I got to visit Urgent care AND the Emergency Room all in one day!
Last week Jerry went to Missouri to teach some class, he left Monday and I had such plans for the 3 days he was to be gone, it was Valentines Day. The boys and I had things to do and we were going to be busy! Monday Zachary wasn't feeling his best but he was doing ok, we went to swim lessons and Jerry called and all of a sudden I felt something coming on...oh great, whatever, I'll be fine. We went home and I made the boys soup and that was as far as I got, I laid down on the couch and was out for the count. I barely made it to 7 o'clock (thank god the boys can't tell time yet!) I sent the boys to bed and crawled into bed myself. The next morning my alarm went off and there was no way I could get up and take Zachary to school and then pick him back up and hour later, just no way. So I waited 45 minutes, drifting in and out of sleep and called the school. I told the lady who answered that Zachary would not be at school because he was sick, she said "you don't sound to good yourself", talk about an understatement!
I really thought I had the flu. The last time Jerry went out of town about 3 weeks earlier I got sick but was fine about 24 hours later so I figured this would be the same, at least this time Jerry didn't take the Tylenol with him. I took some Tylenol and sudafed left over from the last time I was sick. I noticed I could not swallow, not even my own saliva! That's never good. My throat wasn't especially soar, I just couldn't swallow, I'd try to take a drink and a small amount of water would trickle down my throat but that was it, I'd have to spit the rest out of feel like I was drowning.
The boys were mostly on their own for the day. Jerry called and said I sounded horrible, yeah well, I felt worse. The boys made themselves peanut butter roll-ups, grabbed an apple and cheese stick for lunch then snacked on fruit snacks and rice crispy treats. When Jerry called I told him I needed someone to come feed the boys dinner because I couldn't stand for very long and would not be able to do it. He was able to get Susan to come by when she finished work. She brought over pizza, fed the boys and got them to bed for me.
I really thought I would be feeling at least a little better on Wednesday. Boy was I wrong. First of all, I couldn't sleep because of the not being able to swallow thing. I hadn't eaten since early Monday, I had barely drank anything since Monday either, that was all taking a toll on top of just being sick. When my alarm went off on Wednesday I felt even worse. The thought did cross my mind to call an ambulance to take me to the emergency room but I had no one to watch the boys. I tried to call the school but was totally incoherent on the phone. I got 2 phone calls from the school advising me that Zachary was absent and I would need to send a note to allow him back into school. Wonderful. It was also class picture day, which I already paid for because it was supposed to be several weeks ago but school was cancelled on the original day for snow, so now I've paid for a picture Zachary won't even be in. So Wednesday I'm feeling even worse. I started throwing up flecks of blood. Wonderful. I can't drive myself to the doctor, I can't even stand, I can barely walk to the bathroom.
Jerry knows how sick I am, he's supposed to be back today, surely he left early, it's a 4-5 hour drive. He called at 9am, surely he's almost home....NOPE. He hasn't even left yet! I told him I needed to go to the doctor as soon as possible. I haven't been able to eat or drink in 3 days. He says he'll be home in a few hours. Surely he'll hurry back and not stop for lunch, right? Nope. He stops for a nice lunch at a nice restaurant with his boss, easily adding an additional hour to his drive back. The boys were on their own again. Granted they did get a little overzealous this day and attempted to cook corndogs in the toaster oven but geeze, had someone left early and not stopped for a long leisurely lunch on the way home they could have been here and had me at the doctor BEFORE lunch time and the boys would not have had to make themselves lunch. Jerry got home and was pissed, like I had been out partying or something. I could literally barely stand and he's mad because there is a small mess because I have no one to help me when I'm sick.
Then when Jerry got home, he took a 2 HOUR NAP because he didn't think Urgent Care was open yet. I called my doctor, I could barely talk at this point, the doctors office had a very hard time understanding me over the phone but the earliest they could see me was 2pm the next day, no way I could wait. I told Jerry to take me to Urgent Care now, he said they don't open until 4 or 5, it was only 2, so he took a nap! At 4 he called Urgent Care and found they opened at 8AM! So he finally took me. Found I had the worst case of strep they'd seen, my tonsils were so swollen they were touching which is why I could not swallow. And since I'm on blood thinners there was very little they could do for me. They prescribed me antibiotic (the biggest pills I've ever seen in my life, of course, I have problems swallowing, prescribe me the biggest pills on the planet!) and magic mouthwash, it's a numbing mouthwash, not that I was in pain but whatever. We went home and within an hour I was throwing up blood, a lot of blood. That is never good but for someone on blood thinners that's really, really bad. I was very surprised that Urgent Care didn't send me straight to the ER when they found out I hadn't had anything to drink in nearly 3 days. When Jerry called to tell them I threw up blood they said to go to the ER. Justin came over to watch the boys.
We went to the ER. We waited 2 hours just to get to triage. I felt horrible. It was like someone could have walk in with a hole in their head and everyone would have still been watching me to see when I was going to fall over. The doctor in the ER was wonderful. I grossed him out, and you've got to admit, that takes a lot to gross out an ER doctor. My tonsils/strep was just that bad. Even though it took an additional 2 hours after triage to get back to the ER in a room, it was nearly midnight before I got back there. They checked my INR and it was 4.8! They figured when I got sick (threw up) it ruptured my tonsils and that's where the blood came from and since my INR was already so high they were just going to treat me the way they would treat anyone else because they had to get my tonsils back down so I could eat and drink. They gave me IV fluids because I was so dehydrated, gave me steroids to shrink my tonsils, gave me antibiotics to start fighting the strep. By the time I left about an hour and a half later I felt much better and could already swallow.
The whole next day Jerry stayed in bed aside from taking Zachary to school and picking him up. I had to go to the store, make all the meals etc. Even though I was still pretty sick. Needless to say I'm still a bit bitter about all of this. I'm never this sick, I always work through being sick, this is the one time I literally could not do it and I had no help whatsoever.
My INR is now back in range so that's good.
I took Kaleb to the doctor the next day and he has strep, Zachary was also put on antibiotics because he was sick too. Now on Sunday the next week the boys are not done with their antibiotics yet and Zachary is coughing and hoarse and sick sounding again....Winter needs to just DIE!
