{"id":832,"date":"2013-11-14T16:50:21","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T20:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shakabrown.com\/home\/?p=832"},"modified":"2015-02-18T05:23:35","modified_gmt":"2015-02-18T05:23:35","slug":"111413-5pm-checking-in-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shakabrown.com\/home\/111413-5pm-checking-in-day-1\/","title":{"rendered":"11\/14\/13 – 5pm – Checking in. – Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JMH-Emergency-200px-150x150\"<\/a>I went into the emergency room with my mother, and signed in, was told I would be called. They got me in pretty quickly, and I went to an interview nurse that asked about the signs and symptoms. I sneezed before I could sit down, getting phlegm on my hands and face. I apologized and was looking for a napkin. The nurse reacted quickly
\n“Go to that station right now, and wash your hands and face. Don’t touch anything.”
\nI couldn’t see where she was directing me.
\nAnd I started crying.
\n“Stop crying and go there. NOW”
\nI stumbled over to the wash station, came back and apologized. We then went over the symptoms, and she looked at the paperwork from my clinic doctor. She sent me back into the waiting room, where mommy was waiting. Minutes later I heard them call my name. This time they said my mother could come. I was then laid onto a stretcher behind a curtain and stripped to my boxers. The next\u00a010 hours\u00a0were a blur.
\nI only vaguely remember being hooked up to a bunch of wires, having an IV in my right arm, having to get out of the bed to the left side, and there was a urinal container next to the bed. The first 5 times I used it, I asked my mother to step outside of the curtain, while I got out of the bed without messing up the cables. After that I just started getting up as best I could and going. She’s my mother. I was peeing around her before I even knew what I was doing, and she was cleaning it up.
\nIn those 10 hours, I took every test that I had taken in the past 2 months while going to the clinic. CAT scans, brain scans, ultrasounds, EKGs, and blood. Lots of blood. People kept coming in with little biohazard bags and blood withdrawal kits. They came a lot, to the point that they were looking for veins in parts my arm and hand that I didn’t like having poked. I told them they should just take all the blood they needed one time, so that they didn’t have to keep coming back.<\/p>\n

They then sent me for a chest x-ray. I was so weak that I could barely hold my hands over my head.
\nA close friend showed up at the emergency room as soon as she heard I was there.\u00a0 I was really uncomfortable with her seeing me laid out naked in the hospital robe with my mother there.\u00a0As if she’d never seen anyone in a hospital, she’s only a nurse I mean.
\nIn fact, she was still wearing scrubs.<\/p>\n

She\u00a0started working on me, helping the other nurses, who were probably a little confused because she\u00a0didn’t exactly work at this hospital.
\n“What are his blood levels? Are you monitoring this? What about that?”
\nWhen she started to help a tech unhook, or maybe hook up the wires on the EKG machine, I freaked out and pulled a really smart move.\u00a0I asked her to stop and leave.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, she didn’t.<\/p>\n

One of the nurses came in and said\u00a0that they wanted me to give consent for an HIV test. I told her\u00a0I had just taken one. I guess it didn’t count. This was was more than a finger prick, they grabbed another tube of blood.
\nFinally at 3am, a nurse\u00a0came to my side.
\n“Mr. Brown. The hospital has made a decision. We are going to admit you. We believe\u00a0you have TB.”
\n“Admit me? I figured that I was admitted when you laid me on this stretcher and turned me into a pin cushion.”
\n“This is the emergency room. We are going to admit you to the hospital.” They put a yellow mask on my face, told me not to take it off under any condition and put me on a stretcher.\u00a0\u00a0I was\u00a0rolled me into a real hospital room, with\u00a0a door. Anyone who came into that door had to have a mask on.<\/p>\n

Mommy sat in the chair, I was transferred to the bed. I kept telling her she could go home. I was told that I could not leave the room. It was 3am. I just wanted to sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went into the emergency room with my mother, and signed in, was told I would be called. They got me in pretty quickly, and I went to an interview … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “11\/14\/13 – 5pm – Checking in. – Day 1”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tuberculosis","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakabrown.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakabrown.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakabrown.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakabrown.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakabrown.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakabrown.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2376,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakabrown.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions\/2376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakabrown.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakabrown.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakabrown.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}