I thought I knew pain until yesterday...................

Yesterday started like any other day, my early morning focus on getting a cup of coffee. While it was brewing, I went into check on a resident who had not been feeling well the night before. He had thrown up, so off to the shower we went. Problem was he was too weak to handle a shower so I cleaned him up best I could, and called the family to see how they wanted to handle things. Somewhere during this time, I noted a stitch in my left side, but put it out of my head to focus on caring for him. Family decided to transport him to the hospital instead of calling 911. By the time I got him into the van and on his way to the hospital, my stitch was a little worse, more like cramps when you have to go to the bathroom.

Again, I pushed it to the back of my mind and went about getting my other dependent resident dressed and fed. When she was half finished, the pain was getting worse, to the point of making me vomit. Those faint of heart stop reading.... I would give her a bite or two of food, try and lay down for a minute to reduce the pain, go in and be sick, and repeat the process until she was done. The only hurdle was getting her transfered into her (safe) recliner chair, but I managed to do this in spite of the doubleing over pain.

Two hours from the first sign of discomfort, I finally decided this was not going to get better on it's own. Remember (my) Mister was still on vacation and a good two hours from home. I started calling my other emergancy contacts, and couldn't get anyone on the phone. Then I started calling anyone whos number was in my memory and leaving messages. I finally called (my) Mister and told him he needed to get home, I was calling 911. By this time, the pain was so bad that I could hardly talk, so I am sure I freaked him out by not giving him better details. I called one of my resident's son, and thank God he was home and said he would be right over. Then I called 911, and managed to state my need for an ambulance and a police officer to watch over the OPs until help arrived.

The EMTs showed up about three minutes later (I was pretty impressed with that) and between retching and trying to breath through the pain they took a quick history and got me loaded in the ambulance.

Being a therapist, I have used the pain scale hundreds of times to ask someone about their pain, but it had never been an issue for me personally. When the nice EMT stated that he guessed my pain was a 10 (0 being the least 10 being the worst) I gaspt out that it was more like 25! He got on the radio and got permission to give me morphine for the pain. All this did was make my head fill funny, and didn't touch the pain at all.

By focusing on my breath, I was holding it together somewhat, and finally made it to the hospital, you know, the place with the good drugs. They got me into a cubicle, and the nurse informed me they couldn't give me anything until a doctor saw me and there were two people ahead of me. In retrospect, that was just mean. That was one of those situations in which a kind lie is called for. It is not like I was really aware of time, and had she told me a doctor would be right in I know I would have felt better than knowing I had to wait longer. At that point, what little composure I was hanging onto left and I started crying and moaning. I discovered that by moaning, I could focus on that and not the pain so much, so I layed there and moaned just like I was having a baby (Only I never really moaned when I was delivering my kids. Childbirth was nothing compared to this pain.)

When the doctor showed up, I was on my hands and knees (not an easy postion to get into on one of those little cots, with an IV in your hand, and a fuzzy head from morphine). This doc was VERY sweet, ask me as few questions as possible and got me some medication for the pain. If you have not already guessed, she thought I was passing a kidney stone. They gave me of all things Motrin 800 through the IV and within three minutes my pain was almost gone. When the doctor came back, she joked with me that is was my postion that gave the diagnosis away. Aparently I was not the first kidney stone victim that she saw the backside of before seeing their face.

I will save you anymore gory details, but today I am much better. I have to strain my urine for a week and save the sludge to take to my doctor to be sure it passes I guess. So far, only one person has acidently peed into my toilet hat, but I am sure it will be fine.

Anyone else want to share their most painful experiences? I would love to hear how you handled it.

P.S.
This morning I finally got my coffee, and had a much more normal morning. My resident ended up being admitted, so please remember him in your prayers.