Editor’s note: This is the second of two posts. You can can read the first one here. Also, the following is disgusting. Read at your own risk.
So Sunday night I was home from the hospital, trying to drink 7Up and eat Saltine crackers and hemming and hawing about whether I was going to be able to go to work Monday morning. But by about 10 p.m. I realized that was probably not going to happen and I decided to notify the appropriate people and set out to get healthy enough to go to work Tuesday.
Except I still had epic diarrhea .
Seriously.
Epic.
And so I spent all day Monday on the toilet. All. Day.
Like I would take a sip of Powerade, and I would have to run to the porcelain throne. Water? The Little Girl’s Room. A cracker? The Lavatory. Cough? The Potty.
Needless to say, it was a long day filled with pure liquid shooting out of me.
A. Long. Day.
And just because we’ve already shared too much with this story, I might as well go ahead and tell you two more things:
1. It started to hurt after like the 27th time.
2. I was also riding the crimson tide the whole time and so, you know, that added a whole other later of suck to the situation.
By about 8 p.m. I had gone to the bathroom for about 14 hours straight and my stomach was cramping up (but not in the crimson tide way) (you’ll just have to trust me here that I know the difference) so I started to call around and see if there was an immediate care open someone. There was not.
So, at the advice of a Wal-Greens pharmacist, I tried to call the ER and see if they would just call in a prescription for an antibiotic that I could pick up. But because they are stupid, they would do no such thing. Instead, they told me that it was probably not bacteria related and that I would need to come in and get checked out I wanted help.
At that point I tried to tell myself to just stick it out through the night and see a doctor first thing in the morning.
And for those of you who are all, “Why didn’t you call a doctor earlier in the day, when things are open?” I just want to say, “Because.”
Moving on. So there I was trying to figure out how to make it through the night, and my stomach was crapping up hard core, and I was crying and whatnot and I was seriously considering giving up on life. And I kind of totally hit the end of my rope here. So, I called the ER again, and of course she just kept telling me to come back to the ER.
So I did.
And I had to stop to use the John at a random hotel on the way there, but I made it.
Then, I waited more than hour to get a room and then I waited another 40 minutes or so to see a doctor while only covered with a sheet because they apparently ration blankets in the ER. (Note to Illinois residents: Provena Mercy Medical Center in Aurora is a horrible hospital. Never go there).
When the (cute) (but dumb) doctor finally came in, he was all, “So ya, umm, I think we should get a stool sample.”
For those wondering, basically they give you a little upside down hat thingy to put in the toilet and tell you to do your thing (which wasn’t hard, seeing as how I was going every three seconds) and then a nurse has to come collect the little upside hat thingy.
I felt kind of bad for that nurse.
Also, I was a little worried because of the crimson tide and its potential for messing up the sample, but I was told it would not be an issue.
Then, I went back to my bed and my sheet and I tried to hold some water down.
By this point, my mom and grandma had swooped down from the land of Bryon and were at my bedside, and I love them so much for it. (I also want to point out here that my mom and my little sister [both of whom ate nearly the same food as the same restaurant at the same meal] also had the same symptoms as I did this whole time, only less extreme. In case you were wondering why I assumed this was food poisoning).
Anyway, I drank a few sips of water, didn’t throw up (which wasn’t really an issue seeing as how I had been taking anti-nausea medicine they’d given me the day before), and the doctor came in and said it’d be a few days to get the stool sample results back, but that in the meantime he was going to give me two antibiotics.
WHAT?!!
I was told I that it didn’t seem like a bacteria thing. And that I needed to come.
So I basically just wasted six hours of my life to be told that they were going to do the very thing I had asked them to do over the phone.
Ug.
Whatever.
At this point, I was just all, “Give me the stupid meds.”
The doctor also gave me a shot in my butt for the cramps and told me to take an over the counter diarrhea medicine called Lomotol. But he kept cautioning me to only take one a day so that I could get whatever the heck this was out of my system.
“So, only take one,” he would say, and I would nod. And then he would follow that with, “Just one. Only take one each day. Don’t take more than one.” And I would nod. And then, I promise, he would add, “Make sure you take just one.” So then I said, “So I should take ten?” And he looked at me in a way that said, “Dammit, I knew she wasn’t listening.” And then I laughed and then he got it.
I hope he got some sleep shortly after treating me, because the dude needed it.
Anyway, we hiked over the 24-hour Wal-Greens across the street from the hospital and got the prescription filled and sked where the Lomotol was.
That’s when we found out you need a prescription for Lomotol.
I was wondering why I had never in my life heard of that drug.
Stupid doctor.
Luckily, the pharmasist was able to call the hospital and hook me up with that. And I made my way home. I spent the next 24 hours trying to, umm, well, “stop pooping”, as Chris Traeger might say.
But Wednesday morning I was still way too weak to go to work, seeing as how I could barely bath myself so I did as much as I could from home. By Wednesday night, I thought I was doing better, and I was really excited to see that only about 90 percent of the stuff coming out of my body was liquid now.
Thursday morning I attempted to drive into the office, but I only made it an hour because my legs were shaking underneath me because I was so weak. So I only stayed for an hour and then I drove back home and took an hour nap.
And at about 3 p.m., I called the hospital to see if they had gotten back the test results from the stool sample yet and they had and you know what they told me?
Guess.
No. Seriously. Guess.
After all that poop and vomit and stomach cramps and poop, I promise you they said the following, “Everything came back normal.”
I’m thinking about following up with an primary care doctor tomorrow.
