Well. I had a super fun Friday, how about you? Let me set the stage:
Act 1 – Scene 1
Brittney gets up at the same time she always does and starts her morning routine. She puts on a pot of coffee, feeds her kittycat, then changes into her workout gear and hops on the treadmill for her morning jog.
Act 1 – Scene 2
Brittney’s about .4 miles into her run – barely getting started. She’s not even breathing hard yet. Just casually jogging along to classic 80s rock. Ya know. Like ya do.
All of a sudden, she gets a sharp, debilitating pain in her left side. Enough to force her to hop on the sides of the treadmill and yank the emergency shut-off doohickey, thinking it’ll go away in a second, like a stitch or whatever.
Act 1 – Scene 3
CUT TO – Brittney is lying on the ground beside her treadmill with no recollection of how she got there. She’s hot all over, but shivering like she’s freezing. She’s also sweating profusely and unable to catch her breath. Her darling husband is still asleep down the hall, which is just as well because she’s in so much pain, Brittney is unable to call out for help.
Then, her stomach rolls and she gets dizzy. She’s definitely going to throw up. Trying to avoid barfing on the carpet, she tries to get off the floor and make it the 20 feet down the hallway to the nearest bathroom. As she stands up, all hunched over and clutching her side like Quasimodo, her vision darkens and turns red. Aaaand, down she goes.
Act 2 – Scene 1
Brittney comes to on the floor outside the bathroom, with her husband leaning over her, white as a sheet. She’s still in excruciating pain and has no idea how long she’s been lying there, but her husband has grabbed his phone and is dialing 9-1-1. I guess waking up to finding your wife unconscious on the floor will do that to a man.
She manages to croak out, “no ambulance!” and after some negotiation, he hangs up (she has a thing against ambulances and emergency rooms…). Still writhing in pain, she rolls over into a modified child’s pose – head on the ground, knees under her, butt in the air. Rocking gently from side to side, she tries to will the pain away.
Act 2 – Scene 2
After about 10 minutes and with her husband’s help, Brittney is able to go lay down on the bed. The pain is still severe (understatement of the year, right there), but she’s not sweating so much and has regained her voice.
“I can’t go to work like this,” she manages. To which her husband replies, “no shit.”
He’s a man of few words.
And SCENE.
The rest of my day went about how you’d imagine. I call my doctor, even though it was still before 9am. I describe my symptoms to the answering service and within minutes, they’re calling me back with an earliest-available emergency appointment at 11am. Then I email my boss, telling him I had food poisoning, and collapse back on the bed. Little did I know.
The pain starts letting up enough to where I can stumble into the shower. Quincy takes off work, too, because I can’t drive myself. We arrive at the doctor, they send me for an emergency ultrasound…but the kind where I have to drink 64 oz of water in the hour before the appt. By the time they called me in for the ultrasound, I couldn’t sit down. r breathe. Or move too quickly. I HAD TO PEEEEEE.
Anyway…not surprisingly…guess what the ultrasound revealed? A large cyst on my left ovary. They weren’t certain whether it had twisted my ovary around (ovarian torsion) and then flipped back in place or if it had recently ruptured, but no matter what, it was there.
Food poisoning my ass. I should have known.
I have a follow up appt with Dr T next week, but for right now…I’m cancelling the visit with the fertility clinic. Gotta get this taken care of first.
Bummer.
My Stork Got Lost 