Later, that same morning....

Continuing my saga from yesterday....

The emergency department is like a fish tank where the bloopfish and beepfish communicate constantly through the medium. Something is always making an electronic noise. TV shows about hospitals would be ridiculously annoying if they accurately portrayed the ambient electronic sounds in an emergency medical setting.

I lay on my side once more, racked with pain, waiting for something to happen. With any luck it would involved lowering the pain, but so far things had only added to it -- drawing blood, checking vitals, sticking in an IV line.

Frankly, I was surprised that someone in so much obvious physical distress would be allowed to linger so long. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was hours before I was given a dose of morphine, which eased -- but didn't remove -- the intense pain in my back. I have to wonder if hospital protocols have gotten so tough on dispensing pain medication that they make the stuff exceptionally difficult to procure. I intend to ask someone about that.

Meanwhile, I was in the bed, white-knuckled, grasping the side rails like they were keeping me from falling. The pain actually kept getting worse, incrementally, as my repeated blood pressure checks confirmed objectively, and like a good Catholic I offered it up for the salvation of souls. But five hours into the ordeal, I suggested to God that I had probably saved as many souls as I could handle.

I got a lidocaine patch, which helped about as much as a smear of vanilla frosting would. But at last the nurse said he get some morphine.

The time between the nurse saying he would get me morphine and the drug's actually arrival was so long, you could probably have watched half of Cats, which might have been almost as painful. Because now it was tantalizingly just out of reach. My wife, my angel of mercy, probably would have gone out in the streets to try to score some illicit drugs is it had kept up much longer.

No man I know wants his loved ones to see him the way my wife had to see me. I was reduced to a whimpering mess. I feel ashamed about it, but I don't know how I could have behaved differently. Now I wonder if she'll always think of that when she needs me to be strong for her.

Hours passed. I listened to the usual ER chitchat. One patient and his wife being interviewed over and over by staff trying to get them to admit that the husband was a drunk; them clearly bluffing and prevaricating. Occasional laughter in the air. Someone with a long, dull litany of complaints. Me moaning. Why couldn't I pass out from the pain? Does that happen in real life? Of have I been lied to by the movies again?

About the time that the minor relief of the morphine was wearing off, they came to cart me out for a CT scan. This meant lying on my goddamn back again, and once again it was brutally hard. But at least we were doing something constructive. Then it was back to the same spot in the emergency department, to wait some more. Next time I get in medical trouble, please remind me not to do it on the Saturday overnight.

I don't know when it was that they decided I ought to get some Dilaudid, but it took until they decided to send me to get an MRI. That stuff did really ease the pain, at least to bearability, and for the first time I started to think I might survive this mess. I want to note that there was no fun to be had out of these pain meds. I had no mind-altering effects, except what you would expect from the reduction of awful pain. I was a little dizzy. And then I broke into a terrible cold sweat, right in the middle of the MRI.

If you've stuck with me this far -- thanks! Also, you may remember that in 2018 I was sent to get an MRI of my head for a hearing problem. That MRI had a mirror to give the illusion of looking out at the world; this one didn't. It was a blank white tube and it fit me like a tuxedo. I'm not terribly claustrophobic, but it was pretty bad. I shut my eyes and tried to think of anything to occupy my mind -- prayers, shopping lists, every member of the Justice League of America in alphabetical order. When I started flushing and sweating, I didn't think I could make it through -- it's almost a half hour ordeal for the contrast MRI. But I was so strongly motivated to stay in that tube and let them get the data they needed, I just kept my eyes shut and managed to not panic. That was a gift from heaven, right there.

From the MRI I was checked into a room in the orthopedic section, there to get interviewed by all the doctors who hadn't interviewed me already. Now, at least, the painkillers were adequate to the situation, and once installed in the room I was able to rest. It was about mid-afternoon.

I don't think I was rude to anyone, and absolutely no one was rude to me. Really, the staff could not have been more kind through the ordeal. However, I am not proud of my behavior, the moaning, the cries of pain, the inability to put on the brave face. If all the other little indignities of a hospital stay did not follow -- the need for permission to get up, the stupid gown, the escorts to the bathroom, the constant reminders of what one looks like stripped down -- it would still have been as humiliating as anything that has ever happened to me.

Maybe it just means I have too much pride, after all. But as I said, no man wants to be seen by his loved ones as I was in the ER.

🏥 🚑

We'll finish up the tale tomorrow; all downhill from here. What happens next? As Wagner wondered yesterday, maybe I died! That would be awful.