Our town is a hick town. Drunks, drug addicts, all around crazy people. I got stuck in the waiting room with them. One woman brought her whole damn family (and more kept showing up) while she sat there and screamed at people and hacked bloody phlegm in an emesis basin as LOUD as she could. Gross. A guy came in who was so incredibly sick he had to keep going outside to chat on his cell phone and kept coming back inside bitching about the wait while his girlfriend was sitting there pale, shaking, and just ghastly looking. She went back long before he did, he was none too pleased.
The transport guy who took me to CT before I got a room was a complete jerk. He decided he would bitch to me about how his "bitch of a coworker" faked sick and he was the only transport person in the ER that night. Then he proceeded to say "damnit why don't you smile" to me, to which I responded that I couldn't and to please just leave me alone. I didn't want to be rude to him but I just wasn't enjoying his company at all. Good thing my CT scan only took a few minutes.
I got a room finally and waited around for a doctor who was really great, and diagnosed me with Bell's Palsy. The right side of my face is pretty much paralyzed. I had NO IDEA that the ear pain and disgusting taste in my mouth that I'd been having for a few days was really the beginning of Bell's Palsy but alas, it was. I got prednisone and valtrex and was about to be sent on my way when they decided they wanted to take my BP. The HORROR associated with that is something I won't soon forget. The cuff just kept INFLATING. My arm turned blue and I got the pins and needles feeling in my arm and it just kept inflating. The nurse kept saying "relax your arm or it'll just get tighter!" I know she meant well, but relaxing your arm when it feels like something is about to crush it just doesn't happen easily.
By that point, I'd had enough. Overwhelmed by the fact that I had a paralyzed face and the blood pressure cuff leaving red marks all over my arm that are still there, I cried. I have a feeling when I left the 2 nurses were laughing at me for crying over a BP cuff, but I really don't care. I love MOST nurses, my best friend is a nurse, but there comes a point where it just becomes too much to handle all at one time.
On top of everything else, my grandmother was admitted to the hospital today. NOTHING seems to be going right for me anymore. Sometimes I just want to give up.
I took some pics of what the BP cuff did to my arm, but it's kind of hard to see because I was trying to take the pics of my own upper arm. It's harder than I thought.
