Fun and Games in the ER

I don't see things the way I used to.

To write this I have to look at it sideways, and sometimes I squint.  The number of lines can appear to change.  Two dimensions look like three.

Things blur.

Thursday my eyes felt a little crossed.  By Friday it was enough so that when I looked at distant objects, I saw two of them.

This could be anything.  Or so I thought.

Called our doctor he recommended seeing my ophthalmologist and if I couldn't talk to him, go to the ER because it could be something serious.  

So Mary drove to the ER at our local teaching hospital that I've been visiting far too often over the years, and I discovered some new things about it's secret corridors, passages and procedures.

And also that the MRI orifices stay open until deep into the night.

We had not had dinner when we rushed off at 5:30 or so to the Emergency room.  So I did not have my usual doses of antihistamine and nose sprays.  Or dinner for that matter.

Mary stolidly helped me though the process.  And the long waits.    

A likable young man asked me to remove my shirt, commenting that I hadn't been asked to do that in a while.

I told him that I was a fat old man so I don't like to remove it in front of people.

He then started put a needle into my arm and as I was muttering that I just went through that a week ago when I looked down and noticed that I had a catheter sticking out of my left arm.
 
Thus began this adventure in the ER, just a room or two over from where I think I was when I had come in to have my appendix removed.

I was given what appeared to be a standard neurological exam by an attractive young resident physician whose name sounded something like the name of one of the vets who work on our cats from time to time.

She chatted with her boss who was an attractive woman of perhaps my age who explained why my problem was probably not a tumor after a lengthy process that involved her waving her finger in front of my eye.

Thank GOD.

I always enjoy the company of attractive women, although given the amount of mutating chemo I've received over the years about all I can do is talk to them.  I feel a bit like someone examining a new and fascinating variety of fauna.

But I came to the realization that all I could do was be polite.

 An ophthalmologist was called for, and eventually one arrived.   A very tired ophthalmologist.

Drops in the eyes. Pressure test by pressing something that looked like a big ball point pen against my eyeball. More Drops.  Blinding light in the eye.

He had to fetch some other implements and get back to me.  It took a while.

He used a big lens.  He shined more light in my eyes.  He said my eyes are slightly crossed.

I looked up double vision on the web today and found the technical term: Diplopia.  That's it.

Diplopia was also on the exit papers.

I think he actually used the term Strabismus at some point in the conversation.   He said I should see my ophthalmologist.  He talked about corrective surgery.

Sometime in the middle of the long waits, Mary had found a blanket for each of us which we needed because our little curtained off area was right under the cold air outflow vent.   The blankets lessened the feeling that we were freezing to death.

Shortly after 11:30 I got to go take a ride in a dreaded MRI machine.   It has sounds like a wheezing bellows, loud low sirens, buzzes, vibrations and a peculiar jackhammer going off right in your ear.

I wonder sometimes, since I've been in these things before, how they managed to get that large an entertainment center around such a small doughnut hole.

The process was a little different this time than the other times I've been inside one of these bizarre contraptions.  No earplugs, just a towel around the top of my head and ears which fit inside the bird cage that holds my head.   Actually better than earplugs.  I tried the earplugs a couple of times in the past and they never worked.

The blanket was over me.  I got warm. Hot. Nauseated.  On top of that my sinuses were clogged because I had not had my evening's drugs to keep them unclogged.  I couldn't breathe properly

Nothing quite like hot nauseating suffocation while stuffed in a wiener shaped tube.

The technician sensed that I was in distress and removed the blanket and I felt a wave of relief.  But the nausea was hard to get rid of.  

Like all tortures, it ended. There is nothing as good as that first full breath. When you are magically slid out of the machine.

I recommend this as a torture, although I can't guarantee it will get people to talk, they will find it disturbing.  Especially with a little sleep deprivation; as was my case.

Well, back to the ER via the secret passages, and the cold room.  Since there was mere cloth between all of us various inmates, we got to listen to some of the problems that people had.  A young attractive woman bleeding and wanting to avoid a pelvic exam.  An old or not so old man with an uncomfortable case of cirrhosis of the liver; kidneys failing.  The ER doctor explaining that not all alcoholics get it but he had it so he had to stop drinking.

Eventually, sometime after 3:00 we were on our way back home.  The preliminary reading of the MRI indicated that nothing dangerous was going on inside my head. As we drove home where there was one person on the sidewalk, I saw two; there were two sets of yellow lines and the road either veered off in one direction or another depending on how I looked at it.

I thought to myself that I cannot drive like this.

The young nurse who catheterized me asked me what I did for work, and I said programming. Not referring to anyone in particular he said that a lot of the patients that came to the emergency room did not have jobs.    They simply had their bill paid for by the government.  Why work?

But he was working, I was working.  I told him it was for the good life.