My trip to the hospital

About two weeks ago I had a pain in my abdomen which I thought was a pancreatitis attack which I haven't had for about ten years. I am going to give the shortened version of this. About 30 hours later (10 being in the ER) I had gall bladder surgery which went very well. They kept me in the hospital an extra day because my pancreas showed some damage from my previous pancreatic attacks. So, they had me on dilaudin (a narcotic pain killer...note the word 'killer').

I was minding my own business looking forward to being released to go home and was under the care of two darling student nurses who said to "pretend" I was real sick so they could bathe me and wait on me like a real sick person. It was about 9am and as they were washing my face and brushing my hair, I felt REAL nauseous (like where's the garbage can). So, at first, I think they thought I was kidding....but then I went green around the gills and they asked my nurse for an anti-nausea shot. I had that at 9:15am. It was time for my pain shot at 9:30am and I had the dilaudin which I had been having every 3-5 hours as prescribed. At 9:32am, I asked for them to help me back into bed because I became very, very tired. I didn't feel surprised at this, because I hadn't slept for more than 1 hr in a row for about 4 days, even after the surgery.

The student nurse said she would wait until I fell asleep and then would be waiting outside my room till I woke up and would be doing paperwork for her class. At 9:35am, she said I started snoring and she pulled my curtain and left my room. At. 9:38am (we know the time, because Jim missed a phone call and looked at the time on his phone), Jim came for a visit and sat down on a chair to read the paper and my phone rang and I didn't stir. He came up by the bed and saw that I was foaming at the mouth. He called my name and tried to wake me but couldn't.
He called the student nurse and she called my nurse. They had to call the narcotics rapid response team and they came and gave me "nar-can" or "nar-cam" or something like that which did bring me out of it. I was "awake" by 10am but it took till about 2pm before I was all bettter.

What a time that was.......I didn't know where I was. I couldn't speak, I couldn't hear, I was in a dark tunnell with no bright light at the end of it. So wierd. I saw a big calendar and it was going backwards from 2009, 2008. I got to 2003. Wierd. They kept asking me questions like 'Do you know your name...do you know who is President...do you know where you are" I guess people pay good money for "tripping" but this is one thing that I do NOT ever want to do again. If I am going to hallucinate, it better involve a lot of money and Pierce Brosnan.

So, I just wanted to thank God for sending Jim to visit me at that particular moment otherwise I might not be here.