A Visit to the ER
( Don’t worry, all is OK!)
I haven’t felt 100% since getting home from Madison. I was getting daily headaches (some were migraine intensity), and just not feeling up to par. This is totally not normal for me, as I’ve always been a healthy woman. Some of my friends suggested that I picked up a bug while flying, since that happens to quite a few people. I thought maybe I was dehydrated, so I upped my intake of water.
Just when the headaches began subsiding (around the 15th), I felt the beginnings of a UTI (Urinary Tract Infection) start. This is also something I haven’t had to deal with on a regular basis. In the past, a few doses of AZO and gallons of cranberry juice have made things all better.
On Friday, I had errands to run, so I loaded Sedona into the car and made my loop through Fairbanks taking care of business. We stopped at Creamers Field for a walk, and after only a short distance, my back began aching, and the pain radiated around my entire mid-section. I couldn’t even finish my errands; I just wanted to go home and get into bed with a heating pad. (It also didn’t help that I had some young soldier with road rage shadow me onto Post, bullying me with his big truck! I’ll tell that story when I finish this one)
When I got home, I immediately lay down with my heating pad and took a few tylenol to take the edge off the pain. I literally felt like someone had kicked me in the kidneys. I dialed the appointment line at BACH (Bassett Army Community Hospital) to see if I could get an appointment - knowing the odds were slim to none. They have this system where they ‘open the books’ for appointments on a certain day each month. If you don’t call on that day and make your appointment, they all fill up. You can try again the following month, if you’re not seriously ill or dead by then. So, of course there were no appointments available, and I was instructed to call on Monday morning (tomorrow) to see if there were any cancellations.
