In hospital

Sunday morning I made the horrible mistake of reading WebMD. Extreme sore throat? I had that! Flu-like symptoms and fatigue? I had that too! Stabbing pains in upper abdomen, right under the ribs? Oh my god, that's my spleen, and it's about to explode because I must have mononucleosis. I called the emergency hotline to pick a doctor's brain about it and see if I could put off going to the GP until Monday, and he seemed a bit miffed that I didn't have any violent vomiting or diarrhea, so it was hard to get a good answer from him. I napped for two hours in the middle of the day (making myself buy into the "fatigue" symptom a bit more when I'm sure I just hadn't slept enough the night before), and by the time I was walking to dinner the horrible pain in my chest kept going even when I wasn't stretching, and it felt like a knife was heaving up and down between my ribs with every step. I got a Coke with Carly, Sarah, and Zach before dinner and cracked a few jokes about my spleen being a time-bomb over a really horrible stuffed eggplant, but on the walk home I had pretty much decided I was going to call a taxi to the hospital.

I've always liked to be discreet and handle my problems on my own whenever possible, but that "appalled" Mary Catherine, Julianna and Dr. Eberle as they all eventually discovered me looking pretty pained in the kitchen and called Mrs. Bradshaw to drive me to the hospital. As the wait in the E.R. wore on to about four hours, I was really glad I had someone nice enough to wait with me that long--I didn't know the British healthcare system, so it was good to have Mrs. Bradshaw there to tell me what kind of things they find important (bowel movements, apparently, which was pretty embarrassing to talk about even though the doctors brought it up like small talk, and also that I need to pipe up for painkillers because they won't give you any if you don't ask). In a very weird situation, we also had a pretty good time just chatting. I pointed out a few good French films I'd seen in Cannes as she looked over a brochure for a French film series near Oxford, and she told me about her really fun-sounding five-person yoga class in a cottage near the Cotswolds as I employed some deep-breathing to get through the E.R. doc's taking a big vial of blood from the back of my elbow (can that be called an elbowpit? I'd like that). Around 2, once they had shunted me over to a gurney in the "Clinical Decisions Unit" (essentially the "sit here while we figure out what's wrong with you" unit), I tried to act brave and let Mrs. Bradshaw go home to get some sleep. She had been so nice to sit with me all that time (six hours!), and I felt like, having tried to just take a cab to the hospital on my own, I could probably handle the night by myself until they diagnosed me. Things got a little hairy when a surgical consult came by--he didn't have the best bedside manner, so I didn't trust him when he said it didn't seem like a serious medical issue, and when he poked the area between my ribs that hurt the most I burst into tears with the pain--but miraculously Dr. Eberle showed up to chase nurses and insist upon my being admitted since I still wanted to know what was wrong with me.

In the morning I finally got some painkillers and water (but no food!) and they moved me to the only empty bed in the surgical emergency ward, in the "resuscitation room"/supply closet, to await an ultrasound. I got maybe an hour and a half of sleep the night before, so I was glad to doze off in a real, fluffy bed until 11:30 when Julianna showed up with my pillow and iPod. She did an excellent job looking out for me, too, running off to ask the nurses "Well, WHEN is she going to see the senior doctor?" We both had a good laugh when the ultrascan doctor, like all the other doctors, really, told me she was "going to take a look at my tummy," like "tummy" was the most appropriate medical term. Eventually they decided that I have an inflamed muscle across my ribcage from the infection I'd had over the previous few weeks and from all of the violent coughing and that the best thing for me to do was to get a big pack of codeine (or, my favorite, co-codemol, a blend of codeine and paracetamol that sounds like Coco Puffs!) and just watch TV/read books/not move. So that's what I've done the past few days.

The whole British hospital experience was pretty funny. The NHS is good and bad, just like any healthcare system I guess. It was too rad to not pay a pence for my overnight "in hospital" (it's like an adjective, not a prepositional phrase, for invalids in England--I almost laughed when one of my nurses asked if my parents knew I was in hospital). I had asked several of my doctors over the night whether it was a problem that I wasn't a UK taxpayer, but they all said not to worry about it because it was most important that I got care when I was sick. But, for all the time it takes in ERs in the States, I'm pretty sure I would have had that emergency ultrasound within an hour, instead of after a long, sleepless night where I could have been waiting for my spleen to explode. We also saw a woman with the tip of her finger nearly severed from slamming a door on it wait to see a doctor for an hour longer than a girl with a headache! Mrs. Bradshaw chuckled a bit about it not being the rosy picture that Michael Moore would paint, but all in all I feel like I eventually got all the attention I needed, and definitely a lot more than I paid for (7 pounds for my codeine, which is the flat rate for any prescription). I'm not sure universal healthcare would work in the States (we ain't socialists!), but I'm sure there's a lot we have to learn.

My life in Oxford had been slowing down a lot anyway, but with the "inflamed muscle" I've retreated from the outside world even more. I feel like an old woman, calculating which is the shortest route to get wherever I want to go or whether I even need to go out at all because of how painful it could be, which makes me so much more grateful for how healthy I am 99.9% of the time. As I've emerged sporadically the past two days to get to classes and Keble dinner, I've walked myself around (instead of biking, much to my chagrin since it takes so much longer and really doesn't feel much less painful to walk) listening to my iPod like I'm some moody emo-kid in an indie film with my own soundtrack, and I think I've started to mourn. I walk to obscure libraries or down certain alleys and wonder if it's the last time I'll walk there, because I'm not sure when (if ever) I'll return to England again. But bundled up in my peacoat and pashmina, peeking into restaurants and pubs and cafes where I've had fun with my friends, I feel like I have so many good memories to last me a long time.