January 18, 2007, cont...

So I got all trussed up in my green and white gown, leaving my socks and boxers on of course, and crawled into the little stretcher thing set out in the centre of the room. Tiff plunked herself into the little plastic chair off in the corner. Like I mentioned, I’d never been myself admitted to the hospital, but I’d waited with Tiff and Gabby before in the ER when they were sick, so I knew a few things. One: despite our relatively quick admittance, we’d be waiting a long time to see a doctor; and two: Tiff’s butt was gonna be sore from that chair after about 15 minutes. It might have been unjustified, but I felt horribly guilty about both of these things. I didn’t want to cause anyone else discomfort.

A male nurse showed up pretty quickly though, and took my vitals again. Still, they meant nothing to me. I was pretty sure even if they were bad, it was just the flu doing its thing. He didn’t say much, but came back a short while later with an IV drip. Oh great. I hadn’t had a needle stuck in me since I was a kid, and now I was going to have a whole tube shoved into my arm. Luckily, he found a vein pretty quickly (more on my veins later), and hooked me up to the IV, which apparently only contained fluids, with as little whining and complaining from me as I could possibly manage. He reassured me that in a little while most people with my symptoms would start feeling better just from the hydration. I believed him, although my arm was still killing me and I didn’t think the fluids would help that. He left and came back with some kind of “super-acetominophen”, as he called it.

Somewhere during this time, a woman with a rolling cart holding all sorts of unpleasant looking tubes and syringes showed up to take my blood. I really hadn’t been looking forward to this, but since I’d seen Tiff have blood taken and give birth, I figured I should just suck it up and let the woman do her thing with as little fuss as possible. So, I stuck out my right arm, looked off to my left, and followed her instructions to flex/breathe/whistle/whatever. I’m pretty sure I didn’t fully cry, but a single drop might have found it’s way out and splashed on my new gown…but it also might have been a tear of joy…because I was so happy…

45 minutes after I was given the "super-acetompinohpen", (I know because I was timing it) my arm was still killing me. In fact, it was getting worse all the time. Luckily, the nurse came in around that time, and I was able to explain to him in the nicest way possible that I would really appreciate something that can actually help with pain. He almost looked like he didn't believe me, but came back with a syringe...and a syringe, I knew, meant business.
"This is morphine," he said. "Just a little bit, but it should take care of your pain, but it also might make you feel nauseous and drowsy."
He said this while I pushed it into my IV line. "Okay, you should be feeling drowsy now," he said almost immediately after he'd finished. Strangely enough, I'd been feeling sleepy all day, but I sure didn't at that moment. He then said it would take about 10 minutes for the morphine to fully work. I was definitely going to be counting down those minutes.

10 minutes later...and my arm was freaking killing me. 15 minutes...freaking killing me...20 minutes...you get the picture. I can't remember if at this point I called the nurse or if he just happened to come, but I ended up getting another shot of morphine about an hour after the first...and my arm was still freaking killing me. Eventually I got a third morphine shot, after which the pain finally subsided, but this didn't happen until much later in the night.