Hospital Visit

I woke up Wednesday morning, glanced over at the clock, and froze.

5:03

My alarm is set for 4:30.  That's much more time than I strictly speaking need to get ready to go to work: I don't leave until 6:00. But I like to take my time. There's nobody online to chat with at that hour (believe me, eighteen months of straight nights has gifted me with an intricate knowledge of the sleeping and waking habits of Facebook friends)...but there is news to read from various places, coffee (sometimes pluralized) to drink, breakfast to consume, and all of that is after I shower and dress in the dark.

So 5:03 was the first wrong thing. Would that it had been the last.

I lay there for a moment, trying to translate 5:03 into how much time I really had. Did I have to skip my shower? Quick brush of my face, which proved raspy and scruffy enough that the answer had to be "no".

And that's when the trouble started.

I sat up and immediately wished I hadn't. The room wobbled and spun. What the hell?

Gingerly, I pulled myself to my feet. The room pulled itself in some other direction. I stagger-stepped out to  the bathroom, just a couple of steps outside our bedroom, willing everything to just stop MOVING...surely this would pass.

In the shower now, and getting woozier and woozier. I suddenly realized if I didn't do something I was going to f jump cut I'm on my knees. The shower is off but the bathtub tap is running full blast. I have two imperatives running through my addled head: I must shave and I must not stand up.

Reach up, pull the shaving cream down from its place in the shower caddy. Reach back, almost falling backwards, grab blade. Apply cream, run blade in what I frankly don't care are not even remotely sane patterns over my face. Do this long enough and I'll get...most of this scruff.
Fuck, I'm dizzy.

Turn shower off. Somehow worm body around so I'm sitting on the tub, blankly noticing the curtain wasn't closed properly, hoping I haven't flooded anything, then suddenly hoping I have because water is less hard than floor from the height I'm about to fall int jump cut I'm in the bedroom with absolutely no recollection of how I got here.  Sitting on the bed, pulling on work clothes that were (luckily) laid out the night before. The dizziness seems to be abating somewhat stand up to pull pants up no it doesn't fall backwards. Spinning. Wrongness.

It fades and -- v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y -- I start the trek downstairs, one runner the stairs time step down pull other foot down, gripping railing clenching other wall stairs insist running themselves sideways until I get a rush of brains to the head and close my eyes.

Downstairs, on autopilot with most of its guidance systems askew, I have made a coffee. I am sitting in front of the computer, drinking. I have no time for breakfast now but I'm also too nauseous to think about breakfast, so I don't. At least now everything is obligingly staying still. If it stays like this I can work today which is good because I have stuff to learn and stuff to prove I've learned and besides, Walmart doesn't pay sick pay for the first day, unlike every place I have ever worked--

noise

Eva is downstairs. This is not normal, she doesn't get up until at least seven, after I've gone. I turn my head and the room turns the other way fuck.
Explaining to her that I  don't want to go to the hospital. I have been to the hospital and at the hospital you sit and you wait all day and all night and then they give you a pill that's maybe one notch above what's here already and that's what hospitals do.  But no, I can't ride a bike like this. So yes, I will accept a ride in to work, without the argument I customarily put up (not driving means you're imposing any time you need somebody to take you somewhere and I really don't like imposing). But today I will impose. I will get up and yawn jump cut "I think I need to go to the hospital".

Memo to self, marked High Priority: DO NOT YAWN. Yawning causes the room to spin and weave in and out of reality.

Eva has found information online claiming the expected wait time at Grand River Hospital is one hour. This is clearly bullshit of the purest ray serene: one of the last times we were here the wait was actually SEVEN hours before Eva was even looked at (and another eight hours until she was released). But it's finally dawning on me that work is simply not an option today. One of my loves is online fifteen minutes earlier than her normal wake-up time. A quick texted conversation and now I have two people worried about me.

I have managed to call in, a scant half hour before my shift was to start. Even calling in there is difficult because they never pick up the damn phone. It took four tries, but I've called in.

The trip in is NOT PLEASANT. I keep my eyes closed for most of it and will myself not to throw up. Eva has retrieved a wheelchair and I'm being wheeled bump bump herk to the triage, where I am assessed immediately and sent to begin the long wait.

That turns out to be twenty minutes long. I'm in one of those embarrassing hospital johnnies, laying back on the bed. Everything is still moving. The lights are hellishly bright. I'm getting a headache on top of it all.  They have taped a bunch of leads to me, taken my blood pressure several times, and ruled out a stroke. (!) A doctor comes in and does some vision and head balancing tests which I flunk most spectacularly.

I have something called Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. I like the benign right in the name. This, I'm told, is the doing of a stonelike deposit in my left inner ear. I am given a Gravol injection and some pills, and Eva pays $20 for a note granting me three days off work. They tell me that this is good because I'll also have the weekend to recover (assuming, as most people unthinkingly do, that I don't work retail). As it so happens I do work retail, but don't work weekends.

I am in and out of the hospital in seventy minutes flat. This is some kind of medical miracle. The nurses and doctor have been unanimously friendly. This is a hospital experience I would recommend, were it not for the crazy vertigo that landed me in it. We are en route to where I'm supposed to be working right now to drop off my doctor's note (Eva does this while I fret in the car) and pick up my prescription (ditto)

The Gravol shot knocks me out. The pills -- betahistine, they're called -- do the same thing. I spend most of Wednesday asleep. Eva is working from home in case I need her. I love my wife.

Thank you, love, for taking me in, for holding me up, for (literally, this time) being my port in a storm. Thank you to everyone who has checked in on me. I'm on the mend. Each day has been a little bit better, with fewer and fewer dizzy spells. Today I've had four, the worst being when I woke up and got out of bed.  I should be all clear by Monday...back to my standard level of dizziness.