A Night in the ER- from the other side

Monday started out just like any other day as I headed to work around 1:30 after driving back from spending the weekend in the big JC. I arrived at the ER ready to start what I knew would be a fun filled 12 hours. For a Monday, it was surprisingly calm for the first few hours, that was until 5:00 hit and everyone showed up at once. About this time, I started experiencing some back spasms and a slight pain in my right lower abdomen. I tried to ignore this and assumed it was just cramps or the result of not sleeping in my own bed all weekend. Well, ignoring the pain worked pretty well for several hours, but the pain continued to get steadily worse. When it got the point around 10 pm where I couldn't stand upright because it hurt so bad, one of the nurses insisted that I needed to be checked out and made me go lie down in one of the rooms and have the doctor look at me. Well, after Dr. Fain came and pressed on my right lower quadrant, causing me to almost come off the table, I decided I would let them work me up to see what was going on. For those of you who know me well, you realize that I had to be in extreme pain to agree to this. So of course blood work and an IV are required, which I warned the nurse would probably not be an easy task as I am not known for being an easy stick and since my hands where purple and I was dehydrated I knew it would be even harder. 2 nurses and 7 attempts later, I finally had a very small IV established in my R hand. So now that I have the IV in and it's time to draw blood, which of course the IV won't do. So rather than risking blowing the IV by messing with it, the nurse decided to draw blood from the vein in my ankle- lots of fun let me tell you. At this point, I'm still hurting pretty bad and now feeling like a pin cushion, that was until I received the wonderful drug Toradol through my IV. This is one of those meds that while it is a good pain med, patients often don't want or will tell you they are allergic to because it isn't a narcotic. I however thought it was wonderful, but since about the only thing I ever take is Advil or Aleve I guess my system isn't use to much. The big question at this point was whether it was my appendix, an ovarian cyst, or a kidney stone. Dr. Fain was obviously concerned most about my appendix. Well, my urine came back with lots of blood, and a CT comfirmed that it was a kidney stone. The CT also showed that my R kidney was swollen due to the stone blocking the out flow. And-something to look forward to in the future- I have multiple kidney stones still in both of my kidneys. Can't wait for those to cause a problem! I passed the stone a little while later and went home around 3 am to get some sleep so I could do it all over the next day. So that was my exciting monday evening in Park Ridge East ER. I hope not to repeat this anytime in the near future!