When I was a kid, I thought of the hospital – and emergency rooms specifically – as something you went to for…well an emergency. The idea that I would ever have to visit an emergency room myself was beyond my ken. Flash forward twenty-five years. It is September 28, 2024. A Saturday night. I’m visiting my parents on Long Island. I wake up at one in the morning with the most pain I have ever felt in my life. We are talking about excruciating, mind-numbing, knives-in-the-gut pain. I should add that, at the time, I was seven weeks pregnant with a little girl through in-vitro-fertilization or IVF. I didn’t think it was a miscarriage. After listening to her heartbeat my OB-GYN had said, “ninety-five percent chance this will be a live birth”. So why would I worry about a miscarriage? Frankly though, the pain was so great that I thought I probably had miscarried and I thought I was probably going to die myself. Sometimes, when a person dies we say, “at least she is no longer in pain”. That night, I was in so much pain, I understood the reasoning behind that sentence.
I woke my parents up….”I have to go to the emergency room.” My parents were, like myself, hesitant to do that. The best emergency rooms are like purgatories. The worst of them are like little pockets of hell. We didn’t go to the emergency room that day. We waited it out. I now know that this was the wrong decision to make but make it we did. We thought the pain might be due to constipation or a urinary tract infection. Over the course of the next three days, I continued to treat the pain with hot packs and tylenol. My abdomen became distended. I wasn’t able to urinate, defecate, pass gas. I didn’t know it at the time but my body was shutting down.
That Wednesday, October 2, we went to my mother’s primary cary physician. The doctor felt my stomach and said I had to go straight to the emergency room. No stopping. I went to NYU Langone on Long Island. I was treated with a catheter. They did a urine sample. The result was negative. I was sent home. I made it back to my home in New York City. That Friday October 3, I found out that my baby had died. So much for the ninety-five percent chance of a live birth. I still wasn’t able to urinate on my own so on Saturday, October 4, I went to Urgent Care in Manhattan. I didn’t know what else I needed but I knew I did need another catheter. They don’t do catheters at Urgent Care. Instead, they called me an ambulance and off I went to NYU Langone in Manhanttan. The emergency room.
And so the testing began. I did a CAT scan, an ultrasound, a urine test, a blood-test. It turned out my white blood cell count was over 37. A normal white blood cell count is between 4-10. I had an ileus which is a blockage in the large intestine and makes it so that one is unable to move waste out of the body. The scan also showed that I had appendicitis. More on that later. I was treated with an NG Tube which went from my nose into my stomach to remove toxins and waste products out of my body. I was fitted with a catheter. I had three IV ports on my arms to give me around the clock antibiotics. I was septic. My body was dying. I was admitted into the hospital. I remained there for the next ten days.
Over the course of the ten days, I underwent a D&C which is a surgical procedure that can be used to treat an incomplete miscarriage. My white blood cell count decreased. The tube came out of my nose. The IV ports were reduced to one. The appendicitis was not treated. I was discharged.
Four days later, I was back in the emergency room. The D&C was not complete and so an MVA had to be done. An MVA is a manual vacuum aspiration or a procedure that removes pregnancy tissue from the uterus after a miscarriage or when tissue is left behind. I was given more antibiotics.
Three and a half weeks later, Friday November 15, I again experienced the worst pain of my life. This was even greater than the pain I had on September 28th if that can be believed. I thought at first it was gas but it just got worse and worse. So it was back to the emergency room where I proceeded to undergo the tests that were becoming more and more routine…CAT scan…Ultrasound….Bloodwork. However, nothing showed up. At around midnight, the doctor offered me two possibilities: “Go home with some pain medication and a hope and a prayer or stay in observation and get an MRI in the morning.” I chose the MRI which probably saved my life. The MRI showed that my appendix had ruptured but it had probably ruptured weeks ago (see September 28th). The pain was due to an abcess that had formed to protect my body from the infection. Unfortunately it could not be drained since it was too close to the bowel. So I was admitted again to the hospital where I underwent around the clock intravenous antibiotics in order to shrink the abcess so that my broken appendix could be removed. I was in the hospital for six days.
I wish I could say that was the end of my visits to the emergency room but two weeks after I was released I was back in purgatory/hell with more pain. The conclusion? Home with a mountain of dialudin (pain medication) and an unreassuring affirmation by the doctors that the abcess was, in fact, getting smaller and that I should see a surgeon to set a date to remove the appendix.
I saw a surgeon last Monday, December 9. He said, “NYU should not have released you with your appendix back in October. They screwed up. They are dismissing you presently because they do not want a lawsuit. Your ruptured appendix caused the sepsis and the sepsis killed the baby.” Thanks, Doc.
So, Dear Reader, that brings us up to the present moment. I am presently on antibiotics to keep the sepsis at bay and tomorrow I see a surgeon who is known for doing complicated appendectomies. I have become quite experienced at emergency room visits and what I will say to all of you who are afraid of them is the following: The emergency room saves lives. If you are in so much pain that you cannot walk….go there. If you are in so much pain that you cannot speak without crying….go there. When you go there bring your phone and a charger and your headphones. Play games. Watch movies. Text your friends. In my case, they offered me morphine and by golly, I took it. My favorite emergency room is NYU Langone. However, apparently they screwed me by not ignoring the appendix so now, Mount Sinai is my go-to. I hope you never have to go to an emergency room but if you have to or if you know someone who has to, I hope this little entry helps you feel less alone. Happy Holidays! Happy and HEALTHY Holidays!