my self at how excited I was to see people. My people. Coach Awesome and my brother both came to see me. 

I learned more in this trip to the hospital than any clinical has taught me. I learned what my patients go through. And it isn't pretty. 

What I haven't learned is the thing I want to know most: 

What the crap is wrong with me??

The blood work, urinalysis, EKG, and echocardiogram all came back within normal limits. Sort of. My heart rate flip flops between normal speed and slow speed. But I'm into exercise and stuff, so that's maybe normal. And my thyroid. 

Oh, thyroid. You may be my nemesis.

My thyroid (TSH) level was 11. Normal is 0.5-3. Yeah, I'd say that's a little off. 

And then they tested it again a few hours later.

It was TOTALLY normal.

Lab mix up or bizarre case of hypothyroidism/ not?

So really, I have no answers. Just a slew of follow up appointments for more testing.

I left the hospital and went to get my car. Only it wasn't there.

It was towed!

This is the Best day ever. Not.