Friday morning brought no solace. The pain in my head was excruciating and the very thought of food or drink made my guts churn. I was dehydrated and by the seventh day of pain, there was no hope of redemption in sight. At that point I was pretty sure there was something seriously wrong with my head, like an aneurysm or a tumor or something (G-d forbid) and I was convinced that if I didn’t get to the hospital pronto, my head was going to explode. I calmly informed my mother that we were going to the hospital. She just looked at me and started getting her shoes on.
The emergency room was pretty empty, not surprisingly considering it was about 6:00 pm on a Friday. Too close to Shabbat for trivial matters, too early in the evening for bar fights. They admitted me right away, took some blood and gave me a bed. I napped for a few hours until it was time for a C.T. scan. They directed me to the waiting room of the C.T. lab, which was around the corner, down the hall, make a right, turn left at the pediatric section, go through the glass doors, turn right, then left, then right again and go to the end of the hall. Of course, the directions they gave us were something like, “Go around the corner and turn right.” Thank G-d my mother was with me, because in my pain-induced half delusional state, I’d probably have ended up in the parking lot. But together we found it, she reading the signs and directing us on and me moaning loudly, scaring off any would-be muggers.
We sat down to wait. The C.T. technician who finally admitted me was a middle aged Israeli man wearing jeans and a t-shirt who looked like he’d left his cab running outside and dashed in to quickly scan my brain before returning to cruise the streets outside for fares. I calmly lied down on the table while calmly ignoring his fifteen minute lecture about my nose ring and today’s youth in general. My mother led the way back to my bed and then went off to find the Shabbat meal they were hosting somewhere in the hospital. I stared forlornly at the two pieces of bread I may or may not eat and at the small container of cottage cheese I was pretty sure I didn’t want to eat. When she came back, it was lumbar puncture time. For those of you picturing a happy lumber jack whistling and dancing away, you may now banish that image from your mind. It’s nothing quite so innocent. You may if you’d like picture an insane lumber jack swinging his axe around and felling everything in his path. It’s nothing really like that either but at least now we’re in the right mindset. The doctor asked me if I could roll into a ball on my side. I told him that I thought I could probably manage a fetal position in these circumstances. I stared at my knees as he pulled out what my imagination is filling in for me was a humongous needle and plunged it into my spine, extracting whatever fluids a person has in their spinal cord. This is the point where we noticed that my mother was now sitting on the floor trying to stop it from spinning. I invited her to come share my bed but there wasn’t really enough room until they could pry my knees away from my chin. Finally they gave me some fluids with pain killers and anti-nausea meds through an IV and I went to sleep sort of happy-ish.
They woke me up around 7:00 in the morning to tell me that all my tests were fine and that I was free to go whenever I was ready. I asked the doctor what he thought it was and he said that, according to the blood tests it could be a virus. I was pretty skeptical, however I was very relieved that my brain wasn’t going to explode anytime soon. Still, it didn’t really explain ANYTHING and as soon as the drugs wore off I was going to be as bad off as before. The doctor at least gave me some prescriptions, one for pain and one for nausea. We were able to get a cab driver to take us to the closest open pharmacy (which was across the way in Sheikh Jarakh) and then home to Ma’ale Adumim.
We got home in time for the sorriest Shabbat meal ever (at least for me). I’d taken the anti-nausea pills an hour before lunch as directed but a few hours later I was forced to revisit the sorriest Shabbat meal ever, made even sorrier the second time around by the presence of my head in the toilet. Plus the Tramadex they’d given me for the headache wasn’t doing anything much except visiting the inside of the toilet bowl. By evening, the options were a.) go back to the hospital or b.) go to sleep in my own bed and see how I was feeling the next morning. I chose my bed.
The next morning I woke up early and was still feeling pretty awful. I debated waking my mother up and going to the hospital but the internal debate was pretty much decided for me when I started throwing up the remainder of my stomach contents (which were water). We called a cab and returned to the hospital. They put me in a nice dark corner which was even quiet for a few hours. They reacquainted me with Jorge (my IV) and let me sleep for a little while. Then it was off to the neurologist in a wheelchair with a hook for my IV bag. A nurse wheeled me up and left me outside in the waiting room. I ran into a bit of trouble when the doctor finally opened the door and called my name. Everyone just stared at me waiting for me to go in. Finally I said, “What, am I supposed to push myself in?” I was not really in the mood to pull the needles out of my arm by catching them in the wheels trying to roll myself into the doctor’s office. My mom finally went, “oh” and jumped up to push me in. Turns out that the neurologist was actually the same neurologist who moonlights at the Maccabi clinic in Ma’ale Adumim whom I had an appointment with that Wednesday. Anyway, he did lots of tests, looked at my C.T. scan and declared me perfectly fine.
Next they wheeled me off to an eye doctor. Turns out bad vision was not the cause of my now 9 day headache and nausea. I did get a nice tour of the hospital, getting wheeled around all over the place, but I’m not sure I had enough painkillers in me at that moment to fully appreciate it. Not much else happened the rest of the day. I let my mother go home for the night while I tried to sleep in my corner with some old woman screaming like a banshee all night. That almost wasn’t so bad but every time she screamed, the other patients would scream “shut up!” At some time around 2:00 in the morning the nurse woke me up to move me to a bed on the other side of the ER. I don’t know why; she said it would be more comfortable there and I was not awake enough to argue. She put me in a well-lit area with lots of noise and possibly the most uncomfortable bed ever. She then promptly forgot about me. I was going to ask her for some more medication but I don’t think anyone even came back to check on me until the morning (except for a curious nurse who was wondering where the heck I’d just come from). I spent most of the rest of the night fighting with my sheets which for some reason kept popping off the bed and covering my face. By the time my parents came back in the morning I was ready to go home (and I’m not at all convinced that that wasn’t the purpose of sticking me in that bed and then leaving me there). I was pretty annoyed at this point and it didn’t help that the doctor on call was insisting that my headache was a tension headache. She told me I should go to the pharmacy and buy an over-the-counter medication containing Acamol and caffeine. That’s about the equivalent of taking a Tylenol with a cup of coffee, which after the Percocet they’d given me, made me think that maybe she’d gotten her M.D. from a mail order catalog. She’d been not very subtly hinting to me that I could leave whenever I was ready but when I told her I wanted to go home she made me go up and see the neurologist again just in case the doctor and head doctor from my previous hospitalization, the neurologist and the neurologist’s boss had all missed something in the C.T. the first and second times around (this is obviously how they prevent lawsuits in Israel). After waiting outside his office for what seemed like forever, he let me in and cleared me for discharge. He told me that if I wanted, he could recommend that they hospitalize me but since I didn’t see any real point (they were already convinced it was just a totally normal 10 day headache), I declined the offer. So I went home and took a nap on the couch.
The emergency room was pretty empty, not surprisingly considering it was about 6:00 pm on a Friday. Too close to Shabbat for trivial matters, too early in the evening for bar fights. They admitted me right away, took some blood and gave me a bed. I napped for a few hours until it was time for a C.T. scan. They directed me to the waiting room of the C.T. lab, which was around the corner, down the hall, make a right, turn left at the pediatric section, go through the glass doors, turn right, then left, then right again and go to the end of the hall. Of course, the directions they gave us were something like, “Go around the corner and turn right.” Thank G-d my mother was with me, because in my pain-induced half delusional state, I’d probably have ended up in the parking lot. But together we found it, she reading the signs and directing us on and me moaning loudly, scaring off any would-be muggers.
We sat down to wait. The C.T. technician who finally admitted me was a middle aged Israeli man wearing jeans and a t-shirt who looked like he’d left his cab running outside and dashed in to quickly scan my brain before returning to cruise the streets outside for fares. I calmly lied down on the table while calmly ignoring his fifteen minute lecture about my nose ring and today’s youth in general. My mother led the way back to my bed and then went off to find the Shabbat meal they were hosting somewhere in the hospital. I stared forlornly at the two pieces of bread I may or may not eat and at the small container of cottage cheese I was pretty sure I didn’t want to eat. When she came back, it was lumbar puncture time. For those of you picturing a happy lumber jack whistling and dancing away, you may now banish that image from your mind. It’s nothing quite so innocent. You may if you’d like picture an insane lumber jack swinging his axe around and felling everything in his path. It’s nothing really like that either but at least now we’re in the right mindset. The doctor asked me if I could roll into a ball on my side. I told him that I thought I could probably manage a fetal position in these circumstances. I stared at my knees as he pulled out what my imagination is filling in for me was a humongous needle and plunged it into my spine, extracting whatever fluids a person has in their spinal cord. This is the point where we noticed that my mother was now sitting on the floor trying to stop it from spinning. I invited her to come share my bed but there wasn’t really enough room until they could pry my knees away from my chin. Finally they gave me some fluids with pain killers and anti-nausea meds through an IV and I went to sleep sort of happy-ish.
They woke me up around 7:00 in the morning to tell me that all my tests were fine and that I was free to go whenever I was ready. I asked the doctor what he thought it was and he said that, according to the blood tests it could be a virus. I was pretty skeptical, however I was very relieved that my brain wasn’t going to explode anytime soon. Still, it didn’t really explain ANYTHING and as soon as the drugs wore off I was going to be as bad off as before. The doctor at least gave me some prescriptions, one for pain and one for nausea. We were able to get a cab driver to take us to the closest open pharmacy (which was across the way in Sheikh Jarakh) and then home to Ma’ale Adumim.
We got home in time for the sorriest Shabbat meal ever (at least for me). I’d taken the anti-nausea pills an hour before lunch as directed but a few hours later I was forced to revisit the sorriest Shabbat meal ever, made even sorrier the second time around by the presence of my head in the toilet. Plus the Tramadex they’d given me for the headache wasn’t doing anything much except visiting the inside of the toilet bowl. By evening, the options were a.) go back to the hospital or b.) go to sleep in my own bed and see how I was feeling the next morning. I chose my bed.
The next morning I woke up early and was still feeling pretty awful. I debated waking my mother up and going to the hospital but the internal debate was pretty much decided for me when I started throwing up the remainder of my stomach contents (which were water). We called a cab and returned to the hospital. They put me in a nice dark corner which was even quiet for a few hours. They reacquainted me with Jorge (my IV) and let me sleep for a little while. Then it was off to the neurologist in a wheelchair with a hook for my IV bag. A nurse wheeled me up and left me outside in the waiting room. I ran into a bit of trouble when the doctor finally opened the door and called my name. Everyone just stared at me waiting for me to go in. Finally I said, “What, am I supposed to push myself in?” I was not really in the mood to pull the needles out of my arm by catching them in the wheels trying to roll myself into the doctor’s office. My mom finally went, “oh” and jumped up to push me in. Turns out that the neurologist was actually the same neurologist who moonlights at the Maccabi clinic in Ma’ale Adumim whom I had an appointment with that Wednesday. Anyway, he did lots of tests, looked at my C.T. scan and declared me perfectly fine.
Next they wheeled me off to an eye doctor. Turns out bad vision was not the cause of my now 9 day headache and nausea. I did get a nice tour of the hospital, getting wheeled around all over the place, but I’m not sure I had enough painkillers in me at that moment to fully appreciate it. Not much else happened the rest of the day. I let my mother go home for the night while I tried to sleep in my corner with some old woman screaming like a banshee all night. That almost wasn’t so bad but every time she screamed, the other patients would scream “shut up!” At some time around 2:00 in the morning the nurse woke me up to move me to a bed on the other side of the ER. I don’t know why; she said it would be more comfortable there and I was not awake enough to argue. She put me in a well-lit area with lots of noise and possibly the most uncomfortable bed ever. She then promptly forgot about me. I was going to ask her for some more medication but I don’t think anyone even came back to check on me until the morning (except for a curious nurse who was wondering where the heck I’d just come from). I spent most of the rest of the night fighting with my sheets which for some reason kept popping off the bed and covering my face. By the time my parents came back in the morning I was ready to go home (and I’m not at all convinced that that wasn’t the purpose of sticking me in that bed and then leaving me there). I was pretty annoyed at this point and it didn’t help that the doctor on call was insisting that my headache was a tension headache. She told me I should go to the pharmacy and buy an over-the-counter medication containing Acamol and caffeine. That’s about the equivalent of taking a Tylenol with a cup of coffee, which after the Percocet they’d given me, made me think that maybe she’d gotten her M.D. from a mail order catalog. She’d been not very subtly hinting to me that I could leave whenever I was ready but when I told her I wanted to go home she made me go up and see the neurologist again just in case the doctor and head doctor from my previous hospitalization, the neurologist and the neurologist’s boss had all missed something in the C.T. the first and second times around (this is obviously how they prevent lawsuits in Israel). After waiting outside his office for what seemed like forever, he let me in and cleared me for discharge. He told me that if I wanted, he could recommend that they hospitalize me but since I didn’t see any real point (they were already convinced it was just a totally normal 10 day headache), I declined the offer. So I went home and took a nap on the couch.
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