Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Cop Cars, Stretchers, and Near-Fainting Experiences

Fun title, right? Well, that's what my day consisted of today. Looking back on it, I'm laughing at the oddity of my day; this morning, I was perfectly fine and expecting a perfectly ordinary day. But as I was sitting in one of my psychology classes, watching a video about prenatal development with a moderate level of interest, I began to have intense cramps in my lower abdomen. I figured they would pass, but they persisted and intensified, and I soon began to experience an alternately warm and cold tingle all throughout my body (which I know from past experience is a sign that I'm going to faint). My hands were also almost completely numb, and my mouth was dry. I put my head down on the table in hopes that this would pass, and by the time class was about halfway over, I knew I could not stand up. So I spent the rest of class in that kind of agony where you can only shift back and forth in pain and hope it ends soon. When class (finally) ended, I put my hand up weakly and was like, "Dr. Brown, I can't stand up." Then I promptly started sobbing, and apparently I was white as a sheet, trembling, and cold to the touch. My kind professor, her GA, and a random girl from my class waited with me until a cop / stand-in paramedic came, and he asked me lots of questions and then called some real paramedics. They came a while later ... with a stretcher. *insert mortification here* They thought my blood sugar might be low since I hadn't eaten much, but that wasn't it, so the girl and the cop drove me over to the doctor's office (in the cop car, I might add), and the girl waited with me until I saw the doctor. He deduced that I have a bad stomach virus in which my intestines are leeching all of the water from every other part of my body, hence the numbness in my hands and my dehydrated appearance. (Think me odd, but when he told me that, I legitimately thought that was really cool ... or, it would be if it wasn't excruciating!) 
      Anyway, I am currently guzzling water, battling the pain of my greedy little intestines, and hoping I feel better tomorrow! Please pray for me; the doctor said the virus should be gone in about 48 hours, but it could be a really painful 48 hours. Hope you all had a good day! :) 

2 comments:

  1. Aw. I'm so sorry you had to go through that! What's weird is that the very same kind of thing happened to me a week or so ago -- got that same kind of intense painful cramping and fainted twice in our community bathroom...and got sick. It's a funny feeling, when you don't have the strength to make a fist and just KNOW you're going to faint, as if you're hanging on by a literal thread that's so close to snapping. I crawled to my room in a cold sweat and climbed to my bed and told my roommate to go grab our RAs (this was at night) and they called an EMT. Apparently, according to my roommate, I accidentally flirted with him while trying to make light of the situation. O.o Docs deduced it as dehydration.
    I hope you feel better, Elizabeth! DRINK WATER! And tea. Tea is good, too. ;)

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    1. Oh, goodness! Fainting is awful, isn't it? Glad you're okay, though!
      And yes, tea is a wonderful invention, isn't it? :D

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