I should have gone to the hospital
Yesterday I saved my own life. Not figuratively, literally.
WARNING: this is gross
On Friday I woke up with the worst abdominal pain imaginable. I didn’t know what was happening, just that I was in immense pain.
My fiancée said, “We need to get you to a hospital!”
I’m a very independent man, so I said, “No, I’m sure I can figure this out.”
While enduring this pain, I tried to think.
And the first vomit came. It was my dinner the night before.
“Phew,” I thought. Must have been food poisoning.
It was not.
I puked again. And again. And again.
I thought, “maybe this is just blockage.”
Maybe if I drink some water it might soften this up.
It came back out every time.
If you don’t know (I didn’t), the stomach refuses to send anything further if there’s a blockage; meaning nowhere for this to go. So it decides to force you to vomit.
If you don’t take care of a blockage (I do recommend the hospital), eventually you will die of thirst.
I had heard of this, but had zero experience with it. The pain wasn’t like a computer error. Nothing tells you what’s wrong. Which is kind of the important part if you want to know how to fix it.
It’s just a loud and incredibly painful signal that something in your body is wrong.
Moving on.
I would need to vomit regularly whether I ate or drank or not.
Eventually I noticed the colors coming out were changing. So I thought, “at least that feels like progress.” So I just kept accepting the only path forward without a hospital (I’m a stubborn fool, I know. It’ll probably get me killed someday) is to keep vomiting.
The pain got less and less, so I knew it was working.
It took two and a half painful days of constantly leaning over the toilet.
But in one magical moment, pardon my language (but I did warn this is gross), I needed to take a shit.
I had the most compacted shit of my life. And then another. And another.
Now, if it had gone on long enough with no progress, I would have gone to the hospital. Instead, I followed my gut (pun intended).
Two and a half days of suffering in bed, around 25 times over the toilet. My fiancée said ‘let’s go to the hospital’ the second she realized the absolute agony I was in, and that this could have been something more serious. I’m a stubborn fool. She’s not a fan of that quality of mine, but hey. My stupid, stubborn independence caused me two and a half days of extreme pain. Thank god my fiancée was there, she took care of me while I was puking everywhere and developing the shakes and the sweats.
I’ve learned my lesson. Drink water, and consume more fiber, Jake!
I should have gone to the hospital.