Hell Day

Yesterday:

Wow.

Just, wow.

An urgent care visit and an ER visit, both in the same day? Sigh.

Let's recap:

Morning: Family awakes up at 8am. Mama is stiff and sore and already has a migriane; very unusual for the morning. Mama takes Oxycodone. Family goes to Gymboree. Mama hides under play equipment and watches children play. Tries to explain to people who give her funny looks that she's in pain. Oxycodone takes away joint pain but not headache.

After Gymboree, go to the wholesale store for dye-free baby Tylenol and food. Migraine increases and is joined by queasiness, a brand new symptom in 10+ years of frequent migraine.

Go home. Daddy & Baby play while Mama tries desperately to sleep.

Around 4pm, I woke up crying and kinda half-screaming because the pain was that bad. This is the worst migraine I've had. Am trying to compare to childbirth. Don't remember crying during childbirth, only screaming. Go to Urgent Care with 30 seconds left for them to take new patients.

The Urgent Care doctor is calm and mumbly and moves carefully and not loudly. Reminds me multiple times that I need to go to a neurologist and he can refer one if I start going to him as my regular doctor. His nurse gives me a shot of Phenergan ("do not take while breastfeeding"!) for the nausea, but he refuses to give me migraine rescue meds because I'm still breastfeeding.

So he prescribes Vicodin ES. And Phenergen.

I told him Vicodin wouldn't work and could he just prescribe Frova? Even just one?

And he said no, I will not give you one dose of migraine rescue meds that are relatively safe for nursing, but here's 20 Vicodin.

So, well, I have plenty of Vicodin to deal with my join pain now. Which is helpful.

So we go home, and I go back to bed, and try to sleep. I awake up crying again and while B is in checking one me, we hear Elijah screaming in pain. B runs to him, and then I hear B's panicky voice telling Elijah, "Let me see, I have to see, let me see." Adrenaline dulls the pain for a moment and I jump up. With a slightly clearer head than B, I manage to see that Elijah has a gash on the inside of his lip and one on the outside. I assume he's bitten through his lip and kind of panic. I grab my shoes and the diaper bag and we go to the ER.

The bleeding stops on the way, and Elijah laughs at all the sick people in the waiting room. And runs around banging on chairs and cheering. I lean on a chair, trying not to throw up.

Eventually I suggested we just take him home and go to his regular doctor the next day, just to be safe. But then we got called into a room. I continued trying not to throw up while we waited for nurses and doctors. He screamed at them all, terrified of doctors now. I tried to ignore the world and my body while lying on the room's bed. B and Elijah named all the things in the room and watched Monk on the tv. (We were in Kids Care, and Monk was on TV. A woman murdered her husband on-screen. This didn't seem appropriate for the childrens' ward.) Then the doctor checked Elijah's lip, determined that the wound does NOT go all the way through, and sent us home.

Elijah fell asleep in the car with minimal fussing, we picked up my prescriptions, and then headed home. When I went to sleep at midnight, the pain was still there, but I was able to eat some mashed potatoes.

Today, Elijah is very short-tempered and I am very fragile, but we are alive, and okay, and things will be fine.



The happy patient.