One of the medications I'm on says "take with food" on a plain, white
label. It's not one of the scary red warnings, or even a yellow
cautionary statement, just a simple white label next to the rest of the
prescription information. After getting home from a game night far too
late last night and being so completely un-hungry that the thought of
food made me a bit queasy, I took the pills with just a cup of tea and
went to bed around 4:30 AM.
This was a mistake.
I
woke up around 10, well before my alarm was set, with a slight upset
stomach. This rose in a steady crescendo to full on "you're throwing up
now" nausea, and resulted in the sort of projectile vomit that wouldn't
have looked out of place in a zombie horror film. It was reddish,
though, which I took as a pretty bad sign; when I've gotten sick before
it's always been a neutral color. I also had to use the restroom again.
And again. And again. Breathing hurt. I felt extremely weak. I tried
eating some mini-wheats and couldn't even eat a dozen of them as
swallowing itself made my stomach protest. I lied back down for a while,
but that didn't help either. Around 1:15, on the verge of throwing up
again, I just told Delphi I needed to go to the hospital.
Upon
arriving, I relayed the above information, then got to sit and wait for
a while. The hospital was full, somehow, so it took perhaps 15 minutes
for them to get me into a bed. I had to wait for some time between
various stages of treatment: I had blood drawn, an EKG, an IV with
saline drip and two nausea/pain medications, and a long, long wait while
those all took effect. I was cold the entire time - my temperature was
only 97.5°F when I arrived - and the blankets would not stay on
top of me. They ultimately just chalked it up to a reaction to the
medication, gave me a prescription for some anti-nausea pills, and told
me to call my doctor tomorrow to let her know what happened.
On
the way home we stopped by the store and picked up some Powerade, rice,
and bananas, all per the doctor's recommendation that I eat really
light for the next day or two. I'm supposed to just start with liquids
for now and, if that doesn't cause me discomfort, I can eat the bananas
and rice. The nausea medication's a fallback option for only about two
days; I have just five pills that I can take so I'll probably save them
unless there's really no other good choice. For now, I'm just sipping a
bit of something and contemplating going to bed in the next hour or so.
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