Trim Your Nails and Lost on the Interstate

 

 

After spending the night in the ICU at the local hospital, the staff was still scrambling trying to figure out what to do with me.  They claimed they had called all of the other nearby hospitals, and supposedly no one wanted to take me.  

BUT… they did find a place to send me in Salt Lake City, about 3 hours south of where I was.  It’s still snowing pretty hard outside, but they were determined to get me there on a fixed wing flight. 

The firefighters came to load me up, put me on an extremely narrow gurney that was hard as a rock. I asked if there was a chance I could sit up during the flight. I was told to ask again once we were up in the air.

About 30 minutes in air, and my butt has gone numb, and I’m losing sensation in my legs. I ask again, can I please sit up. Apparently not, it’s some kind of liability issue.  

The flight was probably an hour long, but it was incredibly miserable. I had assumed they were taking me to the Huntsman Cancer Center, but I had assumed incorrectly. I was going to one of the local hospitals. 

Another 20 minutes on the ground from airport to hospital. And not only am I in intense pain, but my mouth is dry. Flying on a good day always leaves me parched. 

I’m taken to some room, moved to another gurney. This one is equally uncomfortable. And then they left me there… for a good three hours. A nurse stopped by occasionally to make sure I hadn’t fallen off the gurney. I asked for some water and she disappeared for another hour. Finally she came back with one of those stupid sponge lollipops and it was D-R-Y.  

Finally, the doctor came in and they wheeled me into yet another back room. Without any local, she just started poking and probing in my now very raw and very tender vaginal canal. She decided she needed to pack the vagina with whatever they use to pack it with, to see if that would help slow down the bleeding. Every poke hurt worse than the last.

“Someone needs to trim their nails”. I said. 

“Huh?”

“I said someone needs to trim their nails, because you are scraping my insides with every single poke, and it hurts REAL bad”

“But I don’t have any nails” says the doc. 

The pain kept intensifying.

“STOP! You are hurting me and I’m going to break out my vocabulary and start cursing at you if you don’t do something about this pain”

So the doc paused what she was doing. I was in so much pain, they had to give me morphine. Then she showed me her hands to prove she didn’t have any nails. She applied a local anesthetic to where she was working, and completed her task.

The next day, some guy in a lab coat came to my room.

“We’ve figured out what’s going on…. But we don’t have the capability of taking care of you here. How do you feel about going to the hospital in Idaho Falls?”  Idaho Falls is about 30-45 minutes north of where I live.  

“Great. I said. I know more people there than I do here”.

“You’re leaving by ambulance in the morning”

 

 

So the following morning, two EMTs show up to whisk me back to Idaho. In the middle of yet another snow storm. 

About an hour south of our destination, the driver decided he needed to stop for fuel. He took the very first exit coming from the south thinking he could just stop, fuel up, and get right back on the interstate.  That particular exit does not bring you back onto the interstate, and the first two fuel stations he came across had been closed for years.  So he meandered around Pocatello, trying to figure out how to get a- find a place he could fuel up and b- get back onto the interstate.

In the meantime, my body decided it needed to hemorrhage again. And these guys had NOTHING in the back of their ambulance.  The attendant in the back called up to the driver to let him know of our situation.  As soon as the driver found a place to fuel up, he came to the back to assist. We got me somewhat under control, fuel in the tank. I asked which exit we were at. Then I looked at the driver and said,  “Okay. So here’s the deal. You’re only about 8 exits at the very most from our destination. Just get on the interstate going north. Once you pass Blackfoot, follow the signs for the Hospital and you won’t get lost again.”

About an hour later, we arrived at the hospital in Idaho Falls. 

 

Until next time…