A Hospital Visit
...written on 07.31.03, @ 10:42 p.m.
Thu July 31, 2003
I felt it coming on yesterday. My throat was sore. I mentioned it to Tomo in passing. After class this morning, I came home and crashed.
My whistling cellphone jarred me awake. It was Bill from Nagoya calling to talk about our plans for this weekend. I had emailed him last night about my declining condition. I had no idea what time it was. Bill said my fever was too high and that I should go to the doctor. I said there was noone to take me and he insisted I go tell my landlady.
I crawled out of my futon, got dressed and took my temperature. I took the thermometer downstairs with me to show my landlady. I asked her if she could help me and both she and her husband drove me to the hospital and stayed with me for four hours out of the six hours I was there. My temp was 102.56 F (39.2 C). The diagnosis was tonsillitis.
At one point I was taken upstairs to see the eyes, ear, throat specialist. He was under the mistaken impression that if he screamed then I would be able to understand what he was saying to me. He did this while he had a sharp instrument going through my nasal passage down to my throat. He was yelling a command of some sort and my dear little landlady translated half of it, but it was the half I already knew and he apparently wanted me to get the other half. Buddha, did that hurt! I just felt so awful that tears just streamed nonstop down my face for ten minutes after.
I had blood work done and then was taken down to the IV room. The nurse asked me if I could do something myself. Was I going to give myself an IV? Then she handed me a little silver packet and said that it would help my fever go down and she kept saying "hip", "hip". I couldn't imagine them wanting me to give myself an injection in the hip, but all was clear when I unwrapped the package to find a white waxy bullet shaped pill. I told her I could do it myself and she pulled the curtains while I took care of it.
Then she injected my arm in two places, told me not to touch it for 15 minutes. I imagine it was a test to see if i could take getting an IV. I went outside to call work so they could find a replacement for me as the doctor told me to stay out for the next couple of days.
They told me the IV was going to take two hours! I felt bad already at having inconvenienced my landlady, so I told her to go shopping or something. She said she'd go home and that someone would be back to get me at 7:00pm.
There were six to eight other beds in the room and it was noisy, but I managed to sleep and sweat off and on. I was dreaming that Min was there and that I could feel him holding my hand and when I opened my eyes, there he was!
He said that he had been driving to a meeting in Sekigahara when my landlady called him and told him I was in the hospital. He turned around right then and headed back to Ogaki. He told me I was to call him anytime I was sick or in an accident because he always wanted to be there for me.