The pains that have been torturing my body for the last few weeks, decided they were at a rock concert in a mosh pit. My feet started swelling up the day before yesterday. I couldn’t sleep, I haven’t had an appetite. Last night, while I was soaking my feet in the tub for some temporary relief I noticed that my toes, weren’t anything like I had ever seen them before. They were completely blue. I take a picture of them (I take pictures of everything, duh) and send the picture to my Mom. She in turn sends it to my Aunt Donna who shows my Uncle Don (the doctor).
Ohhhh boy. I knew something was bad when it was 11:30 at night and my iPhone started ringing off the hook. It’s a well known fact that my Mother is horrible at telling me bad news. My Aunt Donna has had “The-One-Who-Tells-Jen-Bad-News” title for about 15 years now, so I automatically assume if she calls me (especially late at night) that it’s not good. I couldn’t bring myself to answer the phone. My Aunt Donna knows this well too. It’s my way of sliding “into” the news. This is my Aunt Donna’s trick. She will leave me a message, and she will tell me right off the bat that she misses me and loves me. Then she doesn’t tell me anything about what the bad news is, except that I need to call her right away because she needs to talk to me and she, Uncle Don and my Mother weren’t going to sleep until I did, and it was very important. Then she ends it with she loves me again. She’s so good at this, and she’s also so brave at being “The-One-Who-Tells-Jen-Bad-News”. Believe me, no one wants that role. No one.
So, I get myself a glass of milk and waddle (I have to walk on the heels of my feet because of how swollen my feet and ankles were) out to the back porch and touch the Call Back button. I sit and listen. She’s very good at explaining things without actually telling me the bloody details while giving special care on the urgency of the matter. Then Uncle (Dr) Don gets on the phone. He sucks at telling me bad news, but he usually doesn’t get on the phone. My Aunt Donna quickly takes the phone back and I had agreed to go to the ER by the time I had hung up the phone, but ONLY until I took a shower first. Aunt Donna said it was fine, but to please try not to doddle (I learned the word doddle from her, I love that word).
Shortly after that, somewhere in between calling my Mother, taking a shower and doddling, my brain sort of unplugged itself. That’s the best way I can describe it since the next 1.5 hours are really fuzzy in my head. I could hear what Brendan and my Mother were saying to me, but I couldn’t match up the words. I was confused, and nothing made sense. It’s like everyone started talking in tongues. Brendan tells me that while I was in the shower I asked him what I was doing. My Mother called while we were in the car on the way to the hospital and she kept asking me how far from the hospital I was. I just couldn’t understand the how far part, like my brain was skipping like a scratched record. I had to keep asking Brendan for help. When I got to the hospital I couldn’t tell them my birthdate, except that I wasn’t 30 yet. I just couldn’t figure out anything past that. When the nurse asked me what year it was, I said that I knew it wasn’t 2006, but I couldn’t give her the year. I guess I did know that Bush was president tho, altho Clinton was at the tip of my tongue. I felt so, dumb. My brain, got stuck, and after the nurse asked me more questions I couldn’t answer I just started crying. I mean, I know I should have known that stuff, but … my brain was just stuck. I knew enough to know that wasn’t right or normal. That’s when I got scared. Something, in me, broke. Something just wasn’t right, something was really wrong.
For the next 6 hours on an EKG I had three IV’s stuck in me and I was just staring at the heart meter, watching my pulse and pulse oxygen level. Just watching. And then my brain turned back on. It went from pause to play again. Ironically during the foggy time, I don’t remember as much pain. I just felt like my toe was dead. When my brain turned back on, pain from all over my body throbbed. Blood test after blood test were taken. When one blood test came back as being fine, another one was ordered up. At around 6 or 7 AM the doctor came in the room (he had only been by for about 25 seconds previously just to ask what was going on) he said that they couldn’t find anything wrong and they were going to send me home with water pills to help drain the swelling, and to follow up with my primary care physician.
Just like that. Not only was I more swollen (my hand was starting to swell at that point), but I was mad, stressed, frustrated at being dismissed when nothing had really changed (besides my brain going from the off to the on switch). Everything my Aunt Donna told me she was scared of happening, happened in regards to how the doctor was going to dismiss it and to be persistant). I again asked him how this had happened before in 2002 and how I’ve felt so horrible the last few weeks, and how my tests always come back showing good stats, but obviously there was something really wrong. He said to see my primary care doc and elivate my feet in the meantime. Here is what just one of my feet looked like. I thought if I went to sleep, I’d wake up and my toes would dead.
I won’t go into a tangent about how I hate healthcare in this country. If no one has seen the movie “sicko” then see it, please. It’s such bullshit. Brains don’t just “turn off” and body limbs don’t swell up to the point of cutting circulation randomly or by a fluke like travel or such. It just doesn’t happen.
So, me and my balloon feet are going to see my primary care doc and go through the whole thing again, with a new set of bloodwork and repeating events of the last few weeks. And I’m scared. I’m scared that they still won’t find anything and I’ll still go on with all this for the rest of my life wishing for one day, I could get through the day, without pain. I just want to feel good.
