Mid-Night Terrors

I left something out of my report about Cousins Day. I left it out because I didn't want to get all sorts of advice, because I'm a lot like my mother when it comes to health issues and because I was just fine now.

I'd been having some intermittent intestinal problems for a couple of days. Mild cramps that would come and go, but which were uncomfortable enough that I would have to go sit down for a few minutes until they passed. But it was one of those "I can deal with it" sorts of things.

I noticed that starting three days ago, I seemed to be having to go to the bathroom a lot more often than usual. I've always joked that I had an "iron bladder," and I'm the person who could fly from London to San Francisco without ever using the airplane's facilities. As we sat playing 65, I found I was getting up more and more frequently, but having less and less of an output.

So Thursday morning, we had just sat down for our first morning game of "65" when I had a pain in my side that practically doubled me over. I thought this was maybe a "pancake" issue, especially since I'd just finished a breakfast of French Toast with syrup and maybe that had the same effect that pancakes and syrup do on me. I went off to the bathroom to take care of business. Only as I sat there, producing nothing, I had this terrible wave of chills and nausea. An overwhelming feeling. I leaned over the bathroom sink and waited to lose my French toast, but the wave of nausea passed.

My side still hurt, though, so I went out to the living room and told everyone I needed to lie down for a bit. In about five minutes, the pain subsided and I went back to playing cards.

I was fine all afternoon except for an escalating sense of urgency. I would go to the bathroom and five minutes later it would feel like my bladder was bursting, so I'd go back in again and get just a little trickle. This went on all evening. I've never had a bladder infection or any kidney problem in my entire life, so other than trying to remember from my transcription days, I didn't know what the symptoms where.

I finally decided to ignore the feeling that I was going to pee all over myself and just try to get to sleep, but I finally did get up and as I got up, I had the double-you-over pain again. I tried lying down, hoping it would go away, as it had that morning, but it didn't. I tried aspirin and, remembering that the appendix is on the right side and that if you're having an appendix attack, you should put ice on it, I fixed myself an ice pack, but that didn't seem to help either.

It's amazing how much more terrifying things are in the middle of the night. Should I wake Walt up to take me to the emergency room (which is a 30-40 minute drive)? Should I call the advice nurse? Should I continue to hope it would go away? My biggest fear was that I didn't want anything to happen that would in any way ruin Jeri's wedding.

My first course of action was to continue hoping it would all go away (as well as some heavy duty praying and reminding God that Jeri's wedding has been a long time coming and it just wouldn't be fair to have anything ruin her special day!) but the pain didn't get better at all. I considered calling Walt on my cell phone, because I sure couldn't walk upstairs to wake him up if I had to go to the hospital. Finally I decided I needed to talk to someone, so I called the advice nurse. She at least calmed me down to where I didn't feel I needed to rush off to emergency right then and there. She did say I should make an appointment with my doctor any time after 6 a.m this morning.

After I talked with her, the pain continued to get worse and I ended up losing my dinner. But after that, the pain, miraculously did start to subside enough that I was able to sleep and slept until 6:30.

I immediately called the doctor's office when I got up and they gave me the first appointment of the day.

It can't be just straightforward. There's blood in the urine, which indicates a urinary tract infection, but it's negative for leukocytes which would indicate that it might not be a UTI. So she's treating me for a UTI, but warns that I might possibly be passing a small kidney stone. And isn't that the very thing you want to be doing while trying to plan two big wedding parties!

At least I've been examined and have a diagnosis of sorts, even if it's not definitive.

Folding Wonton