about that time I went to the emergency room

Alternately titled: A very long post with no pictures (sorry!)

If you're not interested in medical details and don't want to read the rest of this post, I don't blame you. Just know that I got really sick at work a couple weeks ago, went to the ER, survived, and now I'm fine. If you want to know the whole story, keep reading.

So a couple weeks ago, my alarm clock woke me up for work at about 5:30am. As I was getting ready I had some, ahem, "intestinal issues" and assumed it was probably because I hadn't gotten enough sleep (I never get enough sleep the nights before I work - don't tell my patients' parents). Just in case, though, I took some medicine and headed to work. On my way to work I ate breakfast as usual (a Poptart and orange juice, if you must know). I spent most of my day taking care of twin girls and a sweet little boy and feeling quite normal . . . except for these occasional, pretty horrible stomach cramps. I'd be feeling totally fine and suddenly have this sharp pain in my stomach. It would last for 10 - 20 seconds and then go away. In between those little episodes I felt fine. I even had a pretty normal lunch with Sprite to drink (because Sprite makes me feel better if I'm even thinking of having a stomach bug). Since I was having no more "intestinal issues" and felt pretty normal, I thought maybe I'd gotten food poisoning or something. I'd never had those cramps with any virus I'd had before.

Finally, around 4:45 that afternoon, I was standing up, helping admit yet another set of twins (Doesn't anyone ever have just one baby anymore? And does anyone wait until after 37 weeks of pregnancy to give birth?), and I started to feel a little lightheaded. I went to our break room to take a breather. I thought I might throw up, but instead I just became even more lightheaded and started sweating profusely. I was suddenly incredibly weak and couldn't even lift my head off the table. It was kind of like that feeling you get right before/after you throw up, except ten times worse. After several minutes (maybe just a couple, but it felt like a long time), I called my friend Cati in there to help me. I really don't know what I thought she was going to do, but I felt like I should at least get someone to go feed my poor, starving babies. Cati came to the door, looked at me, and said, "I'm going to go get a blood pressure cuff." I took that as a bad sign.

The next thing I knew, my co-workers rushed in, along with a couple of labor & delivery nurses (Cati had to get the blood pressure cuff from them - obviously our tiny cuffs are a bit too small for my arms), and started taking my vital signs and checking my blood sugar. I heard things like "She's dusky", "You're diaphoretic" (aka sweating), and "Your sats are low". They moved me to the floor and put my feet up in a chair (to let more blood get to brain - wasn't that thoughtful of them? :-). They had trouble finding a radial pulse, which scared me a little, but I thought, "I know I've got to have one, because I'm thinking this right now." It was just very weak. For you medically-minded folks, my heart rate was around 110, my blood pressure was 80/50, and my oxygen saturation was around 85%. For you non-medically-minded folks, my heart rate was too high, my blood pressure was way too low, and my oxygen saturation was way too low. Everyone assumed that I hadn't been eating or was doing some crazy diet or something that caused my blood sugar to plummet. But my blood sugar was normal, as it should've been since I'd eaten two decent meals that day! They decided I needed to go the ER, strapped an oxygen mask to my face, and put me on a stretcher (head still lower than my feet, which is an interesting way to travel through the hospital). As I was riding through the hallways with Cati, our boss, and a labor & delivery nurse at my side, I reached down and felt two paper towels on my stomach. Nurses tend to grab paper towels and use them as makeshift "charts" when they're in a hurry. Sure enough, on the first paper towel was my name and all my vitals, and on the second were the words "I'm a NICU nurse" - guess they wanted to make sure I was taken care of. How nice.

By the time I arrived in the ER, things has calmed down a little bit. I was feeling a little better, was looking more pink than blue, and was able to come off oxygen. The ER staff took great care of me and quickly got blood drawn and an IV started (by the way, I now have much more sympathy for my little patients when I take tape off of their arms and electrodes off their chests!). My boss sat with me until my mom came. Of course she was a bit delayed because Tekia was at home with similar symptoms, minus the almost passing out part. Over the next four hours, I received two liters of fluid (and thus made several trips to the bathroom), got a chest xray, and had some lab work done. Everything was normal, with the exception of slightly low potassium, for which I received a giant potassium pill. Finally around 9:30pm I was discharged with the diagnosis of gastroenteritis (has the stomach flu ever done that to you before??). I slept for what seemed like forever and laid around the house for the next day, and then I was back to normal.

It was a very strange experience. And I still really have no idea why it happened. But at least I learned a valuable lesson from it - if I ever get bored at work or want to leave early, all I have to do is go to the breakroom and turn blue. Apparently that gets people's attention.