"It only takes, like, 30 seconds to get a cheeseburger and I have to wait 2 hours for healthcare?"

or, How I Spent My Monday Night/Tuesday Morning

"This sucks," said the teenage boy in the waiting room to his mother after uttering the sentence that is the title of this post. He was holding the side of his head, complaining about how much his ear hurt. His mother, clad in salmon-colored sweatpants and hastily thrown on furry suede ankle boots, looked mostly irritated rather than worried. I assumed her son begged and begged for her to do something, then she got him to the ER and all he could do was complain.

It seemed that all anyone could do in the ER waiting room at that hour was complain. There was the white-trashy lady who claimed to have been waiting to be taken back for six hours. Her husband had already been treated for something, and for whatever reason, was waiting in the hospital parking lot in his truck. I'm not saying she wasn't in bad shape, but she wasn't in much visible pain and limped only as much as someone who pulled a muscle at the gym. I was, and still am, a little hung up as to why her husband would not wait with her in the waiting room. Her hyper 8-year-old son waited with her for a while, then resigned himself to the truck.

Two girls came in, one looking similar to me in that she was clutching her pelvis and gritting her teeth. White trashy lady complained about the wait, and the two girls soon left, hoping to get faster service at a different hospital further down the road.

So why was I there? It felt like Christmas Eve all over again in the worst way. If you recall, I spent most of the afternoon of Christmas Eve at the ER starting with severe lower abdominal pain that subsided. They diagnosed me with a UTI, gave me antibiotics and sent me on my way. Well, the same think happened last night, just after coming back from hanging out at i,fanblades (band of Matt & Nigel, in case you weren't aware) practice in Delaware. The pain was bad. I had Matt drive me to the ER around midnight.

Where we waited. And waited. And waited. The pain was going away. I was beginning to think I should just go home and call my doctor's office as soon as they opened. Then I was called back, paid my co-pay, and decided if I was going to spend $35 to sit around in the middle of the night, I might as well wait to find out what the hell was wrong with me. I was poked, prodded, exhausted. It was 4am, and I was crying through my blood draw, which is not something I typically do. I tried to go to sleep, but the nurse had stuck an IV cannula in my arm, just in case. I couldn't find a comfortable position to put my arm in. Luckily my ER room had a TV, so I was able to distract myself with CNN for a while.

I just wanted to go to sleep. I wasn't hurting too much anymore. They gave me a CAT scan. Said it looked like my ovary might be the cause of the trouble. Then they gave me a pelvic exam, which hurt like a bitch because of the aforementioned ovary problem. Then they decided to send me for an ultrasound. The ultrasound tech informed me that I had an ovarian cyst on the right, possibly also a smaller one on the left. Hearing my symptoms, she said that one of them had most likely ruptured.

So, after this entire ordeal, around 9:30am, I was finally discharged with a diagnosis of ovarian cysts, a prescription for some high-test NSAIDs for pain, and instructions to make an appointment with my doctor sometime this week. I slept all afternoon, probably 5 or 6 hours, but I still feel completely out of it. I'm sure I will head off to bed early tonight.

So, that's how I spent my Tuesday morning...literally...all of it. I'm feeling a lot better now, and I'm sure that I'll be fine. I'm off to lie around on the couch, have some water and play some DS.

There were amusing diabetes-themed angles that applied to this visit, but I think I will save those for tomorrow. I'm just too exhausted right now. Ugh.