How I amused a security guard

Or, the reason I only got three hours of sleep Monday night.

Monday Husband had been having abdominal cramps and really bad diarrhea all day.  Bad enough that Imodium was barely touching it.  He’d already decided that if he was still feeling that bad Tuesday morning he was going to the doctor, but we never made it that far. 

About 9:30pm Monday he walked out of the bathroom to inform me that there was blood in the diarrhea.  Arg.  COULD just be something minor, but it also could be something major.  And of course at 9:30pm there’s nothing open but the ER.  So off we go into Syracuse (neither of us having bothered to look into the little local hospital enough to be comfortable going there except under dire threat of life) to Saint Josephs Hospital. 

Now the last time I’d been in their ER it was cramped and dingy as hell.  I knew they’d done a bunch of upgrades, but wow did it look nice.  There was even plenty of seats!  What I didn’t expect was not only did they have improved security, you had to go through a metal detector to get in.  Seriously.  I know ER violence has been increasing, but metal detectors??

Anyway I’d not thought that far ahead, so not only did I still have my pepper spray on my keychain, but also a 15yr old leatherman and a pocket knife in my purse.  After about three trys of emptying my pockets  (and taking out my metal hair clip) I was still buzzing when I went through the detector, when my brain caught up with me and I realized I still had one more knife on me.  This one:

on the chain around my neck.  Oooops.  When I pulled it off the security guy just started laughing and said that was the smallest pocket knife he’d ever seen and to just stuff it in my purse and not stab anyone with it since he’d already sealed up the bag with the other “dangerous items”.  Guess I don’t look dangerous. 

By that time Husband had gotten checked in, and even made it through triage and was waiting for me.  Of course blood in your stool isn’t considered immediately life threatening so we sat and waited, and waited.  We finally got called into a room about 11:30, where the nurse drew blood, requested a urine sample and went over the various symptoms again.  And we waited again.  The Doc got to us about 12:45ish, and decided he wanted a CAT scan after doing his exam.  At which point I decided I’d better run home and let out the dogs since I was pretty sure it was going to be another couple hours at least.

Driving home at 1amish is interesting when its an hour or so after your normal bedtime.  Its even more so when a firefly decides to hitch a ride and then sit on the inside of the roof of the car just out of my line of sight and flash away.  It was highly distracting.

Got back to the hospital a little after 2am, I’d collected the various “dangerous items” from security on my way out, and was smart enough to lock them in my car this time instead of bringing them in.  So the metal detectors didn’t yell at me nearly as much this time.  Husband had just gotten back to his room after his CAT scan. 

About 3ish the Doc came back in and and informed us it looked like an inflamed colon to him, he was setting up IV antibiotics and pain meds and then we were free to go.  Of course he neglected to tell us that the IV stuff was going to take a 1/2hr to get set up and another almost 2 to administer……by the time we actually left (with prescriptions for more antibiotics and a recommendation to have Husband’s regular doc refer to him to a Gastro specialist) it was turning light outside, and it was full light by the time we got home.

Driving when you’re that sleep deprived is NOT A GOOD THING.  I pretty much crashed as soon as I got in the door.  Slept till almost 9am, when the dogs informed me that they wanted food, and staggered on with my day…..

Husband’s ok, his regular doc thinks it might just be caused by stress, he has been under some lately, but he’s got a referral to a gastro specialist just in case.