Blog Eugene Fischer | 22 Oct 2009
One Year Ago Today
It’s kind of appropriate that I’ve stayed in bed sick all day. Today is the 1-year anniversary of one of the most astoundingly terrible days I’ve ever had. I know, because it was so awful that the last thing I did before I went to bed that night was post about it on Facebook, for fear I would never believe it really happened otherwise. Let’s revisit one of the worst days I ever recorded for the internet. It will be fun!
Oct. 22 [2008]: Retrospective Itinerary
• Wake up. (around 12:00 noon.)
• Mess around on Facebook.
• Feel mild pain in right kidney.
• Take a shower.
• Feel intense pain in right kidney.
• Call girlfriend to say you won’t be able to take her to her doctor’s appointment, because you seem to have a kidney stone.
• Feel excruciating pain in right kidney.
• Call mother to take you to emergency room, then struggle into random clothing (nicest slacks, moth-eaten undershirt, flip flops).
• Feel utterly ludicrous agony in right kidney.
• Lie on the ground in emergency room parking lot until humanoid figure brings you a wheelchair.
• Fall out of wheelchair and lie on the floor under triage nurse’s desk.
• Spend a quarter of an hour writhing in pain in phlebotomist’s office, waiting for phlebotomist to arrive. Occasionally mutter “someone please help me.”
• Have blood drawn.
• Be unable to produce a urine sample.
• Get left in wheelchair blocking the doorway to the hospital while a room is prepared for you. Start to cry, just a little.
• Get admitted and taken to room. Put on gown.
• Just for fun, have another nurse draw several more vials of blood. (These will be declared unneeded and thrown in the trash a little while later.)
• Receive and IV and a saline drip.
• Receive an injection of morphine.
• Realize that morphine is love.
• Notice that girlfriend has arrived. She seems unwell.
• Pass kidney stone.
• Ask mother to take girlfriend to her doctor’s appointment. Explain that you will be fine, because your veins are full of love.
• Doze. Get IV removed. Get dressed. Sign discharge papers. Call a taxi to take you home.
• Receive call from mother, informing you that girlfriend’s doctor sent her to the emergency room.
• Have taxi take you across town to other hospital.
• Comfort girlfriend while she waits many hours.
• Comfort girlfriend while clumsy nurse awkwardly tries to plant an IV.
• Comfort girlfriend while she waits for injection of anti-nausea medication to take effect (Note: it never will; this medication is ineffective for her.)
• Wait in room while girlfriend is taken to get a CT scan of her head, to see if her weeks-long, increasingly severe headache is potentially fatal.
• Comfort girlfriend while waiting many more hours for results of scan. Notice that girlfriend’s discomfort does not seem at all lessened, despite the intravenous medications that she has received.
• Gently browbeat nurse into administering different medications. Watch tension finally melt from girlfriend’s face.
• Learn that CT scan was normal. Get discharged from hospital.
• Fill everybody’s prescriptions.
• Have mother take us home. Take girlfriend inside to put her to bed.
• Grab an empty trashcan and catch girlfriends third, fourth, and fifth bouts of vomiting, while trying not to stand in the first and second.
• Put girlfriend to bed.
• Drive to Wal-Mart to buy a mop.
• Return home. Fantasize about killing girlfriend’s cat for having tracked through the vomit.
• Mop up vomit.
• Mess around on Facebook.
• Go to bed. ( Around 3:20 in the morning.)
This occasionally now gets referenced in family lore as the Double Hospital Incident. Compared to this time a year ago, I have to say I’m feeling pretty good!
on 22 Oct 2009 at 7:17 pm 1.Valerie said …
I guess it is kind of funny reading it now. Probably just because you’re such a great writer!
on 22 Oct 2009 at 7:58 pm 2.Karen said …
Jesus, E.J. You set the bar high for bad days; no wonder a sick day seems like small potatoes now. I can’t believe you had to drive to Wal-Mart to buy a mop. Oh, and the rest of it sounded like no fun at all either.
On a happier note: I look forward to seeing you at WFC soon!
on 22 Oct 2009 at 8:48 pm 3.Kat said …
Oh, E.J. Does it make me a bad/ sick/ weird person that reading this makes me miss you?
on 22 Oct 2009 at 9:23 pm 4.Eugene Fischer said …
Val: Of course, this doesn’t take into account how two days later I caught whatever you had and started throwing up in the bath. And this was before the Crohn’s diagnosis/treatment too…. Happy all that’s behind us.
Karen: Finally, someone who gets it! Hospitals, yeah, whatever, but a visit to Wal-Mart at night? Shoot me.
And I’m going to get to see you at World Fantasy? Oh, that’s easily the best news I’ve heard all day. I can’t wait!
Kat: Missing me is always allowed, for any reason. When I’m not present it’s even encouraged.
on 22 Oct 2009 at 10:51 pm 5.Melissa said …
AWESOME. I love hearing other people’s ridiculous health stories. My go-to story is about a weird gut infection I got that kept me sick for a month. My mother finally took me to the doctor after four days of fever and vomiting.
on 23 Oct 2009 at 6:10 am 6.Kate McG said …
Wow. You really do have the weirdest…luck…sometimes. I had a week kind of like that around Christmas two years ago. It’s hard to take care of someone when you are feeling like dying yourself.
on 24 Oct 2009 at 5:34 pm 7.Jean said …
It was a very bad horrible long day. I felt helpless watching both of you for all those hours. Let’s not ever do it again.
on 24 Oct 2009 at 10:13 pm 8.Cait said …
One year already?? Thank god that’s fading into the distance at least in time. I doubt it will ever fade from both your brains! Hope you’re feeling better now too!