Didn’t Wake Up Dead

I spent the better half of my evening yesterday in the emergency room. My little stomach issue was making nauseous and causing me some discomfort. So I broke down and went to the E.R. just so I didn’t wake up dead today. I made three attempts at going. The first one, I walked into the closest hospital and saw a line of about 5 people waiting to be checked in. I quickly turned around thinking, “maybe it’s not an emergency.” But, I was still a little worried about it, because I never feel bad really. So, I got in my car and drove to hospital number two, where I walked in, although there wasn’t a line of people standing to get checked in, the waiting room was filled with no less than 3 dozen miserable looking human beings. I turned right back around and walked back to the parking garage thinking “yep, definitely not an emergency.” As I was heading home, I saw a walk in clinic that was open, so I stopped in there.  They were really nice and had no wait at all, but I was told that they really only deal with sore throats and sore vaginas. If I needed any kind of scan, they wouldn’t be able to help. By that point, I was super nauseous and had pretty much committed to getting checked out. So I went back to hospital number one and checked in. There wasn’t a line to check in and there were only a few people in the waiting room. Imagine my surprise when I ended up sitting there for two hours before getting called back and taken to a room. Then I was thinking, “well, they didn’t think it was an emergency either,” but I was already there and it’s better to be safe than sorry especially when you never get sick, right? The nurse came in and took about a gallon of blood. I peed in a cup. The doctor gave me an injection for pain and one for nausea. A transporter came and took me for a CT scan. All of that within ten minute of getting into a room. It made the two hour wait seem not so bad at that point. Then I laid in bed waiting for the results to come in. The doctor was thinking appendicitis, which was weird, because I was still thinking hernia. Then, for no good reason, all the lights went out in the hospital. Zero lights. It was like a scary movie for about fifteen seconds. I could hear people in the hallway getting ready to freak out right before the flicker and then the lights were restored. Then I listened to them talking about how they were getting ready to freak out because they’re scared of the dark and some other irrational reasons, walking dead and whatnot. Right after that the doctor came in and told me it wasn’t appendicitis and that my blood work was basically perfect. Everything within normal range. And I was like, “um, yeah, I told you I’m the picture of health, so if it’s not my appendix, what could it be?” And he’s all full of “I don’t know.” Then he told me that I have a spot on my liver that I had seven years ago when I had a CT scan in the emergency room for a similar pain and that the spot had grown just a tad, nothing to be worried about, but maybe I want to see my primary care doctor to have it looked at. And then he asked me if I had injured my back or lifted anything heavy, because I had two disks in my back that were deteriorating and I need to follow up with my primary care doctor for that as well. I told him that I don’t have a primary care doctor at the moment, because I don’t have insurance at the moment, and I’m not worried about liver spots or deteriorating spines, did he know why my stomach was hurting and why I was nauseous? He didn’t. I asked if it could be a hernia. He said, “maybe” and told me to follow up with a  primary care doctor and prescribed me an anti-nausea med and a non-narcotic pain med and sent me on my way. So this undoubtedly $15,000 hospital visit was fruitless. I still don’t know why my stomach hurts. I guess I just pulled a muscle, because I didn’t wake up dead today and it’s not hurting as bad as it did yesterday and it’s way better than the day before yesterday, so, I will just go back to my way of thinking that if I ignore anything that may be wrong, then it can’t be wrong. That’s usually my logic anyway and it works so as the old saying goes, “if it ain’t broke….” You know the rest.