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Excitement in the ICU
Jul. 27th, 2005 11:33 pmYesterday, I discovered that if you're going to have a medical emergency, the best place to do it is the Intensive Care Unit. Particularly if you're one of the people who is supposed to be up walking around taking care of the people who are critically ill in their beds. Before freaking out ensues, let me point out to you that I'm home, updating my journal and just fine.
As I've written about in some of my more recent journal entries, I haven't been feeling 100%. I'd say I've been running more around 75% lately, tired, achy, muscles twitchy, sleeping a ridiculous amount and overall, not at all well. Yesterday, I overslept my alarm, woke up and felt positively foul, but still pulled it together and went to work. The morning started out OK, I was up on 5B, our neuro ICU, saw 3 patients, was talking with some of the nurses (ironically, about how I hadn't been feeling well, and trying to pick their brains a little bit) and then started multidisciplinary rounds. Basically, people from each of the different disciples (nursing, rehab, dietary, respiratory, etc.) meet up and we round on the patients on the units, we had talked to the patient in room one, then went into room two. After being in there for a few minutes, I suddenly felt very warm, and then broke out into a clammy sort of sweat. Not wanting to cause anything resembling a scene, I backed slowly out of the room, dropped my stuff on the nearest table and held on for dear life when the instinct to "hold on or you're falling down" kicked in. One of the nurses happened to be walking toward me at this point, and the next thing I know, she's standing behind me blocking me to prevent a fall and yelling for a chair. At that point, things get a wee bit hazy, but I know I was slapped into a chair, wheeled into an empty patient room, hooked up to the monitors, blood sugar checked, had my boss called, then the charge nurse was on the phone with my doctor's office, all under 5 minutes. I didn't ever go completely out, but I also definitely was not all there either. As far as immediate vital signs go, the only thing out of whack appeared to be my blood pressure, which was definitely elevated, but was coming down over time. So, then came the indignity of being wheeled down to the department (I knew I was feeling better when I started to be embarrassed by the whole mess), the being rather babied by everyone. I ended up in the doctor's office where they did an EKG (which came out OK), a slew of blood work and had an extensive discussion with the doctor on call. (For a bit of back-story, just to make this more fun, my regular doctor happens to have gone out on maternity leave in the last 2 weeks, early, because she's having twins.) The one interesting thing that I did find out is that my 2nd round of blood work was not completely fine as I had been led to believe, I actually had an elevated CRP (which is an indicator of inflammation), and not exactly in the slightly elevated range either.
As for what actually happened yesterday, no immediate explanation, however it does appear that I was rather dehydrated, and as the heat index was again, over 100 degrees, and there's only so much an air-conditioning system can actually do, heat probably also played a role. In addition to all of that good stuff, I do get to go see a neurologist again, once more to rule out MS, because of the muscle issues. I've been through this once before, and things were pretty inconclusive, nothing visible appearing on MRI, but odd things in my symptomatology that were never really explained. On the one hand, I'm just annoyed, partly because it seems like that if it were MS, it'd have been figured out by now, and aren't we just chasing around another red herring, and partly because I really dislike doctors, and doctors offices, and everything related to having to go, be poked and prodded and have tests done and etc. On the other hand, I'm kind of relieved that there's a plan in place, even if it seems to be starting in a slightly off the wall place, because something needs to get better, I just can't keep going like this.
So, that's the dish; I'm tired, I'm cranky, and, as we used to say as kids, I don't like the government (it had something to do with some slogan chanted by a bunch of women on a protest march). And to top it off, now I've got everyone at work hovering around me making sure I feel OK, or that I'm not overwhelmed, or that I'm not too tired, or whatever. I appreciate the concern, but I kind of want to just get though and get on with it. I do realize that simply by posting this journal, I am spreading the word more, and likely will result in more people checking in (either via lj-land or other means) but partly that's to minimize having to explain it over & over again, and to just kind of get it out there, I don't know, make it a little more real, and partly, to document what is actually going on. Enough rambling, it'll be bedtime soon enough.
As I've written about in some of my more recent journal entries, I haven't been feeling 100%. I'd say I've been running more around 75% lately, tired, achy, muscles twitchy, sleeping a ridiculous amount and overall, not at all well. Yesterday, I overslept my alarm, woke up and felt positively foul, but still pulled it together and went to work. The morning started out OK, I was up on 5B, our neuro ICU, saw 3 patients, was talking with some of the nurses (ironically, about how I hadn't been feeling well, and trying to pick their brains a little bit) and then started multidisciplinary rounds. Basically, people from each of the different disciples (nursing, rehab, dietary, respiratory, etc.) meet up and we round on the patients on the units, we had talked to the patient in room one, then went into room two. After being in there for a few minutes, I suddenly felt very warm, and then broke out into a clammy sort of sweat. Not wanting to cause anything resembling a scene, I backed slowly out of the room, dropped my stuff on the nearest table and held on for dear life when the instinct to "hold on or you're falling down" kicked in. One of the nurses happened to be walking toward me at this point, and the next thing I know, she's standing behind me blocking me to prevent a fall and yelling for a chair. At that point, things get a wee bit hazy, but I know I was slapped into a chair, wheeled into an empty patient room, hooked up to the monitors, blood sugar checked, had my boss called, then the charge nurse was on the phone with my doctor's office, all under 5 minutes. I didn't ever go completely out, but I also definitely was not all there either. As far as immediate vital signs go, the only thing out of whack appeared to be my blood pressure, which was definitely elevated, but was coming down over time. So, then came the indignity of being wheeled down to the department (I knew I was feeling better when I started to be embarrassed by the whole mess), the being rather babied by everyone. I ended up in the doctor's office where they did an EKG (which came out OK), a slew of blood work and had an extensive discussion with the doctor on call. (For a bit of back-story, just to make this more fun, my regular doctor happens to have gone out on maternity leave in the last 2 weeks, early, because she's having twins.) The one interesting thing that I did find out is that my 2nd round of blood work was not completely fine as I had been led to believe, I actually had an elevated CRP (which is an indicator of inflammation), and not exactly in the slightly elevated range either.
As for what actually happened yesterday, no immediate explanation, however it does appear that I was rather dehydrated, and as the heat index was again, over 100 degrees, and there's only so much an air-conditioning system can actually do, heat probably also played a role. In addition to all of that good stuff, I do get to go see a neurologist again, once more to rule out MS, because of the muscle issues. I've been through this once before, and things were pretty inconclusive, nothing visible appearing on MRI, but odd things in my symptomatology that were never really explained. On the one hand, I'm just annoyed, partly because it seems like that if it were MS, it'd have been figured out by now, and aren't we just chasing around another red herring, and partly because I really dislike doctors, and doctors offices, and everything related to having to go, be poked and prodded and have tests done and etc. On the other hand, I'm kind of relieved that there's a plan in place, even if it seems to be starting in a slightly off the wall place, because something needs to get better, I just can't keep going like this.
So, that's the dish; I'm tired, I'm cranky, and, as we used to say as kids, I don't like the government (it had something to do with some slogan chanted by a bunch of women on a protest march). And to top it off, now I've got everyone at work hovering around me making sure I feel OK, or that I'm not overwhelmed, or that I'm not too tired, or whatever. I appreciate the concern, but I kind of want to just get though and get on with it. I do realize that simply by posting this journal, I am spreading the word more, and likely will result in more people checking in (either via lj-land or other means) but partly that's to minimize having to explain it over & over again, and to just kind of get it out there, I don't know, make it a little more real, and partly, to document what is actually going on. Enough rambling, it'll be bedtime soon enough.
