A Few Hours of Firsts - Part One

This time last week I wasn’t feeling the love for the day. I felt sluggish and generally blah. I couldn't put my finger on what it was so I figured it was just my intense dislike of going into the city for work, or even, this particular role. Either way, I had a doctor’s appointment were I knew I'd be required to give several samples that could help pinpoint the problem if it was physical.

Now comes a warning: this entry will be an over share on medical things. Stop reading now if you are of a delicate disposition.

The doctor’s appointment turned up nought. Nothing out of the ordinary, but I was poked, prodded and pricked as usual.

I went to work. Still didn't feel fabulous but now I knew it was in my head. I could cope with that so I made the best of my day. It ended up being quite productive, but as the day wore on, the feeling of listlessness increased.

Once home for the night I got all my chores out of the way early. I had a light evening meal and settled down with Cara and the laptop for a little Facebook time.

About 10 I was ready for bed, early for me, as I stood up I felt a sharp pain shoot from my right, lower back down to my groin. I'd felt pain like this before. It had been a couple of months before when I had a kidney cyst bleed. I knew the next half an hour was going to be extremely unpleasant. I was right.

The pain in my right built up and settled. The dull, thick, thudding, pain that comes after a heavy blow. It got louder. I could hear it pounding in my ears. I sat down, stood up, paced a bit. Then started the cycle again.

The pain spread across my back to my spine and beyond. Nothing I did could get me into a comfortable position. At one point I was on all fours with my arse in the air. If I'd had company they may have taken it as an invitation.

At one o'clock I decided a warm bath would do the trick. It did. For about 30 seconds. Then I could feel it again. Spreading across my back, sneaking around to the front and spreading fingers down across my pubis.

The cats were freaked. Cara was freaked and hiding on the bed like she'd been scolded. She'd done nothing wrong, but Mum was pacing the house rubbing her back and side and muttering, 'fu*k, fu*k, farrk' under her breath.

At one forty five in the morning, I dialled '000'.

'Please state the nature of your emergency.'

I explained and continued pacing while I waited. Somewhere in there I unlocked the front door and put a jumper by the door. I didn't need it then, after all I was sweating the sweat of a fevered fellow.

The Ambulance arrived about 10 minutes after I'd called. They asked me to sit down, I declined and explained why, they took me out the the flashing lights outside. As I closed the door I was left with the vision of terrified puppy eyes.

FIRST #1: Ambulance ride as a patient.

The journey was less than smooth, not because of the driving, that was great. The painkillers they tried to give me smelled so sickly sweet it made me vomit, which made me pee a little, which caused a few tears, which in turn commenced the apologies. It's a chain reaction. I know they see this and much worse every day, but I still felt I needed to acknowledge my humble thanks to them saving me.

I threw up all the way to the hospital. By the time I got there I was wearing wet pyjama bottoms and I had well and truly started tumbling down the shame spiral. For no other reason than I was a 39 year old who wet her pants while vomiting.

My blood pressure on entry to the hospital was 149/111. Trust me, if you know nothing about blood pressure, that isn’t good.

The nurse told me off for leaving it so long before calling an ambulance because I was close to ‘stroking out’.

I was put in a ‘sub-acute’ room and given two Panadol.