I didn’t need the video. My doctor, a nurse practitioner, took one look at me trying to move to the bathroom down the hall before my appointment and told me I needed to go to the E.R.
“All they ever make me do is pee in a cup,” I cried tearfully, recalling the first time I went to the E.R. with muscle spasms and worrying about what this new bill would do to my tight budget.
“Listen, the doctor and I saw you walk down the hall. You need to go to the E.R. Do you have someone to drive you?”
I nodded, more enthusiastically to demonstrate it wasn’t just me bobbing my head, and pulled out my cell phone to see if Kat was still in the parking lot.
As we pulled up to the emergency room, she offered to stay with me.
“Want me to come in and sit?”
“No, it’s okay. I know it can take forever,” I said, not wanting to put her out any more than I had already. I pulled open the door and started the journey to the front desk.
E.R.’s quite quickly became a place I hated. This would be my third trip, and likely my least favorite. In the future, as things became worse, I would get zipped right through, but for this day, I was still a new person, in a new town, scared, lonely, and not sure what to do to help myself get better or less freaked out. So, there I was, standing as best as I could, while bobbing my head, waiting my turn until the check-in nurse could get me to fill out paperwork. With little empathy in her voice, she shuffled papers and told me to wait in the plastic chairs lined against the wall with the five other people who decided a Monday morning was a good time to visit the emergency room.
Just to make matters worse, as I sat, my body progressively began to slump over. Involuntarily. It was as if, head bobbing all morning–trying to maneuver all morning–had worn me out to the point where I could no longer hold myself up. How did those dashboard hula dancers keep it up? Silently in my plastic chair, I started to cry. No one seemed to notice. Unlike a deli line at the grocery, no numbers were called, no names pulled to the front counter. We just waited. All six of us. Minutes kept ticking by. My cell phone flashed in my hand with Cheryl asking if I was still at the ER and that maybe she’d stop by on her way home from work–Cheryl who fished me out of the car the night before. “Thanks,” I texted back, while slowly pulling up my aunt’s number–the one my parents said was available if I needed anything while they were gone.
“Having trouble. My body isn’t working right. At E.R. and I’m scared.” I clicked send on the text.
Just two weeks earlier, I had called her after my doctor had declined my request for muscle relaxants and I had let her know what was going on. That same day as I was driving home from the appointment worrying about my brain, I had a car whip out and smash into the side of my car. On the sheet of paper for the E.R. I did not indicate I was there due to an accident. Two weeks couldn’t have such a delayed response, right? Besides neurologist one had said, it was just atypical migraines.
To this day, I don’t remember being put in a room. I do remember not having to pee in a cup. I remember being forgotten for another hour. I remember Cheryl coming in. I remember my body beginning the muscle spasms again with a vengeance. I remember Cheryl sitting on me to help me control not being folded in a way that wasn’t humanly possible as my body arched backwards without stopping even when my spine tried to call “Uncle”. I remember being so scared that somehow I would break and Cheryl yelling for someone to come in and help us. I remember a nurse trying to hand me a pill when I had no control of my hands. I remember my aunt showing up at some point and driving me home. Of being exhausted. Of finally having my head stop bouncing. Of Chinese food and my aunt asking if I thought I’d be okay by myself. Of me not wanting to inconvenience her either and saying yes, I would be. After all, she had already driven two hours to reach me and had two hours still to go home.
I remember waking up the next day thinking it was a good idea to go to work.
Come to find out, it was not a good idea at all.