Saturday 8 December 2001

Pic of the day: Since I did not bring my camera, I'll randomly illustrate with a screenshot from the computer game Theme Hospital (from Bullfrog). A bit ancient, but still the only one in its genre. I play it with Swedish text and voices these days, where before I had German. Ahem. But today was no game. Not at all.

In hospital

Well, that was a nasty surprise. OK, not a complete surprise. You see, I had secretly decided to take EverQuest to my workplace and test there (not in paid time, duh!). After what happened yesterday, I expected to get sick so I could not get to town, because some supernatural force seems desperate to keep me from that game. I expected a slight diarrhea or some such, not something as drastic as this.

I woke up at 6:30 feeling queasy, very thirsty, and my stomach burned. I was still tired, but soon noticed that this was something worse. I had trouble standing upright. I tried to retch at the WC, but to no avail. I felt weaker and weaker, as if losing pressure. (As indeed I did – blood pressure.) I got to my feet, stumbled into my living room and called medical emergency. As I told them my name and address, I fainted.

I woke up in the reclining chair, confused. Had I managed to call emergency? Then I saw the phone receiver on the floor. I picked it up and continued the conversation. While doing that, I suddenly puked on the living room floor. Twice. Man, I wish I had had time to clean that up before I left. Good thing I don't have carpets.

The emergency watch did not sound impressed. Then again this was Saturday morning. A lot of Norwegians puke on Saturday morning, and quite a few black out too. Friday night is traditionally binge drinking night here in Norway.

I called G.B., one of Smith's Friends. He was still asleep, but not anymore. These people are servants of the Living God, and I knew he would not risk letting me die. He came after a while and drove me to the nearest medical center. We waited till they opened at 8, and I was their first patient.

***

The young GP in training was quite thorough, but focused soon on my history of acid reflux. He also considered that I might have a wound on the small intestine just after the stomach (its English name escapes me). To check this theory he delved far into my rectum to get some feces to test for microscopic blood. "This is so not my style" I commented. "It's nobody's style" he replied. Given some of the weird people I have met online, I am not so sure. Just the other week I picked up a Japanese word meaning "anal attack". (I'm not sure what's more scary, the fact that any language has such a word, or that I have learned of it.) I did not debate the topic further, though. (Oh, and it still hurt a bit the day after. I guess I'm not good at relaxing in a hurry. It may come with experience, but hopefully I shall never know.)

Anyway, there was indeed microblood in the stool, and this may be one reason why I was sent to the hospital. However, when I came there, their interest seemed to shift. It may be because I was there a couple years ago for another fainting spell, that time because my heart rhythm was out of control, varying from slower than usual to faster randomly. That had been a one-time appearance, and they had written it off as stress. Seeing that I had fainted again, they put the heart telemetry stuff on me again and kept me all day and all night. Even though I had not complained about the heart, and continued to say that I did not think the heart had anything to do with it. (It did not, as they found out eventually.)

The young female doctor who first checked me after I came to the hospital (as opposed to the guy at the local medical center) was around the same age as my best friend, SuperWoman and served her first year here. It is not quite unlikely that they might have studied or worked together, I thought. I was tempted to ask her if she knew her, but reason prevailed. It's not as if it would have helped in any way, regardless.

There was mention of a gastroscopy, but they stopped mentioning that and started to feed me later in the day. They took quite a few blood tests, though. I understand that you can find out a lot by such tests, these days. I am still surprised that they have to take many separate tests, instead of just taking one and dividing it. Oh well.

***

I was put on the Observation post, a place of moderate privacy. There were curtains around each cell, so we could not see the other patients. We could hear them, though. The little old lady next to me for instance was in the habit of whispering her thoughts fairly loudly. I much doubt she knew she did this. She was hard of hearing, so almost certainly did not hear her own thoughts. I did, to some extent. She had been struck down on the street by a thief who took her purse. Now her shoulder hurt, and she thought about her shoulder a lot. She refused painkillers, though.

Luckily I had Cassie the Pocket PC with me. This allowed me to take notes, as well as spend several hours reading e-books. What a great luck that I had downloaded a few of those only days before and not had time to read them all yet.

For further entertainment, there were birds. Yellow-breasted sparrows, they looked to me. They must have come in through the open windows. According to the nurse, they did so routinely; some patient had once fed them, and many found them interesting. They were not quite tame, but nearly so. They would sit and look at me. They are probably not very carnivorous, but still I'm glad they were gone before the night.

One day and one night did I lie for observation. After the batteries ran out, I meditated and slept. Definitely no computer games. For dinner, I had not been able to eat at all, though I did drink a little juice and eat a few spoonfuls of yogurt now and then. In the night, my body declared my stomach OK again, and wanted food. I continued to be hungry for the rest of my stay there, though the evening meal and the breakfast were both delicious. And best of all, free. Such is the strange country I live in, that staying in hospital is absolutely free. (But for the doctor to check me and send me there cost me almost $20.)

***

I still don't know quite what hit me. It did not feel in any way like the usual gastro-intestinal infections that circulate in society, through food and unwashed hands and such. The only thing in common was throwing up. This time for instance there was no diarrhea at all. And there was the burning pain, coupled with intense thirst. No fever – in fact, my temperature when I finally got to measure it was 36 degrees C, one degree lower than normal body temperature. That was how I felt too. I think I was on the brink of shock there for a while.

So far, we now think it was a particularly severe case of acid reflux, stomach acid running back up in the esophagus and eating away at the lining there. I have had mild symptoms in this direction for a long way, but have thought this a good thing: It keeps me from eating much. One should not eat much at my age, unless one has heavy manual labor. But I guess I shall henceforth have to treat it medically like millions of other people already do. I will have to take this up with my doctor soon. The hysterically funny thing about all this is that Acid Reflux is the name of my perhaps favorite online comic strip. And some say there is no God...