I consider myself lucky to receive subsidized COBRA benefits (even if it's just a crappy HMO), despite the fact that I'm unlucky enough to be unemployed.
When I worked for Aerospace Company X, I did not get paid unless I showed up for work. Thus, I was never sick! Really, though, in the ten months I worked there, I was blessed with good health. Of course a month into unemployment and I'm already on my second illness. Go figure!
I started to get sick early yesterday afternoon. I had a sudden urge to ... go to the bathroom. The ... urge ... continued with every subsequent trip to the bathroom. I didn't think much of it because my stomach is prone to wild mood swings every now and then. Unfortunately about two hours after I started having ... urges ... I suddenly felt a bit like throwing up. I texted Daniel to tell him. He was driving home from work and called to ask if I needed anything at the store. He said he'd make chicken soup when he got home.
Before he got home it took me five heaves to get every last ounce of the sandwhich I'd had for lunch out of my stomach. Every last ounce and then some. I felt so much better after I threw up, I triumphantly lay down on the couch practically patting myself on the back for my good efforts. I thought maybe the sandwich hadn't agreed with me and my body just needed to expel whatever was in my stomach. Then, ever so slowly, the nausea creeped back up toward my throat and an hour later I was throwing up again. The slice of bologna and cheese I had for breakfast along with two cups of coffee was now also expelled from my body, and I realized I probably had the flu.
Let me explain something here: I am not good with throwing up. Give me diarrhea. Give me constipation. Give me stomach aches and pains. Please, please, please do not give me nausea and/or vomiting. I rarely, rarely, rarely throw up after a night of drinking. I don't let myself get that way. I could not remember the last time I'd actually had the stomach flu. Twenty, twenty-two years ago maybe? No clue. My body was obviously making up for the past 20 stomach flu-free years by torturing me with the trifecta of stomach flu symptoms.
After one trip to the bathroom I returned to the kitchen with a plastic grocery bag in my hand. This is a large amount of stomach bile, I said to Daniel. I'm putting this bag in the kitchen garbage. You might want to take the garbage out tonight, I warned. He looked at me questioningly and said, why didn't you just throw up in the toilet? I think our relationship reached a new level of closeness when I told him I had no control over certain other bodily functions when throwing up.
Glumly, Daniel and I discussed the irony of our big shopping trip the night before and the meals we were planning to make all week long considering I had no appetite and couldn't keep anything in my stomach. He began packaging the bulk food we'd bought that we realized would now need to go in the freezer. Do you want me to make chicken soup tonight so you can eat it all day tomorrow? He kindly asked. I'd already declined burgers when he'd made them. The sight and smell of food was making me sick. I didn't think I'd be eating anything the next day considering how I was feeling.
Neither of us knew exactly how sick I was. We just thought I had the flu and it would pass. There wasn't a lot Daniel could do for me as I lay on the couch. He gave me some sort of carbonated see-through beverage that tasted really bland. I tried to sip from the glass. I simply wasn't thirsty even though I knew the hydration level of my body was probably reaching dangerous numbers. I was expelling more water/liquid than I even thought was contained inside a person's body, no less a person who hadn't had anything but coffee to drink all day long. My vomiting became schedulized. Every hour on the hour I'd get up from the couch and disappear down the hall toward the bathroom. And then three hours passed with no urge to vomit. I was convinced that my flu was passing after only four trips to the toilet. So I started sipping bottled water in an attempt to rehydrate.
I told Daniel I wanted to sleep in the guest bedroom so he wouldn't catch the flu. He didn't like the idea of me sleeping in another bed, but finally agreed it was for the best. He picked me up from the coolness of the tile floor in the bathroom where I lay in a heap of sweat with my water bottle at my side and tucked me into bed in the guest bedroom, depositing a small garbage can at my side in case I needed to throw up. Just sleep it off, he said. You'll feel better in the morning.
I think I had been asleep for an hour when I woke up to throw up for the fifth time. It was some time after 10 p.m. By this time, I really had nothing in my stomach. Literally nothing. Everytime my body heaved, my temperature soared and I began to sweat. Sometimes I felt like I was choking on my own bile and would end up swallowing it back down again. I began to get scared.
For some reason, my mind began focusing on Brittany Murphy. (Oddly, earlier that day I'd been watching this really terrible movie she starred in ... The title had 'Love' in it, this much I remember, and the opening scene basically typed out an on-screen disclaimer excusing her for her bad British accent.) I'm not up-to-date on the official details of her death, if they've been released yet, but I kept thinking about how she had passed out in the shower and been declared dead by heart failure at age 32. Later it had been reported that she'd been experiencing flu-like symptoms leading up to her sudden death. Unable to shake the events of Murphy's death from my mind, I was convinced my heart was going to give out, too. This is probably not a rational thought most people would have while trying to get through another round of heaving bile, I recognize that.
The last time I threw up was just before midnight. I pitched a fever as I sat on the toilet, garbage pale in hand, small amounts of bile in garbage can. I couldn't stop throwing up ... the nothing that was in my stomach. I couldn't shake the fever or the sweats. It was starting to go dark in the bathroom. I was on the verge of passing out. Danny! I called from the toilet. I heard him rouse from bed as I again called his childhood nickname. He stuck his head in through the bathroom door. Take me to the hospital, I said. I couldn't even manage to flush the toilet before I spilled onto the ground whimpering and nearly hyperventillating. I was sweating, then suddenly I was freezing cold.
When you have an HMO, you can't just go to any hospital. You have to go to your HMO hospital. I don't live in the same city as Daniel, he doesn't have the same insurance that I have; so we were both at a loss as to the location of the nearest hospital. Suddenly he remembered that there's a Kaiser Permanente building on Beach Boulevard. He swung his truck in the right direction and took me there without delay only to discover it was not a hospital. It didn't even offer urgent care. It was closed. I knew we had a good hour to locate a hospital before I started throwing up again, but we had no clue which hospital location was closest; and my google search on my iPhone wasn't cooperating.
We ended up in the city where I live, a 15 minute drive. As I was explaining my symptoms to a doctor, an admitting nurse stood to his right firing questions at me. Address? Phone number? Emergency contact? Emergency contact relation? Address? Phone number? My heart sank when she asked if I was employed. I gave her a hallow no in response; and then handed over my medical insurance card.
In the ER, I received two litres of IV solution, four shots of anti-nausea medication, and another unexplained shot. They did an ultrasound, drew blood, and did a UA. I was able to swallow four pills of some sort of antibiotic/anti-nausea/anti-acid combination and immediately got shooting stomach pains. The nurse gave me what he called a magical GI cocktail which smelt faintly of grape Kool-aid and was chalky in texture. It was larger than a shot glass and he instructed me to down it. I could only take a few sips a time. I think it was the most putrid, awful medicine I've ever tasted and it made my lips and tongue numb immediately. I refused to down the entire portion I'd been given, but luckily whatever I managed to sip through the straw immediately settled my stomach. I was finally discharged at 4:45 a.m. with a script for antibiotics, anti-acid pills, and anti-nausea pills. I felt so bad for Daniel who was supposed to start work that morning at 4. He sat uncomplaining in a chair by my bedside the entire time.
They weren't exactly sure what was wrong with me. Gastroenteritus? An infection of some sort? My white blood cell count was elevated, suggesting infection. Not just any run of the mill stomach flu after all. While I was in the emergency room, another person complaining of my exact symptoms was admitted. The ER doc said he'd been seeing two to three cases per night just like mine.
Today I feel better, but better is a relative word. I'm not nauseaous. I can drink water. I have mild stomach pain. And a mild but persistant ... urge ... when I got to the bathroom. I'm thankful for the doctors and nurses who helped me last night, the pharmacists who handed over more drugs today, and mostly Daniel. Because without him right now, I'd be lost.
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