June 2015- The Emergency Room

The Emergency Room

I walked in to the ER at 4;30 pm. I told the woman at the desk to sign me in for a tick bite. I told her that I had been having some weird symptoms after the fact, and they asked me to have a seat.

I brought a book. King Arthur and his Knights of the Round table. I noticed I had been having a more difficult time than usual reading. Concentration was hard, and everything around me seemed so loud. 

A lady sitting next to me complained that it has been three hours now that she had waited to go back. 

Two hours later, they did my vitals and asked me questions at the triage station. The nurse was a younger man, and he asked me how long the symptoms had persisted, and where I had gone hiking. 

When I told him the Midstate Trail, he said that he biked there all the time. Then, he said that his house was quite near it as well, He asked me to try to explain to him specifically what part, I told him which area. He said his house was right next to that entry. His eyes looked concerned. 

"Good luck," he said as he ushered me back out to the waiting room, "I hope you get better quickly."

It was nearing midnight before they led me back. 

The doctor was a little Indian man, and he automatically insisted I get a vaccination for Tetanus, because I couldn't remember if I had mine done or not. Come to think of it, I was having a hard time remembering much of anything. 

"I promise you, you cannot have Lyme disease," The doctor said to me.
"How would you know without testing me?"
"Because the incubation period is not in a week."
"It's been nine days now."
"It is not in nine days."

He told me that he was going to write me a prescription for 100 mgs of Doxycyline twice a day for ten days, just to make me feel better, and because I live in a high risk zone for Lyme disease.

"Is that all it takes to cure it? Ten days? And what's the point of prescribing me them if I can't possibly have it?"

He told me yes. That it was a simple viral infection, and that I was free to leave with the prescriptions, to which I asked,

"Aren't you going to at least test me for Lyme disease? Or possible co infections?"

He explained to me that it would not matter, because it would not show up that soon. I explained to him again that two weeks didn't seem right to me at all. That a longer treatment might be needed. 

He asked why I was so anxious. If I did have Lyme, it would be gone after the ten days..He seemed completely puzzled. He didn't know why I kept questioning him further and why I was so worried.

He assumed I was being racist, and started explaining to me when he came to America and that he had schooled here, and that he had a daughter my age. 

"Do you think I would lie to you?,' he asked me.

"You'd be surprised," I blurted out. 

There had to be something to this. 

I said, "There are other things that can be transmitted through ticks into the body. Like Colorado Rocky Fever and stuff. Aren't you going to test me for any of those things?"

He looked annoyed,but he said that we could do the tests. They drew many vials of blood from me, and I waited to hear the results. They said they all came back negative. That I had no infections.

"Well, if it isn't Lyme disease, and it isn't one of those things you just tested me for, then what's making me sick?"

"I don't have all the answers," he said, "and I never said you don't have Lyme, but I don't believe you do."

Before I left, I decided to make my bed for some reason. I grabbed one end of the white hospital blanket, and waved it in the air to fold it, and out from its center fell a vial of the blood they had said they had taken for tests, after they had assured me everything would be fine.

The vial from the hospital, right after I found it...

 

I grew very upset.

What if this was the very vial that contained the answers to my malady? 

I put the vial in my bag, and then I walked quietly out of the hospital and waited for my ride home.