First College ER Trip!

Do you know that saying that goes like "God gives his strongest soldiers the toughest battles"? Well lately it has felt like God has been throwing all kinds of battles my way! I dealt with some family issues at the beginning of the semester, then I got COVID-19 and was in quarantine for 5 days and now I was just in the hospital this past weekend! However, I somehow am still making it through the semester and looking forward to getting a break this upcoming week.

Are you wondering why I ended up in the hospital? Don't worry, I'll give you the whole story. It all began on this past Saturday morning. I woke up feeling fine until I was up and moving around and noticed a weird feeling in my upper abdomen. I didn't think anything of it so I continued with my plans for the day. Two of my friends asked me to walk to Buckeye East for breakfast, which is about a 15-minute walk from our dorms. 

As we got farther into our walk I noticed that the pain in my upper abdomen began to get worse. I tried to ignore it until it became an extreme stabbing pain. I noticed that the pain was so bad that I began to feel nauseous and lightheaded. If you know me at all, you know I hate to admit when I don't feel well. I kept walking trying to ignore the pain but I then felt my body about to pass out and my vision going black so I told my friends I needed to sit down and ended up lying on a bench on the side of the road. 

Me casually laying on a bench

I laid on this bench for a while and every time I thought I was feeling better and sat up, I began to pass out again. We ended up having another one of our friends come to pick us up in a car and take me back to my dorm where I could take some medicine and lie down. My dad is an EMT so I called him and explained what I was going through and we both agreed that I would try to wait it out and see if this would go away on its own. I took it easy for the rest of the day and later felt fine. I thought it was just a random occurrence and moved on with my life.

On Saturday night I was woken up with the same pain I experienced earlier. I took medicine and tried to relax. The next morning I woke up with more of a feeling of uncomfortableness rather than sharp pain. I went on with my day until later I experienced another episode of intense pain. I was in the library and finally came to my senses and decided to go to urgent care. I felt OK enough to drive myself so I used my roommate's car and drove to Findlay. As I was checking into urgent care and explained my symptoms to them, they immediately told me they could not do anything for me and that I needed to go to the hospital immediately. 

They explained to me that I would most likely need to get my gallbladder out according to my symptoms. As I was leaving urgent care I called my parents sobbing because I really did not want to go to the hospital. It was really difficult to go through this knowing my parents were 8 hours away and couldn't just drop everything and be there with me in 20 minutes. I made it to the hospital and got myself all checked in and then I proceeded to wait 2.5 hours in pain before I was even called back.

At this point I was in so much pain. I was exhausted and I was really wishing I hadn't gone by myself. When they finally got me a room and began the process of trying to figure out what was wrong I was so out of it. All the nurses were really nice to me because they knew I was a young college student who was there all by myself. I got several tests and scans done which took a very long time. They also finally were able to give me lots of pain medicine to help ease the pain I had been dealing with.

Me walking into the ER

After hours of going through tests, the doctor finally concluded that I had an inflamed gallbladder. However, she said it was not inflamed enough to warrant needing to take it out right away. I was told that I needed to take it easy over the next few days so that I wouldn't aggravate it more. The hope is that this issue will resolve itself and I will not have to get my gallbladder removed, but we'll only know with time. I was given instructions that if I experience continuous pain for several days or if it worsens I have to go back and consider getting it taken out. Luckily I go home in two days so I am just trying to hold on until then!

I was at the hospital for roughly seven hours and didn't get back home until 3 a.m. Needless to say, it has been one heck of a week! Trying to deal with a great deal of pain on top of keeping up with classes and starting rehearsal for a show is pretty exhausting. I'm just happy to be here and know that eventually I'll look back and laugh at this situation. So if you ever find yourself in a position of having to go to the hospital, don't be stubborn and instead let people go with you so you are not alone. If anything, I hope you got a laugh out of my crazy story today. Who knows what will get thrown at me next!