Hospitals, lack of sleep and new pics. in 2013

Just for the record, take care of yourself when you have a stomach virus. Or else you may end up in the ER hooked up to IV's due to severe dehydration.

That was how I spent my Tuesday afternoon/early evening.

It all started out as my normal yearly doctors visit to get checked out and get my scrip for birth control redone. In the two weeks leading up to that though, some other problems cropped up. Stomach issues which everyone at work is having right now, a weird pressure in my head, dizziness, tiredness, excessive thirst, fluctuations in my blood sugar and migraines.

A normal person would probably have thought, "Hey dumbass, you're getting dehydrated! Drink moar water naow!"

Me, I jumped to the conclusion that since three generations on my dad's side are or were diabetics, my time had finally come and started panicking.

Did I start drinking more water? No. Had I, this whole thing could have probably been avoided. But, instead, when my mouth felt like a barren wasteland, I chugged Pepsi. Even after Ben told me several times I should drink water instead.

Sometimes it is okay to listen to the menfolk, as it turns out.

Saturday, I collapsed in the hallway at work when coming back from lunch. I took a half point on my attendance and went home early (though I think they would have frog marched me out of there had I tried to stay). I gradually felt better that night and Monday, almost stopped drinking soda, mainly sticking with water and green tea until the caffeine withdrawal headache started to get out of hand.

Tuesday morning, however, it came to a head and the stomach virus my body had done a great job of fighting off thus far kicked in full throttle. I also collapsed again in my parents kitchen.

Luckily my appointment was that afternoon.

I explained what was going on to the nurse, then she took my vitals. Then ran out of the room to get my doctor. BP 90/50, pulse 155, temp 100.4. My doc came in, talked to me for a couple of minutes, poked around on my stomach (which about made me come off the table) and, when sitting up made me dizzy as hell, ordered me to the ER. The yearly will be done at another time.

Five hours, two IV bags, nausea medicine and an EKG later, I was given a clean bill of heath. They gave me a scrip for more nausea meds and hydrocodone for the headaches since the Ibuprofen they gave me didn't help the one I had at all.

At least the bed in the ER was a lot nicer than the one I got stuck in during my last trip to the ER in '05. The bed was way too short, my legs hung off of it right below my knee. When Brett came up there, she took the doctors stool and cranked it all the way up so my legs could rest on it. This time, only my feet hung off if I laid flat, which was fixed by slightly curling up. Ah, the perils of being tall. And it still cracks me up how they will ask if you are pregnant three times and then do a pregnancy test anyway. Why bother asking if you're going to do the test? Makes no sense.

I'm also off work for the rest of the week. My supervisor is so awesome. Rather than have me call in everyday like they usually have you do, she had me take a picture of my doctors note and send it to her to forward to our OM so I can sleep in. Otherwise I'd have to get up at 7:30am just to call in.

Not that I have been able to sleep. The most I've slept at a stretch is about two hours. Then I'm up for one reason or another, can't go back to sleep for several hours, sleep for about an hour and a half, later, rinse, repeat.

It's kinda scary to think about how many people probably died from dehydration before doctors figured out to hook them up to an IV to replace the fuilds in the body.

On a slightly funny note, this all came about on a really oddly timed day. Robbie and I are at my parents house since our car is in the shop (again), so dad is the one that got to ferry me around. My appointment was at 1:30 and he had a doctors appointment at 2:40. As the morning progressed and I got sicker and sicker, I tossed the idea at him that he might want to see about rescheduling his in case mine wasn't an in and out job (no pun intended). At first, he waived it off, saying, "It shouldn't take that long." But fifteen minutes later when I'd had my head in a bucket no less than 100 times (or at least it felt like it), he was on the phone with his doctor rescheduling his appointment.

We didn't get back home until 7:30pm, so that was good foresight on my part.

Robbie was very sympathetic that night when I got home. I had him help me take the EKG electrodes off and it kinda worried him at first. He pulled the first one off and after my reaction to it feeling like three layers of skin went with it, he got a very worried look on his face and said, "I'm getting mom!" then ran into my parents bedroom, yelling, "Mom! Somethings wrong with mama!" My parents both flew into the bathroom where I was, probably thinking I had collapsed again.

A funny thing I've noticed about kids, when your feeling well and want to play with them, they are too busy. But when you feel like hubcap that fell off on the highway and ran over fifty times, you must play with them NOW.

A few people have asked to see new pics since it's been awhile since I've posted any and quite a few of you aren't on my Facebook. So here you go!

Me from July with blue streaks. The blonde is still there, but the blue faded almost completely within a month and was totally gone after the last time I bleached it. Now that I finally have a job that doesn't care what my hair looks like, I'm taking full advantage of it. I'm thinking of going all over blue next time.

Robbie last month when he picked out his glasses. He's slightly farsighted in one eye and goes cross eyed when he focuses on something at times. We're hoping the glasses corrects it as it did with my dad and aunt when they were little. But if he has to wear glasses starting now, that's no big deal. He's done a lot better with them than we thought. He started out wearing them for at least a couple of hours a day for the first week, then went to full time.