Hospital Run

While many of you were following the ongoing events on Twitter last night, I'm going to try and consolidate that information into a single, coherent blog post now that I've had some sleep.

Last night, around 7:30, I was driving along the Interstate in Chicagoland. I kicked part of the truck out of annoyance at an open weigh station... then my shoulder started to hurt. No, it still doesn't make sense to me either. The pain came and went, but mostly came; by the time I'd arrived it was quite painful to even move that arm in any meaningful way. Writing was painful. Turning my head was painful. Don't even ask what it felt like to mis-shift a gear. The pain spread quite a ways, too: all the way up the right side of my neck to my jaw and about halfway down to my waist.

Concerned about it, I called the nurse line the insurance provides to get an opinion on it. The nurse was quite friendly, but also strongly recommended that I don't drive at all considering the condition my shoulder was in. Staying parked at a customer yard wasn't an option (it rarely is), so I had to just deal with it. She recommended that I go to an urgent care facility if at all possible, though. Nothing was open that late at night, so I figured I'd just kinda deal with it... then the pain got even worse and started spreading to my chest, which scared the heck out of everyone I was discussing the situation with. Storm Gryph said he'd take me to the hospital; I said I'd go.

We arrived at the hospital shortly before 11 PM. I was taken back for various paperwork, then waited a few minutes before some X-rays were taken. Around midnight I went back and stayed in an examination room for a while while the doctor looked into it. An hour later, I was told the doctor had ordered a shot of painkillers for me... and since it was 2 cc worth, it needed to be injected into my butt. I went from being uncomfortably warm in that room to shivering in the blink of an eye, but ended up taking it because my earlier Tylenol was wearing off. I couldn't even move for several minutes after that, but once it kicked in, I slowly rolled over and stood up. Shortly thereafter two more x-rays were taken, another round of waiting, and I finally had a diagnosis: a sprained right shoulder. I was told to be careful with it and given a prescription for Motrin. Upon being released, we went to a Walgreen's to get that prescription filled. The pharmacist had it taken care of within minutes, which surprised everyone; we all figured it would be an hour or so and would have time to get some much-needed food first. So we went for food, then - at four in the morning - I was finally back at the truck and went to bed.

I just want to thank Storm Gryph for playing taxi service, Dresil for being a coat hanger (sorry :) ), and everyone on Twitter who expressed their concern last night. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. :)