Life's like that!

Just when you think you're cruising along; a little anxious, a little stressed, generally happy, generally glad that the Commonwealth Games ended (and that Australia didn't win EVERY medal), a little bit excited about booking our Christmas holidays in Perth and Broome...

Boom... you wake up in immense pain and get whisked off to hospital in an ambulance.

Yep, that was me on Monday night. Went to bed with a slight ache in my left hip, woke up at midnight feeling the most horrendous pain I have ever had the misfortune to feel. Couldn't quite soldier on so woke my valiant husband (who, thinking I was talking in my sleep - which I incidentally never do - tells me to go back to sleep). In a panic, he runs around like a chook with his head chopped off, calls an ambulance and then tries to call a) our friends and neighbours (answering machine), b) my dear sister (doesn't answer calls from "private numbers" - sheesh!) and c) my poor dad (who certainly doesn't need panicked phone calls in the middle of the night).

Ambulance arrives and two calm young ladies assess the situation (which isn't pretty) and produce something they call a whistle (a plastic whistle-like device filled with pain killer medication) which I am meant to suck on and which will eventually make me feel better. This stuff tastes friggin' awful, I mean bloody disgusting... surely it wouldn't cost them any more to make it taste like lobster sashimi or possibly something more pedestrian like bubblegum or mashed potatoes or even a cheese and tomato toasted sandwich. I cry... the pain, combined with this vomit inducing "pain medication", is making me feel very sorry for myself. I become a shaking, sweating, crying, wobbling lump of patheticness.

In the hospital I am greeted with an efficient looking middle-aged woman... aah, the triage nurse (who will skillfully assess my distraught situation and have me whisked immediately into top class care). Well, no! Being a private hospital the first person to greet you when you arrive in a [presumably] emergency induced state is a clerk whose job it is to inform you that the cost of admission to Emergency is $295 and if you are admitted to the hospital proper it will be ... well, at this point I was so dumb-struck by this act of outright idiocy I tuned out and just nodded dumbly. For f's sake they don't even tell you how much a haircut is going to cost until you saunter up to the counter afterwards and are informed it will cost you the Gross National Product of a small African country to have had your ends trimmed.

Finally I'm in my own cubicle and I get roundly ignored by all and sundry. Eventually a bored nurse turns up to take my blood pressure and take a blood sample. A geological age later a doctor who, by all appearances, would rather be having root canal treatment rather than be in that particular emergency room on that particular evening, appears and informs me that my pain could be caused by either kidney stones or by a ruptured cyst. They'll do some tests in the morning. I get a shot of morphine and soon after I couldn't care about the pain or anything else for that matter. Jason arrives. I am dozing and he tries to sleep in one of those incredibly uncomfortable chairs which they manufacture exclusively for hospital rooms. After watching him squirm and fidget through my half closed eyelids I finally convince him to go home and get some sleep.

In the morning I wake up to more of the warm and comforting patient care I encountered the night before. After a brief check of my blood pressure (they are obssessed with blood pressure in hospitals - how about a little more concern for MY PAIN!!!!) I am informed that they need a urine sample and that I can't eat anything until they figure out what's wrong with me in case they need to operate. Goody. Sample provided I return to bed for more dozing. I am informed I am to have an ultrasound at 11:00 am.

My dear sister arrives. All is forgiven for not answering the phone. She brings trash magazines. They make me feel even worse... not more pain, just worse about the world, about the trees which were cut down to print this mind-numbing crappola and about the need for publications which publish 97% bullshit (I am assuming the recipes have at least been tested and are probably accurate). It is truly amazing that they can fill however many pages with complete fabrications based on little more than a few bad photos and the editors' own imagination.

Finally I am taken for my ultrasound. It couldn't come any sooner, the requisite full bladder is not the most comfortable sensation on top of my painful hip and lower back area. After the regular ultrasound I am "treated" to an internal ultrasound - modern technology... where will it all end? The ultrasounds reveal a large ovarian cyst on the right side (not explaining the pain on the LEFT SIDE) and many fibroids in the uterus.

I return to my cubicle to be greeted by "lunch". As I take a tentative sip of my clear soup the nurse rushes in to tell me that I can not eat anything until they decide that I am definitely not having an operation. Sadly I watch them take away my lunch tray. Not long after the gyno VMO turns up to explain that the cyst and the fibroids are what they call "incidental findings" and do not explain the pain which he now suggests are skeletal/muscular (huh?). He gives me a arthritis type pain killer and says to make an appointment with his office in regard to having the cyst removed.

I go home feeling rather bemused by the past 12 hours and wondering what it all means. The pain is much better. I feel fairly confident I am not dying. I feel slightly irritated at having wasted a day at the hospital and getting my family all upset over nothing.