The Rumors of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated (Part Deux)

(When last we left our plucky heroine -- Part I -- she was busy being slapped and wanting to pee, and terribly disappointed at the lack of a Machine That Goes PING. )

As the afternoon wore on, I spent the time mumbling and pushing The Button. They hooked some more things to me -- enough electrode adhesives that I resembled a hyperactive 3-year-old's sticker booklet, a telemetry machine that apparently did something, but did not go PING. Eventually I was introduced to Dr. Napier, who would be my on-call physician overnight. (Of course the first thing I asked Dr. Napier was if he was related to Charles Napier. He looked at me quizzically. "The Blues Brothers?" I said. "Bob's Country Bunker?" Nothing. I gave up.)

If you looked up "tall, dark, and handsome" in a dictionary, there would be a picture of Dr. Napier. He was like a cross between the George Clooney and Johnny Depp of on-call physicians. I imagine that Dr. Napier is tremendously popular with all the nurses and patients, even the semi-conscious ones. Hell, maybe even the unconscious ones. When I talked to one of the nurses about something Dr. Napier had said, she replied, "Oh, yes, Dr. Napier, he's really...nice." Emphasizing "nice" in that way that made it clear that Dr. Napier would be even nicer if he'd take his shirt off. But I digress. He seemed very knowledgeable and competent and sharp, which is the important thing. Mostly.

Dr. Napier took a look at the Foley catheter receptacle and said, "This concerns me." It seems the bag was still mostly empty. If he was concerned, I was concerned. If he had told me they were going to sell me off for medical experimentation, I would have said, "Sure, whatever you want." He then listed a number of steps they would take to address his concerns, something about a bolus of fluids, lasix, and an abdominal CT. He said this all very calmly. They hooked me up to a machine that takes your blood pressure every 10 minutes. After a couple of cycles, he looked even more concerned. "Let's get that CT scan," he said.

They weren't about to have me try to stand up again after the last fiasco, so in some manner involving a sheet they transferred me to a gurney. I don't remember much of that, except the disconcerting feeling that if they weren't careful my abdomen was going to burst open like a pinata and it wouldn't be candy that would come spilling out. We went through a series of doors and elevators and hallways while the theme music from "Get Smart" played in my head. They has sent me with the assistant-assistant nurse, probably so that if anything happened to me on the way, they would have plausible deniability. Finally we ended up at the CT scanner place, which seemed to be somewhere in the bowels of the hospital. It was dark and quiet and soothing, and the scanner was manned by three very pleasant young men in scrubs.

They transferred me to the Scanner Gurney (or whatever it's called) and ran me through a couple times, telling me to put my arms up over my head and hold my breath. When they seemed satisfied, they stopped. One of the scanner guys asked me to sit up. I said, "I don't think that's a good idea." He said it would only be for a minute.  What could it hurt?

I was right, and it was a very bad idea. As soon as I was upright, I felt an intense wave of nausea. I barely had time to register the thought that, "Boy, am I nauseated," before I projectile vomited all over the CT scanner and the pleasant young man standing next to it. And when I say "projectile vomited," I mean Saturday-Night-Live-Will-Ferrell-Parody projectile vomiting. I mean Linda-Blair-Exorcist projectile vomiting. I mean six-foot-distance-several-quarts-of-fluorescent-yellow-goo projectile vomiting. 

There was a slight pause. Then I vomited again. And again. Everyone was rushing around trying to find something for me to vomit in. First try was a partial cardboard box, which proved inadequate. Then there was something like a plastic sleeve, which proved even less adequate than the cardboard box. Finally somebody emptied some kind of a container full of something that made a clattering noise when it hit the floor. I hope it wasn't expensive. Eventually I stopped vomiting. I apologized profusely to the pleasant young man now covered in fluorescent yellow goo. He said, "Don't worry, it's not the worst thing that's happened to me," but he sounded like he was lying. 

Next thing I remember, I'm back up in my room, and Dr. Napier is still looking concerned. He's also looking very disapprovingly at the numbers on the blood pressure machine. I eventually learned that was because numbers that low are considered "incompatible with life." Yikes. Turns out the CT scan had showed I had a large hematoma in my abdomen that had collapsed my bladder, and that event had followed backward up the chain of command until it was throwing my whole system off. Add to that the fact that I was very probably overly dehydrated when I went into surgery (thanks to the bowel prep stuff I drank on Sunday), and the fact that I had spent 20 minutes vomiting on everything, and it was a perfect storm, but not the kind where William Fitchner has the Southie accent.

For a while, it was just fluids, blood pressure readouts where they called out numbers like a really boring game of bingo, a parade of phlebotomists tasked to draw blood every hour, and lots of people looking very concerned. At least until the spiders.....

(This is turning out much longer than I had anticipated. I blame Stephen King. To be continued....)