It’s Been a Long Night…

We spent an hour and a half in the emergency room tonight.

For the past several days, I’ve been having an eery, uncomfortable, completely unnerving tingling yucky feeling in my face and running down my arms and sometimes my legs, as well. It’s more pronounced when I walk and has been starting to disturb me. Terry figured it had something to do with the extreme heat and humidity, as I don’t fare well with heat.

We made a WalMart run after work and those are never quick, especially since we were going to try to do a little bit of summer clothes shopping, as well. By the time we reached home, I was really starting to feel funky and Terry encouraged me to lay down for a bit.

Believe it or not, though, the emergency room visit wasn’t for me. We started to work on making dinner and Terry wanted to take a Tylenol for his aches and pains stemming from a fall down the stairs a couple of days ago (that’s a whole other post!). It was a gel tab and I should have kept him from taking it. He has trouble taking pills (he was recently diagnosed with a relatively uncommon condition called eosinophilic esophagitis) and has recently made incredible progress, moving from just his small prescription pills to taking full sized Excedrin caplets without difficulty. However, even I have problems with the Tylenol gel tabs sticking in my throat. I should never have let him take it.

The pill stuck in his throat. This is incredibly terrible for him. Because of his condition, things can stick in his throat or even just irritate the esophagus enough that his throat closes off and he can’t swallow. He can still breathe, but even that can be a problem if he doesn’t continually expectorate his saliva and it backs up in his throat until it reaches the top. I first and last witnessed this during his last episode about 9 years ago when we were dating. It was very frightening for me because I didn’t understand what was going on. I just knew that he was attached to the bathroom floor, hanging over the toilet, for hours. Just spitting. Until finally his throat relaxed enough that he could swallow again.

We live literally one mile from a very good hospital. It took me five minutes tonight to decide that we just needed to drive to the emergency room and get this taken care of. It really was as much for me as it was for him, as much as I would like to seem a selfless angel. I really could not stand to watch him suffer through this for hours again. He panics inside, even if he manages to maintain an extremely calm demeanor, so it didn’t take me very long to convince him to let me drive him to the ER. So, we got dressed (we were both in our comfy after-work wear at this point), penned the dog into the kitchen, grabbed a book for each of us, a bowl that he could spit into and hopped in the car, leaving our dinner untouched.

I swear, it took every ounce of self-control I had not to fly down the road at 90 mph. As it was, I was going 10 miles over the speed limit, but since it’s less than 5 minutes away, going faster wouldn’t really have helped!

The emergency room staff were just as good as everything else we’ve experienced relating to this hospital. We got him signed in quickly, the triage nurse interviewed him about 5 minutes later and another 5 or 10 minutes later, he was in a bed, with a nurse putting an IV into his arm. Everyone was incredibly kind and quick-acting. Because no one had heard of his condition, they took our advice as to the course of action to be taken to help him. This meant a shot of Glucagon (a muscle relaxant specifically for smooth muscles and a treatment successfully used for him in the past) into the IV. 10 or 15 minutes later, he was able to swallow again. 45 minutes or so later, we were walking back out the door. He was only unable to swallow for an hour or less. Much shorter than any previous experience he’s had. THANK GOODNESS!

Needless to say, the adrenalin rush that I experienced, kicking into maternal hen mode and getting things taken care of, has finally worn off and I am back to feeling crappy, with a side of exhaustion.

But, who cares about me? I don’t. 🙂 Terry’s better! YAY!

So, with everyone fed (Terry had Jello and mashed potatoes) and life slowly returning to normal, I’m finally rolling the both of us into bed.

[Edited to add: Carol commented that I should have had myself checked out while we were in the emergency room, so I did want to add that I have a doctor’s appointment scheduled for Monday evening. It was intended to be a routine check-up, but if my symptoms persist, I will ask about them. I have checked my blood pressure during an episode and it was normal, though my pulse was higher than normal, so it could be a blood sugar thing or who knows. Rest assured that I will check into it if it does not abate when the heat does. Or by Monday. Whichever comes first. Thank you for your concern. :)]