SICK

So my entire family is/was sick. Crystal had more horrible facial pain in her face last week, resulting in another trip to the hospital. Then we all developed some sort of stomach virus or food poisoning, and various substances were coming out of random orifices, etc. It was a good end of the week/weekend.

Crystal's hospital visit was a nightmare of truly astonishing proportions. The last time we were there, they treated her in the fairest and best way ever. While they tried to get her pain under control, they let her stay in the hospital for a couple days for monitoring, and only when they felt her condition was treated did they let her leave. Last week, the admitting doctor upstairs in the hospital proper told her flat-out that because she had come to the hospital for help with her Vicodin addiction in the past, he would not be giving her any pain meds. Nevermind the fact that downstairs in the E.R., where we had just spent a couple hours, they were giving her morphine and dilaudid to try and control her pain.

Crystal basically imploded. She didn't know what to do. They were telling her that she was going to have to sit there all night and be in pain, while they would treat her with Tylenol and a hot pack. We wouldn't have been in the fucking hospital if the problem could have been treated at home, now would we? The doctor told her that he didn't feel she was really in pain, and implied she was there to score drugs again. We waited down in the E.R. for hours, and Crystal even went through an MRI, one of the scariest things she's ever done (she's claustrophobic and has panic-anxiety..."Okay, now hold perfectly still and don't move for about forty-five minutes while trapped in this tight spinning tube"). If we were really there to score drugs, we would have left HOURS AGO. Not to mention that I wouldn't have taken any part of it. We're not ending up where we were before, thanks.

I was livid, Crystal was devastated...we left, after Crystal made a huge scene in front of all the nurses and patients, at 11:00 at night. Normally I would have been embarrassed by that sort of thing, but I was too angry at that fucking doctor to even care what the rest of the hospital thought. My wife was in horrifying pain and they were refusing to help her because of something she had sought help for before. Fucking ridiculous. She spent the rest of the night in bed, sobbing hysterically and feeling like she was never going to be able to get help again. It was absolutely horrible.

She got help the next day from her primary doctor, which was basically a life-saver. I don't know what we would have done without it. She got her nerve-meds refilled and he gave her a prescription for some pain meds, which worked to get everything under control again. I think in the future she has to make sure she has her nerve meds on hand if she needs them. She didn't get the last prescription filled because the pain had ebbed a bit, and her primary suggested she stop taking them to see what happened. Next time we'll know it comes and goes.

So after all that, this stomach virus completely destroyed us. Evelyn was sick and puking all day, then Crystal got it, and then it passed to me. I threw up so much that I haven't had a voice for two days. It's actually worse today. It's never happened to me before, and I didn't even know throwing up could do that. Was in the stomach acid? Or the retching itself? Or is it something completely coincidental? All I know is it fucking sucks. I'm already worried about being back at work after having missed the end of last week and yesterday. I could be suspended for five days, or perhaps even fired if they're feeling especially vindictive, and now I have no voice to even make calls today. Not exactly feeling like a contributing member of the team, here. I've been here for almost three hours so far and they haven't said anything, but that could always change.