Daniel Powter's "Had a Bad Day" describes today for me....started out rough (Monday) after a weekend that almost didn't count as a weekend, then gradually got worse. Yuck. It's one of those days when you wish you could get a do-over right from the beginning. I woke up knowing this was gonna be a rough week, since we're pretty much broke...well, beyond broke really. Spending all the money we spent on my car, another washing machine, and the house payment pretty much tanked us.
Then I got to work and it was okay for a while...until my Mom called to tell me my Dad was puking his guts up. I felt bad for the guy, but gee whiz, I had to get stuff done at work, ya know? I told her to call if he got any worse, expecting him to rest and feel better later on in the day. I managed to eat my lunch (leftovers...yay...) and get a few more things done, and then Mom called again. This time she was hysterical. Dad was puking blood now, and she didn't know what to do. Instead of telling her to call 911, I told her to calm down and that I'd be there as soon as I could. I let my friend Carol know I needed to go, and she sent me on my way.
When I got to my parents', Dad was lying in bed. He was cold and clammy, sweaty, and was retching and heaving. It was hard for me to hold it together...I'm one of those people who pukes at the sight, sound or smell of someone else puking. I did my best, though, because I knew my Dad needed me. Mom doesn't drive anymore, so it was going to be up to me to get him to a doctor. I saw the blood my Mom was talking about, and it was more like streaks of blood than pools of it...that was a bit of a relief. Still, though, he was pretty bad off, so Mom insisted that I go ahead and try to get him seen by a doctor.
I managed to get Dad to lie down in the back seat of their car and hit the road. He wanted me to try the walk-in clinic first, so we headed there. On the way, he puked two more times. Thankfully, though, we'd thought ahead and brought along a wastebasket with a grocery sack in it. I pulled into the parking lot at Pro-Med and told Dad to stay put for a minute. The lot looked really full, so I decided to go in first and see how long the wait was going to be. Good thing I did...the wait to even get evaluated was over an hour. With my Dad's history of heart problems, I didn't want to take the chance and wait that long. Nausea and vomiting are a few symptoms that can present themselves as precursors to heart attacks.
So I decided that the emergency room would be a better choice, since they triage patients in order of the severity of their problems. As I was getting back into the car, I misjudged a little and whacked the crap out of my forehead on the door, cutting a gash right over my left eye. GREAT....icing on the bad day cake. Nevertheless, off we went to the ER. I dabbed my cut on a towel we'd brought along until it was only just oozing a bit, and pushed onward.
The triage nurses got Dad right in and did an EKG and drew blood first thing. When they determined that he wasn't having a heart attack, they downgraded him a little and allowed some more urgent cases ahead of us. About an hour later, we were back in a room. The ER doctor came in and talked to us, then decided to order some X-rays to check for obstructions in his digestive tract. He got those done, then the nurse came back in and told us his labs showed that he was dehydrated from all the vomiting he'd done. That meant he needed IV fluids. The bag got hooked up, and he was given some medicine to help with the nausea. So we waited.
The doctor came back when the IV drip was finished, and he reported that the X-ray was fine. He said Dad probably had one of the many stomach bugs that are going around, and that he just needed a little more rest and plenty of fluids. He gave Dad a prescription for phenergan and something else I've never heard of (for the stomach upset, I would assume), and sent us on our way.
Dad had perked up in the last hour or so of our ER visit, so I figure the IV fluids were exactly what he needed. And I'm sure the injection for nausea helped a lot, too. I got him back home, and managed to get myself home just in time to catch the end of American Dad with my kiddo T.J. Now I'm off to bed. I'm gonna try to sleep in a bit, since Daltrey stayed the night at my sister-in-law's tonight. Wish me luck for a better day tomorrow. I just hope I don't wake up with a horrible headache to go with the gash and the huge goose-egg on my forehead.
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