Sweet n Salty
The ER
I ended up in the ER the other night, right after I posted my last entry. I had reached up to scratch the inside of my nose and it started to bleed. I have frequent nose bleeds, so I figured I would pack it with a tissue and go on with my night. Except that tissue started to turn red, and it started to creep down the Kleenex. So I switched the tissue out. Went about getting ready for bed. Had to switch that tissue out. Then thought it was best to tilt my head back for a while so I lied on my back on my bed and pulled out Salt In My Soul and read a few entries. Then I had to cough, and when I did, a huge chunk of congealed blood came up. I spit it out in the bathroom and grabbed another tissue, and watched as blood steadily dripped into the sink. I remembered last year, not long after my second sinus surgery of the year. I remember blood running down my front, staining my skin as it went. I had a handful of Kleenex held up to my nose to curb the literal gushing. There was so much blood that it ran over and started running out of my other nostril. It was running down my throat and I was choking on it, and spitting up clots. I was leaning over the kitchen sink, shirtless, as blood spattered everywhere. It truly looked like a crime scene. We called 911. They rushed me to the hospital who watched and blood continued to spray from me like a faucet. It was spattered all over my front, and my face, and down my hands and my arms. They packed these huge, saline-filled gauze balloons in each nostril to put pressure on the hemorrhage, and lessen the bleeding.
They decided they were going to drive me down to Phoenix (via ambulance) to the bigger hospital, where I originally had my surgery done. We got maybe 10 minutes out of the hospital, when the ambulance got a call, and turned around. Apparently they had talked to an ENT doctor at the hospital, and he said he wanted me down there, stat. So they medivacced (helicoptered) me down to Phoenix. So what would have taken a two hour drive to get there, turned into a thirty minute flight. It was so surreal, even in my drug induced haze (they gave me pain medication to help with the discomfort of the ‘rhino rockets’ in my nose). It was a pretty open-plan helicopter so it was mostly windows, so I got to see out, the whole flight. I remember wanting to take some pictures or video to send to my parents but they were very strict about me taking my phone out at all. Then I got nervous because I couldn’t find my phone anywhere. I thought maybe it had been left behind in the hospital. So I was trying to look for it while strapped to a gurney, and the medic and the pilot getting annoyed with me starting to panic about not having my only form of communication with my family back home.
Once we arrived at the hospital in Phoenix (I ended up finding my phone underneath the gurney once they rolled me out - whew!), the rushed me inside. I can’t remember the exact order of events (between blood loss, and pain medication), but they started transfusing a couple of units of blood. The ENT doctor came to look at me, and decided that since the rhino rockets were working sufficiently enough, he didn’t need to perform emergency surgery on me. But they wanted to keep an eye on me, so I ended up spending three or four days in the hospital. They finally pulled the packing out on the third day. I cannot iterate the absolute relief that I felt. Before then, I couldn’t breathe through my nose at all, there was so much pressure inside of my head because of the packing, and my poor nose was entirely raw from everything. Once I got back home, one of the first things that I did was take a shower, and rinse all the dried, caked blood off of me. Though that incident might seem insignificant to some, I remembered the doctors saying that it was a severe hemorrhage and that I might have bled out, had they not stopped it in time. Hell, I was already so weak from the blood loss that I couldn’t transfer myself from the gurney to the bed in ICU in the Phoenix hospital.
So, naturally, when my nose wouldn’t stop bleeding the other night (and it seemed to be picking up) I just remember thinking ‘no, no, no. Not again!’ I remembered how scary it was the first time and how uncomfortable I was. So I tried to stay it out at home as much as possible, but after fighting it for an hour, I asked my sister to take me to the Er. When we got there, my blood pressure was 186/109. And while I’ve dealt with seriously high BP issues in the past, it had gotten better, so this was a bit of a surprise to me. But the nurse said that was probably why I got a nose bleed. And she said it so cavalier, it frustrated me. Because I knew what was going on, and how dangerous it become, and she thought I was just overacting over a minor nosebleed.
The other frustrating factor was when I finally went back. The doctor came to talk to me and I told him about my crushing headache that had slowly started to surface and he said he would get me some pain medication. I was so glad that I didn’t have to fight him on that. Because of the opioid crisis, it makes things that much harder for us legit chronic pain patients to get the care that we need. But when the nurse came in with the ‘pain medication’, she had a Tylenol for me to take. I had just taken Tylenol at home not more than a couple of hours before that for a toothache and it had done literally nothing for me! I told nurse that but she just shrugged it off and had me take it. I didn’t bother bringing it up to the doctor when he came back in, because I didn’t want to be labeled as a ‘drug seeker’, as one ER doc had already slapped that label on me the second he saw me (a different doctor, a while ago). But now I’m scared to speak up and advocate for myself, and my pain, because I don’t want to be denied and then looked at like I’m a drug addict.
But that’s a whole other story in an of itself. The opioid crisis is a huge problem in this country and I tend to think the ones that suffer the most because of it, are the ones that need it the most. Because we’re scrutinized and judged and labeled and it makes it almost impossible to get the real kind of care that we need.
They decided they were going to drive me down to Phoenix (via ambulance) to the bigger hospital, where I originally had my surgery done. We got maybe 10 minutes out of the hospital, when the ambulance got a call, and turned around. Apparently they had talked to an ENT doctor at the hospital, and he said he wanted me down there, stat. So they medivacced (helicoptered) me down to Phoenix. So what would have taken a two hour drive to get there, turned into a thirty minute flight. It was so surreal, even in my drug induced haze (they gave me pain medication to help with the discomfort of the ‘rhino rockets’ in my nose). It was a pretty open-plan helicopter so it was mostly windows, so I got to see out, the whole flight. I remember wanting to take some pictures or video to send to my parents but they were very strict about me taking my phone out at all. Then I got nervous because I couldn’t find my phone anywhere. I thought maybe it had been left behind in the hospital. So I was trying to look for it while strapped to a gurney, and the medic and the pilot getting annoyed with me starting to panic about not having my only form of communication with my family back home.
Once we arrived at the hospital in Phoenix (I ended up finding my phone underneath the gurney once they rolled me out - whew!), the rushed me inside. I can’t remember the exact order of events (between blood loss, and pain medication), but they started transfusing a couple of units of blood. The ENT doctor came to look at me, and decided that since the rhino rockets were working sufficiently enough, he didn’t need to perform emergency surgery on me. But they wanted to keep an eye on me, so I ended up spending three or four days in the hospital. They finally pulled the packing out on the third day. I cannot iterate the absolute relief that I felt. Before then, I couldn’t breathe through my nose at all, there was so much pressure inside of my head because of the packing, and my poor nose was entirely raw from everything. Once I got back home, one of the first things that I did was take a shower, and rinse all the dried, caked blood off of me. Though that incident might seem insignificant to some, I remembered the doctors saying that it was a severe hemorrhage and that I might have bled out, had they not stopped it in time. Hell, I was already so weak from the blood loss that I couldn’t transfer myself from the gurney to the bed in ICU in the Phoenix hospital.
So, naturally, when my nose wouldn’t stop bleeding the other night (and it seemed to be picking up) I just remember thinking ‘no, no, no. Not again!’ I remembered how scary it was the first time and how uncomfortable I was. So I tried to stay it out at home as much as possible, but after fighting it for an hour, I asked my sister to take me to the Er. When we got there, my blood pressure was 186/109. And while I’ve dealt with seriously high BP issues in the past, it had gotten better, so this was a bit of a surprise to me. But the nurse said that was probably why I got a nose bleed. And she said it so cavalier, it frustrated me. Because I knew what was going on, and how dangerous it become, and she thought I was just overacting over a minor nosebleed.
The other frustrating factor was when I finally went back. The doctor came to talk to me and I told him about my crushing headache that had slowly started to surface and he said he would get me some pain medication. I was so glad that I didn’t have to fight him on that. Because of the opioid crisis, it makes things that much harder for us legit chronic pain patients to get the care that we need. But when the nurse came in with the ‘pain medication’, she had a Tylenol for me to take. I had just taken Tylenol at home not more than a couple of hours before that for a toothache and it had done literally nothing for me! I told nurse that but she just shrugged it off and had me take it. I didn’t bother bringing it up to the doctor when he came back in, because I didn’t want to be labeled as a ‘drug seeker’, as one ER doc had already slapped that label on me the second he saw me (a different doctor, a while ago). But now I’m scared to speak up and advocate for myself, and my pain, because I don’t want to be denied and then looked at like I’m a drug addict.
But that’s a whole other story in an of itself. The opioid crisis is a huge problem in this country and I tend to think the ones that suffer the most because of it, are the ones that need it the most. Because we’re scrutinized and judged and labeled and it makes it almost impossible to get the real kind of care that we need.