Brain Pain

I got to spend almost four hours of my night in the emergency room tonight.

Apparently I have forgotten how to get into my car. I banged the side of my head into my door frame while trying to get into the car last night. Now I’m dizzy and sluggish with blurred vision and a headache. I feel like I’m drunk… just a painful kind of drunk.

It didn’t take long to realize that life in the ER is a little different than what you see on TV ERs. Mal and I were in the waiting room for almost an hour and a half. At first it wasn’t too bad… the room was pretty full, but quiet. We were able to watch, and hear, the TV. Sure, it was a crappy movie (Titanic), but it was bearable. Then, synchronized almost perfectly with the beginning of a new show, the atmosphere changed. Instead of the room of quiet people respecting each other while waiting to see a doctor, it changed to a room of people talking very loudly to each other from opposite sides of the waiting room, people wandering around asking for cigarettes and a light and a random person playing every ringtone on their cellphone. Sigh.

They finally called my name and they brought me in to sit on a stretcher in the hallway. No room, just a stretcher. That was awkward… we were right in front of a pair of treatment rooms. One was filled with a family watching a relative fade away before being transferred to the intensive care unit.

The other… Mal and I called the crazy room. For the first hour or so the room was occupied by a woman who just stared through the space in the curtain out at us. That was obnoxious. I was happy to see her discharged… until they brought in the next guy. The second hour was an interesting mix of strange moans/groans and the peep-show of a stubborn old man standing naked in his room, covered in his own poop.

That was fun.

My cat scan tech was an old friend from back home… that was a good surprise for the night.

If you know me, I have no problem telling you I’m a hairy beast. Besides my receding hairline, I think my palms and the bottoms of my feet are the only parts of bare skin on my body. It’s one thing to talk about it, but another to have the nurse make me take my shirt off and change into a gown in the hallway. I was not a fan of that. Manliness at that level isn’t safe for young children or senior citizens…

Another interesting sight in the ER was the weather person from the local news station (the name rhymes with Judy Frasier). People were coming up to her introducing themselves with the “Aren’t you that lady from the news” line while her husband was in a hospital bed… She walked through the hallway that was being used as my hospital room and gave me a look and a smile. It was almost one of those “I think I know who you are” looks that I was probably giving her too. It could have been a smile for the fact that I had the decency to not come up and bother her while she was there with her husband… or it could have been all the sexual tension. I get that a lot… you get used to it after a while.

Oh well. Everything is fine… I have a mild concussion that will be fine after a couple days of rest and tylenol.