On the Line

It's 1:09 a.m. on New Year's Eve - the day before the official onset of 2016 has literally just begun. I am jostled, violently, out of sleep by the nasty resurgence of the migraine my body had been fighting off (with a healthy dose of sleep), coupled with intense nausea, and the most excruciating lower back pain I have experienced in a reasonable period of time (thanks to a ten+ year-old back injury from NFA Lacrosse). 

I had a seizure several hours before; the kind of seizure that I experience only in the past tense through Thomas relaying the experience to me, as if I'm some kind of absent bystander.  I remember nothing of the incident, other than waking up in a swamp of drool, and simply fell asleep right after. I had been fighting off a headache for most of the day yesterday, and there was a touch of inevitability to eventual seizure (and a sense of elation that it waited until late at night to happen, as to not ruin my day). Not to mention I was super tired, and super stressed that evening. It was a literal molotov cocktail waiting to explode, and as I was told, we were lucky the seizure was a small explosion. 

But waking up in that much pain, with my stomach feeling as if it were being torn to shreds while the invisible vice around my head continued to pulsate with tightening and loosening, and the weighted dumbbell housed in my back tripled in its miserable weight - it was too much. After an initial (failed) attempt to go back to bed, after vomiting at least three times (out of pain), I announced to Thomas that we would be going to the hospital. And so, out of bed he lept as I packed up my wallet, cell phone, COBRA notice (extending coverage until today), and the bevy of medications I take, and off to Orange Regional we went.

This is not a PSA for Orange Regional, but not withstanding the surly intake nurse that was slightly more inquisitioner than caretaker, that hospital was spot-on in its care. I was sped along the process with an unfamiliar ease - a stark contrast to the lengthy wait times expected at St. Luke's in Newburgh. Additionally, I noticed that everything from the linens, to the waiting room chairs, to the nurses themselves smelled GOOD. The smell of antiseptic and vomit didn't seem to plague the ER beds, which was a lovely change, and helped to reduce some of the anger of the migraine. The speed of medication administration, not to mention discharge, was also a very welcome change. 

Styling, #HungerGames.

Be it some kind of anti-serendipity or tragic-comedy (I am so dedicated to this word that I would use it thusly), they decided to buff and wax the floors in the ER at the exact same time I was lead into my bed. I fought, rather unsuccessfully, to mold the linen at the bottom of my bed around my head and eyes to block out as much of the noise and flickering lights of the ER as possible from exacerbating the migraine, while secretly willing the deaths of what I imagine to be lovely and dedicated hospital workers. No one likes to be that person, the evil and terse patient, but Migraines turn you into a monster. Please don't judge me.

After a nurse came in and demanded to turn on the lights to the room (despite my outcries) to draw blood, the doctor came in and offered a cocktail of anti-nausea, anti-inflammatory, and pain medicines that would be administered by my very sweet male nurse that made small-talk and entertained what I can only imagined was a sad attempt at comedy on my part. Thomas is convinced he was flirting with me, and if he could be flirting with someone with obvious VPL wearing a sweatshirt with pug puppies wearing neon bows (from the kids department at KMart), all the more power to him. I was just happy I was going to be seeing some relief, and given the right medications, perhaps some stars. 

Fiction. 

Fact. Not hot. 

I was given Zofran and benedryl (to eliminate the nausea) and Topirol (to reduce the pain of the migraine). I had very little energy to freak out about being given Topirol, and made the conscious decision to die if I had to, in an attempt to receive some relief (if you've read my posts, you know that the last time I was given Topirol, I "hulked out" and then begged Thomas not to let me die). Needless to say, as sleepy as the benedryl made me, the Topirol didn't have a serious impact in mitigating the migraine, nor did it have any psychosis inducing symptoms. So, I was offered a small round disc - Percocet. There is nothing like Narcotics to make any kind of pain go away; I was finally ready to go home to pass the hell out, and wait for Thomas to fill the script of Percocet given to me by the Dr (just in case).

Pretty much what Thomas' hair looked like. What a champ. 

Thomas, as usual, was a champ. I don't remember most of the ER experience, as I oscillated between sleeping, hiding under a linen blanket, and whimpering in a nearly ecstatic state of pain. But he, aware of the long day of work in front of him, sat by me and narrated the parts of the evening that I couldn't remember or simply refused to deal with out of pain and exhaustion to the treatment team. Thomas is my rock, and if I'm going to get through this awful period of insurance nonsense (incidentally, my insurance card didn't work, so I'm now listening to the repeating message of various health insurance companies and the NYSOH) and treatment, it will be because of his resilience and caring. I am the luckiest person alive, even if I can sometimes forget it. That said, I can sometimes forget a lot of things, like where I live - the sweet male nurse asked where Walden was in reference to Middletown, and I couldn't figure it out. 

Today, NYE proper, I am headache-free (for now), but exhausted, totally and completely exhausted. I signed up for insurance through the NYS of Health Exchange, having to stomach the costs of a high-premium, low deductible "gold" plan through Fidelis, that will unfortunately (likely) not start until Feb (as I missed the deadline for Jan, even though the deadline was the day after I stopped working at CP). I have been on hold with the exchange for over an hour to try and fight this date of enrollment, to move it up to Jan 1. If this unnecessarily extensive wait is any indication of my success, I expect to be pissed off in about another hour, if I can stay awake that long. Poor Thomas - if I am this tired, I can only imagine how tired he is. 

I am hoping not to be a wet blanket tonight, and try to celebrate with the love of my life in whatever way someone like me can celebrate NYE. I'm excited for the start of the New Year, and have a post on the way about a tentative diagnosis that I will share with you tomorrow to mark the New Year. But at this point, I'm trying to just "remain on the line", in whatever metaphorical sense that can be understood. Even if it's from that movie when Lance Bass tried to be straight. 

Happy New Year's Eve. May you find yourself less irritated by unresponsive phone conversations, and full of the love of family - which, if its anything like mine, is worth more than gold (coverage or otherwise). I crack myself up.