cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So I Rode in an Ambulance to the ER This Morning Well this has been quite a morning. Yesterday I got a prescription for Tramadol for my pain. Which I had never taken before. So I took some about an hour before going to bed. I woke up with my left eye sort of swollen. Then while I was driving to work everything suddenly went to shit in the space of about 10 minutes. The whole left side of my face started to swell. My left cheek went numb. I could hardly hear out of my left ear. My left arm became numb and tingly. Then I got dizzy and nauseous. I decided to drive myself to the hospital, which was on the way to work anyhow. But it became pretty clear that I couldn't make it. I pulled off at the next crossroads and got out of the car. I thought I was going to puke but I didn't. It was suddenly hard to even keep standing upright. I flagged down a passing car and asked the woman inside to please call me an ambulance. The nausea passed by the time the ambulance arrived but everything else was just as bad. My symptoms fortunately didn't quite jive with a stroke as it turned out. I was perfectly capable of ordinary speech and had no cognitive problems. The paramedics suspected an adverse reaction to the tramadol. When I got the hospital they gave me an IV and took sloppy notes, asking the wrong questions. But when I eventually talked to a doctor he seemed to have the right idea. His diagnosis, after doing some research, is that I have a viral infection in a couple of lymph nodes on the left side of my head which has spread to my eye (basically its like pink eye on crack). He thinks that the viral infection caused sudden swelling and fluid retention on the left side of my head, leading to the numbness and hearing loss. Then he thinks that my left sinuses suddenly drained, causing an imbalance between my eustachian tubes. This led to dizziness and nausea. It was pure unfortunate coincidence that my ulnar nerve compression flared up in a massive way at just that moment, causing the numbness down my left arm. At least its not a stroke and probably isn't a reaction to the tramadol, although I have been warned not to take it again at least for the next few days. Just in case. So here I am, sitting at my desk with a hospital bracelet on my left hand and a piece of cotton taped over the inside of my stupid right elbow. Which now hurts from not only the usual pain but also from the IV going in and out. My left eye is all swollen up and my left cheek is still numb, etc. Fuck this shit. Truly. Fuck this. Oh, and now I'm out $100 for the ER visit. That's really great. When I get home Trish and the kids will have already left for Pittsburgh to visit her grandparents and they won't be back until Monday afternoon or evening. So I'll just sort of sit there alone and in pain and shit for the next 3 days. 11:26 a.m. - 2009-09-04 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||