Second hospitalisation this year in Adventures in paradise

I’m going to write another entry, just incase I die in the next few hours/days.

I joke, but not really as well. Last night was a very warm night and I was having trouble sleeping. Or rather, my mind was running at a million miles an hour, and I was mostly stressed about the state I had left work in, which I think I wrote about. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it and stressing about it and it was making my mind go crazy. I hate my brain sometimes.
And it was nearing 1am and I knew I had work at 7am, but I just didn’t feel right.
It was when I laid on my left side in the dark with my head on the pillow that things started to get scary.
It was that horrid room-spinning feeling. But only for a little bit. I managed to stop it by sitting upright and turning on the light and tuning in to my surroundings. It went away. I calmed myself down enough to think I could maybe try again, but I was paranoid now. I found my old Covid RATs that are now well out of date, but figured I’d try them anyway. This was one of the symptoms I had when Covid whacked me for six in Sydney of March this year, although that time I couldn’t even move. Why was my head spinning? Was it the stressed day at work moving heavy shelves all day? Was it the heat? Was it because I had been up since 4am and now 21 hours had passed since I last slept? A combination? And my over-active brain - fucker of a thing ergh. I could not stop stressing about the amount of work I had left to do. It was out of my control obviously at that time of night, and I was trying to tell myself to fucking let it go, but I couldn’t. The RAT’s both came back negative.

I left the apartment at around 1:30am. Part of me wanted to go to the BP to see if they had RATs (they didn’t), and I was pretty scared at that point. I kept walking, probably about 2km, passing a few road-workers and bread trucks that were out working at that time. The walk was mostly good. It was still very warm. I was only in shorts and a singlet, and had put shoes on thankfully. I started to feel weird again as I approached the road near the hospital, but forced on. I walked into the emergency department and stood around for what felt like ages until the triage nurse attended to me. Then I sat in the waiting room for over an hour, to be moved inside the ward to another waiting area with four chairs in it. I guess for the non-emergency people like me. I felt sick in the first waiting area, but started to feel better in the second. I was in the second waiting room for around 5 hours. Man. 6 hours sitting in two chairs. It was after about 3 hours that a Welsh nurse came in to talk to me about what happened. He took a few notes, took my blood pressure (twice in 36hrs for me now, as my GP took it yesterday as well) and I was left to wait, wait, wait.
The three others in the room with me were interesting. One was a mental health patient, but he was harmless, thankfully. He just kept calling out for pain medication, of which it seemed the nurses were ignoring him. I figured maybe he was there all the time. There was a girl next to him. I didn’t know why she was there until she was let go around 5am or so. The guy next to me was actually fairly cute. I heard him telling his nurse about a bunch of issues he had, and I felt bad for him, and wondered how much longer he had been there before I arrived.
I felt dumb when the nurse got to me, as I knew I was there as more of a preuation than anything. I didn’t want to end up unable to move like I did earlier in the year, and with the similar feeling (somewhat), I wanted to stop it in it’s tracks.

Anyway, I was finally seen by a doctor at around 6:30/7am. It was a busy night in the hospital. I couldn’t help but see the vast difference between the hospital here and the one in Sydney, but I guess the circumstances were completely different there as I was wheeled in by ambulance lol. But man, I kept thinking to make sure I have an “emergency” episode Monday through Wednesday and not any other night, because you’ll take a good quarter of a day to be seen to!

But when I was seen, the doctor was thorough. He did a few hand-eye co-ordination tests where he got me to follow his finger with my eyes. Then he held my head and pushed it back over the side of the bed on both sides, and got me to press against his hands in all directions.
I was surprised at how young the doctor was. Very twink-like, and I wasn’t complaining about that at all. Seriously looked like he was about 19yo, and after waiting for so long in the waiting rooms, it was nice to see I was being taken seriously.

The doctor told me that he’s inconclusive on what my issue was, and that he knows that’s not what I wanted to hear, but he did tell me a bit about the various forms of vertigo, which is what he thinks this is/was. I told him about how I’d had a stressful day at work yesterday and asked if that could have contributed to it, but he didn’t seem to think so. Nor was Covid. It didn’t even seem like an option to them and they didn’t even test me for it. I’d worn a mask the entire time anyway, but even the nurse and doctors weren’t wearing them in the emergency department. I think after what happened to me, seeing that blew my mind. I guess everyone is over it and it’s no longer mandatory, so even the docs and nurses are over it, given the shit they went through for a good few years there.
The doctor said that the positioning of my head when I laid my head down could have moved some “crystals” in my ear, which could have affected my balance and made me feel the way I did.
That was some news! Any news was welcome. and it made sense to me. This twink knew his stuff! The doctor also sent me into a room to have an ECG done with the Welsh nurse who’d attended to me earlier. He was cute too! I had a bit of a chat with him while he hooked the machine up to the tags. Where do I find me one of these cute medical guys? :D
Do I just have to have more health episodes?

After the results of the ECG returned, which was pretty much immediately, the doctor came back into the second waiting room and sat down next to me, cross-legged. Yay, I got a gay twink doc! Well, I assume. I just don’t think a straight doctor would sit with one leg over the other like that lol. That other guy I’d been sitting next to for hours had finally left, and I was alone in the room. The doctor told me that he was happy with the results of my heart, and that if I feel weak or have blurred vision, to present to the hospital again, but that I was free to go.

Oh thank God for that. After 23 hours waiting around in Sydney and other 7 or so here, I get to a point where I just want to wak out again, because I felt like I’m never going to be seen to, but I just had to keep reminding myself that other people are there for far worse emergencies than I am, and I just have to be patient. Those other three were in the room for God knows how long before I arrived, and they were all still there. I hope they were okay. The mental health guy wa waiting around to speak to a mental health nurse, whom they said wouldn’t be able to see him until after 5am, but he eventually got there. He was the only vocal one in the room, other than the other guy telling the nurse his symptoms.

I’m glad I had my phone with me, with how much I was waiting. It turns out that my Facebook had been hacked also, to the point where my account “didn’t exist” anymore. Fucking HELL. Like, I tried everything to try and get it restored but nothing. The password I had changed to was incorrect. My profile photo was showing, but my profile didn’t exist. I had REALLY been hacked.
Instagram was sending everyone in my contacts something about Bitcoin mining. So yeah, obvi if you’re on any of my social media, please ignore all that shit. It took Instagram about 4 hours to restore my account where I could then go and delete the shit they had hacked me with (it was on my Story as well as DM’ing people) but Facebook took a while longer. I thought I had lost it for good, but upon trying one last thing, it suddenly worked again. Like, geeez.

Anyway, I have my discharge letter. It reads my diagnosis is Benign Paroxysmal Vertigo.

Of course I Googled that when I got home, and I understood why the doctor did the tests he did on me, including throwing my head back over the edge of the bed lol. Damn, kid, take me out to dinner first next time, k?
Apparently doing that is like a “reset” and works in 80% of cases. He did a few things a bit differently to what Google says to do, but it’s good to know there’s a way of helping reset my ears/balance if I feel like this again.
I’ll give the letter to my doctor on Monday when I go back in for my cholesterol results. I think he’ll be surprised that I admitted to hospital so soon after seeing him.

Part of me can’t help but think about that time I got king-hit on Oxford Street in Sydney that time about 10 years ago. I got struck in the side of the temple at quite a force, I remember, in what I believe was a gay hate crime. I remember right after being punched in the left side of my head how lucky I was not to be on the ground. He must have hit me juuuust in the wrong spot, or the knuckles were separated where he connected. And 10 years later, having a few of these verigo-ish sensations, I wonder if that ever has anything to do with it, all these years on.
But you know, that’s my over-thinking as usual, which is nothing unusual.

I just try to understand everything.

So yeah, if I die, at least you might have a reason why, and maybe someone can pass on the information to my parents at my funeral, because I sure as hell ain’t giving the, access to this diary :)

Work was nice and told me not to come in. I didn’t get discharged until after my start time anyway. I got home and was exhausted so I turned on my aircon, closed the blinds and climbed into bed. I noticed I wasn’t as stressed about work, now that I wasn’t there and my ASM had told me not to worry about the mess I had left. I still feel bad about it but between that and my exhaustion (28 hours awake by this point), I managed to fall asleep. I woke up around 2pm and am just going to stay awake for a few more hours to try to keep my sleep schedule back to some sort of normality. I definitely need to keep an eye on this brain of mine because I think it’s causing me some mental anguish, but yeah, I had to listen to my body.

A scary night.

Last updated November 17, 2023