Subtitled, My Fourth Time in an Emergency Room for 2004
Somewhere someone got fired on her first day of work. I am not that person, thank God. I am, however, going to give the girl who spilled coffee on herself and the guy who shredded the wrong documents a run for their money on who had the worst first day of work. Like those two losers, I will have to show my face at work on Monday, groan.
I went to work for the first time last Wednesday. I woke up from a nightmare at 5:30 in the morning: flamenco dancing onstage in pitch darkness with a rock band. My eyes were swollen, and I only barley managed to stuff my corpulent self into a business suit and ugly shoes. I picked up some mutant dust at the community super-mart on the way to work. The swelling of my face got worse as the minutes trickled by. I was an hour and a half early for work, itchy, irritated, with my eyes bulging from their sockets.
I started out with three other girls, one of whom was a good friend of mine. Since I didn’t really know the other two girls I had to issue the disclaimer that I normally don’t look like (literally) a fish out of water. Yeah, all goggle-eyed girls say that. We filled out a bunch of forms for work: identification cards, personnel records, insurance, social security and went on a mini-tour of our labyrinthine office. It became apparent during the day that that mini tour was wholly inadequate, when I spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out where my office was.
My mini-tour was made even mini-er by the interruption of a partner who suddenly wanted something done ASAP by any one of us newbies. I had to proofread a client’s brochure which was alternately in our national language, English and Spanish, within an hour. This was relatively easy work, if I understood what I was reading. Surprisingly I was able to make enough corrections to make it apparent that I knew what I was doing. I did a few more things for this partner for the rest of the day. I also proofread another document for an associate who had been my teacher two years ago. She got my name mixed up with one of my other classmates, which made me cringe. I racked up three and a half hours of billable time on my first day, which isn’t so bad. Okay, I admit it, technically, my first day wasn’t so bad except that I was butt-ugly and swollen the whole day!
I had to tell anyone with eyes and ears that I normally look better than I did that day.
I frightened an associate in the elevator when the doors opened and she saw me looking like Mack the Knife, with my gauze mask and scalpel… okay, fine, I had no scalpel.
I scared my secretary when I gave her a list of my allergies, emergency numbers and showed her my last-resort adrenalin syringe for the onset of anaphylactic shock.
I was too scared to eat turon
And the clincher was going home. Not home yet, actually. I waited for months to go my friend’s baby shower, and at 6 P.M. I was on my way to the party in a taxi. Thirty minutes later I was less than a kilometer from where I started, surrounded by a sea of other vehicles. My body could no longer take the added stress and dirt that was weighing on me. And so the air began to thin around me, or maybe it was my lungs that grew thick within me. I felt like I was being smothered by my swollen flesh and dread began to creep into my consciousness, dread that was telling me I couldn’t ignore my allergies for a second more.
I started sending messages to my friends to tell them I was not feeling well. Initially I just wanted to warn them, so that when I get to the party looking like shit that couldn’t get hit on in a bar full of merchant marines, no one would get too alarmed. But later, after I talked to my doctor on the phone and she told me to get the driver to drop me off at a hospital instead, I had to tell my friends that I couldn’t come to the shower after all. They called me, one by one, offering rides to the hospital, especially after they found out that I was alone in the cab and very frightened. I told them not to worry, and that I would call them if things got worse.
Then I called my mother. I just ushered her into her worst nightmare: I was sick again. She told my sister to gather my things and meet me at the hospital. True enough when I staggered out of the cab my sister and my father were there to help me walk to the emergency room.
I was once again lying on the bed where I almost died on June 26, 2004. My sister told me this since I don’t really remember that night. Actually as I walked into the emergency room I realized it was the first time I was ever able to do that. A nurse took my blood pressure, which was low, and hooked me to the oxygen tank. I spend about a couple hours on that bed under observation. I just wanted to eat dinner and go home. My father was completely upset by the whole thing. He was abroad for duration of my hospitalization and ordeal as an outpatient. He grumpily stood watch by my bed, ever angry at the things that were wrong in my body. My sister on the other hand was cheerfully greeting all the medical staff she knew around the emergency room, even in Admitting, Billing (where she saw my pulmonologist) and the hallways between them.
After a bunch of phone calls to my two immunologists I was set to go home. I was told not to work for the next two days, and for good reason. I almost fell down the stairs when I got home because I was so weak. My mother and sister had to give me a warm bath because I could barely keep my head up, let alone wash myself before going to bed. That night I had a dream again, it’s just that I don’t remember exactly what happened. I think it had something to do with cowboys and (Punjabi) Indians.
I could barely leave my bed the next day. My sister called in sick for me. All my meals were brought into my room. I was taken to the hospital in the afternoon for a medical reevaluation. I ended up with the prescription that fixed me right up:
Montelukast Singulair TM 10 mg tablet
Desloratadine Aerius TM 5 mg tablet
Ranitidine Zantac R 150 mg tablet
Methylprednisolone Medrol R 16 mg tablet
Levocetirizine diHCl Xysal R 5 mg tablet
Budesonide Formoterol Symbicort R Turbuhaler R
Yes, I took all those on Friday morning (Except Xysal, which I took in the evening) and I managed to pee fifteen times, all that was necessary to rid me of the swelling that distorted my face, the same face that will have to show itself at the office after disappearing for the rest of the work week. Sigh. Hopefully no one will recognize me, and no one cares that I’ve been on leave longer than I worked.
My good friend, the one I ate friend chicken with when I got home between hospitalizations last June, told me that the other day some girls from our high school had a field trip in her office (a little place we call the Supreme Court) where she razzle-dazzled them with her wit, charm and brilliance. Oh well. Here’s hoping I’d have a day like that.
