Friday, June 10, 2005

an evening in the emergency room...

spent last night in the emergency room because i was feeling weird. Docs seem to think it's a Tegretol overdose. the whole thing's just crazy - call my family doc's office cuz that's what medicaid demands - they shrug their shoulders (over the phone, that is) and tell me i should just go to the emergency room, that they'll probably have to run tests that they couldn't do at the doc's office. go to the emergency room and they ask me "why are you here?" cuz that's what my doc told me, i tell them. so they draw some blood, gimme a bag of saline because i may be dehydrated, and give me a pill to make the room stop spinning. then they make me wait...and wait...and wait...mom's going crazy - eventually we find out that the tegretol level had to get sent out, that's why it's taking longer...then after more waiting we find out that they declined to put "STAT" on the sample, so that's why it's taking so friggin long. i was okay (prolly cuz of the drugs that gave me, which included a small dose of Ativan - woo hoo!) but mom was climbing the walls. they tell me their best guess is that i've overdosed on my Tegretol, and send me home. er, exxxcuse me? what do i do about taking my meds that evening, 3 of which are tegretol pills? oh, go ahead and take everything. so, i might be overdosing on something and your solution is for me to take more of it? err, well, take only 2 of em, and follow up with your neurologist. so that i did. call the neurologists office, they tell me i'm scheduled in July, that's the soonest they can see me - excuse me?!?!? spent the night in the emergency room and yet they can't follow up with me until late july? so they tell me they'll have a doc call back. he agrees with the er doc's assessment and we'll cut back the tegretol and see how it goes. how completely fucking vague. arghhhhh

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