Pain
I woke up feeling sore, the pain in my back had got worse. I was alright as long as I didn’t move. Moving was the problem. The muscles in my back would go into a painful spasm. Sometimes, it was a little twinge and that wasn’t too bad. Other times it was strong enough to make me gasp with pain. That was bad. I felt that staying in bed was a valid recovery option.
Departure
Loved One left for work telling me that if the pain got worse, I should go to the hospital. What she actually said was that I should ring her and she would take me to the hospital but the key part of the message was hospital.
Bus
The pain got worse so I felt that visiting the hospital was a good idea. I was hoping that a doctor would give me a quick look up and down, tell me to “man up” and send me home with a couple of aspirins. The walk to the bus stop was slow and full of winces. This was not a good sign. I don’t think the bus driver intended to hit every bump in the road but I felt he did.
Waiting
The first hurdle was the triage. The queue was five people deep but some of them didn’t look that bad. I was particularly unimpressed with the man with a cut who had come here to have it cleaned. That could have been done at his local GP. His excuse was that the queue was longer there. Eventually, I got to the desk and told my story whilst the triage nurse took notes. Then the waiting started
Room
I was called from the waiting room and placed in a little room. The nurse asked for my story again whilst taking my blood pressure and blood saturation. He then said that someone would be in to see me in a while. I plugged myself into a podcast as I felt this could be a long wait.
Nurse
An hour later a nurse came into the room and went through the same procedure. Nothing much had changed. She said that the doctor would be along soon.
Scans
An orderly came in and wheeled me down to the medical imaging department. I was taken straight into a room for a chest X-ray. This involved standing, lifting my arms and feeling a lot of pain. Next, we went to the CAT scan machine. I laid down on the bench and waited. The procedure involved putting something in my veins to add contrast. The side effect was to make me feel warm, get a bad taste in my mouth and then feel sick. It was at that point they turned the machine on.
Doctor
I was wheeled back to another room and told that the pictures would take a while to appear on the system. I did my best to fall asleep but failed. The doctor and Loved One arrived at the same time. The doctor delivered the news. On the plus side my liver and spleen were intact, the bad news was that I had a fractured rib and a slightly deflated lung. I was given a script for some strong painkillers and instructions to take deep breaths every hour or so.
Home
Loved One and I went home via the Chemists. I was feeling very pissed off as this whole episode had effectively wiped out a whole bunch of my plans over the next few months.
Helpless
What really frustrated me was that I felt helpless. Loved One wanted to help and that just made the feeling worse. I sat in front of the television whilst she did all the things that needed doing. I didn’t like not participating.
Bed
Getting into bed was tricky. I couldn’t find a way to get into bed without pain.