A trip to the ER

So I thought I'd try and get this blog written now while I'm all doped up and my wrist pain has turned into a dull throbbing pain.

Ok, so I was walking to the bus last Tuesday morning, when I tripped over a raised sidewalk edge, which Seattle seems to have many. I completely wiped out, and actually took a "Family Guy" moment as I lay there in pain. I got up and went to work, without thinking anything of it. By the next morning, my left wrist was a little sore, but nothing to unbearable. Later that night, I noticed that it had started to swell up a bit, so I put ice on it, elevated it and gave it no more thought. By Thursday morning, the wrist had swollen up so much that I could barely touch my fingers together. I tried to gimp my way through work, but once my manager saw it, she immediately sen me home to get medical attention, which I had planned to do anyways, but after work, since they've been cutting my hours now, and I need every one I can get.

Seattle has many many hospitals, but if you are poor, homeless, critically injured or uninsured, there is only one place that will take you, regardless of your ability to pay, and that's HarborView. Now I have been there several times, but this was my first adventure as a patient. I arrived around 1:30pm on thursday, and checked in, filled out my admittance paperwork and my financial charity application, which was approved, so this whole adventure would now be free, which is why I think they just went nuts in my treatment. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I then sat in the ER waiting room until 7:30pm, when I was finally taken back to a bed in the ER. I almost left twice, thinking how stupid it was to spend so much time just to have a doctor tell me my wrist was just sprained and I needed to go home, ice it and then wrap it. Well, they looked at it and wanted to get some x-rays of the wrist. But before that, they wanted to draw blood for tests and cultures, and place an IV, for fluids. At this point, I was very open with the nurses about my past Vascular abuse (if you have to ask, then you don't know me that well), and sure enough I provided even the best nurse there with a challenge. Not only did they have to find a usable vein, but then they had to hit it and thread the catheter into it and get it to hold. After 3 tries, they finally managed to get a small (22ga) IV into a similarly small vein in my upper arm, almost to my shoulder. Crazy part was that they couldn't draw blood out of it with the syringe, so with this needle and splint sticking out of my arm like a small drip faucet, they free bled me to get my blood samples, then hooked the IV up, which accepted and flushed without problems. At this point I'd like to explain how nasty of a taste in the back of your mouth you get every time they flush the IV line with saline. If you never experienced it, you're lucky. So its now about 9:30pm, and they get my blood work back, with elevated white cell count, an indicator of septic infection. So they start me on a an Antibiotic that made me turn bright red and made me feel like I was on fire. After an hour, when the IV was done and they came to get me for X-rays, they noticed my condition and got all upset that I hadn't said anything to them about this discomfort. Honestly, after the 1mg shot of Dilaudid, aka Hydromorphone, a powerful narcotic used to treat pain, I really didn't notice or care about any minor pain. Anyways, its now pushing 11:00pm and they take me to get X-rayed, 8 times, just to discover that there is no break or fracture, which then brings the orthopedic surgeons into my life. They sent me to get a CT scan, which involved pushing a marker dye through the IV, more instance fire in the veins. The result of all of this, was that I had a pocket of fluid build-up in my wrist and they suspected it was septic, leading to an abscess, that must be drained. So I was loaded up with more pain meds, oxycodone this time, and then they numbed my whole hand with Lydocaine, and right there in the ER room, they made an inch long cut in my wrist and tried to force the puss and fluid out. But nothing came out, which seemed to annoy the doctors. It was at this point, they decided to keep my overnight, kept pushing antibiotics in me and try again in the morning to drain the infection. I was NOT happy about staying. I just wanted them to patch me up, give me the oral antibiotic and send me home. My wrist now looked and felt worse than before. Plus I was starting to feel sick, cause I hadn't eaten all day. Around 3:30 am, I was moved to the 6th floor, to an actual hospital bed. And once again they tried to put a new IV in me. But my reputation of a hard poke/poor vascular condition had proceeded me. My nurse Jen took up the challenge, and it proved to much. I suffered quietly as she tried to hit veins on the top of my left foot, the top of my right foot, across my right ankle and the side of my right palm, some of THE MOST PAINFUL PLACES EVER TO POKE!!!!! She got frustrated with it, and was very thankful I wasn't upset by it. Really it would have done no good to complain. I had nobody to blame but myself for this, seeing as how I trashed all the of the biggest, easiest veins everywhere. I know understood what my councilor at treatment was trying to tell us, about leaving one spot, one vein untouched for just such an event. They finally managed to get a good, solid IV in my right ring finger, still painful, but it was a super site. So now everything, the antibiotic, I'm on 2 different kinds now, plus fluids are all funneled down and pushed into that tinny little vein we all have on each side of our fingers. And thats how my first 14 hours went. I'll finish the rest later, but basically, its more the same. Sorry, but my hand hurts alot right now.