The Magical Mystery Tour

This past Monday night at some hour, I was taking the magical mystery tour across my apartment for one of several nightly trips to the bathroom when the lights went out. Not literally because I always sleep in total darkness but figuratively because my own lights went out. This was the first time in my life something had happened to me that I had no recollection of at all. I mean none. All I know is that I woke up in bed with cuts and bruises on both arms plus my forehead and a terrible, constant pain in my left side and back. So I call it the magical mystery tour because I remember nothing about it at all.

The pain in my back and side didn’t subside any on Tuesday so I stayed home in a prone position, convinced the pain would be less the next day, and it seemed to be so. I was able to get out of the house on Wednesday, run a few errands and even go to happy hour without the constant pain I had been suffering the day before. So I thought the worse was over.

It wasn’t. Wednesday night the pain came back with a vengeance and wouldn’t leave. I’ve never been much for taking medicine because of faith in the body to heal itself. So before my heart attack three years ago, I had never been on a prescribed dosage of ANY medicine for the long term. But by Thursday morning, the pain was so intense and constant that I started taking two full-strength aspirin every four hours to try and ease the pain. Although it helped some, it didn’t help enough so Thursday afternoon, I decided to go to the doctor. I know I should have gone sooner but it seems to me every time we pay a visit to our doctor, they find something we didn’t know we had and that nefarious expectation usually kept me away but not this time. I couldn’t stand the pain anymore that caused me to cry out loud in anguish every time I moved the wrong way so I called the clinic to see if my primary health provider could fit me in for a visit. I was disappointed to discover that not only could they not see me, but they were also weren’t even at the clinic for the rest of the week so I did the only thing I knew to do and that was to go to the emergency room.

I told a few friends what I was doing and they all volunteered their services to take me but since I only live across the street from our hospital and emergency room, I figured I could make it on my own which I did. We’re always hearing good things and bad things about local health care and McCook is no different so I didn’t really know what to expect. But I was greeted right away by personnel who seemed to put my well-being first in their minds and that was a great relief to me. The attending physician in the emergency room yesterday was Dr. Christina Nguyen and I couldn’t have asked for better care. She put me through a battery of exams including constant blood-pressure monitoring as well as an MRI on my head because when I fell, I obviously fell head-first, my ribs to see if anything was broken and my lungs and kidneys. I appreciated they were following all the protocols to find out what was wrong with me but I was still in constant pain. That was eventually taken care of by giving me a strong pain-killer while awaiting the test results which worked like a charm.

Dr. Nguyen re-appeared to tell me I had broken two ribs in my fantasy fall. Ribs take forever to heal so she informed me the only pro-active thing they could do was to keep the pain I was experiencing manageable until the ribs began to heal. So with a hand-full of prescriptions in tow, I was dismissed from the emergency room and went directly to my pharmacy where I secured the miracle drugs that will hopefully keep me sane until the sharp pains from my injury subside.

They worked the first day and I expect they will keep on working. My hat is off to the team of nurses, doctors and health care professionals who put my needs first and worked hard to both diagnose my injury and treat it. At least as far as my injury was concerned, I give the emergency room at our local hospital an A+.

It’s good to know you have someplace to go where you’ll be in good hands should that need ever arise.