oh the pain…

srsly.  i have had just about enough of this gallbladder business. 

yesterday i’m out at lunchtime, having a coffee with a work pal (i know, i totally made a friend, yey!) and all of a sudden my back starts aching.  like, badly.  so i figure that maybe i’m sitting in a bad chair or something… so i’m shifting around, trying to get comfy, but it just keeps steadily getting worse. 

so we head back to the office, and the walk is killing me.  every step is making the ache worse, but i don’t want to be that complaining girl, so i just try to suck it up. 

i get back to my desk and sit down.  but no, that makes the pain worse.  so i get up and pace around my office.  nope, that’s EVEN WORSE.  so i shut my door and lay down on the ground.  a little better.  i do some yoga stretches, but no, it feels worse again. 

now i’m starting to get nauseous.  this is bad news.  the room gets a little spinny, so i head to the washroom, thinking that puking in my office is probably bad form.  after a minute or two of pacing around my washroom, i decide that i can’t take this anymore. 

i go back to my desk and take the only 2 advils i have in my purse and sit down.  i do what any sensible human would.  i google “back pain” and nausea.  oh lookie what the internet says… it kmight be my pancreas, often caused by gallbladder problems.  up until this point it hasn’t even occurred to me that my gallbladder is the culprit.  all previous gallbladder pain has felt like someone is squeezing my ribs, not like they’re stabbing my back. 

so i figure i had better go to the hospital.  like stat.  because i can’t really breathe well anymore.  so i gather up my stuff and mumble something to my boss and the receptionist about the hospital and leave.

then it’s decision time.  i hate st pauls.  its always super busy and you wait forever… BUT, it is only 2 blocks away.  and i feel like i’m going to die.  but then, i’m thinking that if there’s a chance they might keep me in overnight, i do not want to be there. 

so i get on the bus to the skytrain station, skytrain to broadway, change trains to lougheed and arrive 45 minutes later.  one of the worst rides of my life.  my mom picks me up and whisks me over to eagle ridge hospital.  they sign me in, take my blood pressure, temp and pulse.  my temp is high, i have a fever and my blood presure and pulse are up too.  they tell me to sit down while they get me a bed.  so i sit.  FOR 2 AND A HALF HOURS.  WTF?  i seriously thought i was going to die.  and they left me in the waiting room while they took everyone else in ahead of me.  they even took this old man that came in to have the wax removed from his ears.  yep, BIG emergency there. 

apparently they didn’t have any more beds, but everyone else only needed a chair in the emerg.  so i had to wait.  good times.  apparently the fact that i was in a chair already in the waiting room didn’t really matter.  i needed pain killers.   badly. 

anyways, long story short, they did blood tests and stuff and gave me the most brutal shot ever in my arm muscle for the pain.  i have a massive bruise and goose egg on my arm from it.  it hurts.  and yes, i didn enjoy the irony that the painkiller caused me a massive amount of pain.  i was sad i didn’t get the morphine like last time. 

and then they gave me more percacets and told me that if the pain comes back, to come back to the hospital (again) and take a percacet.  oh, and also to go on a diet. 

ugh.  i am so over you gallbladder.  why won’t you work properly damn it.  you had better not pull this crap when i’m in vegas.