travis's birthday was on wednesday. the very next day, he found himself in the emergency room in st. francis hospital.
he called me at about 1:00 at my office and asked what i had going on for the rest of the afternoon. then he said he thought he was going to have to go to the emergency room. luckily my schedule was pretty free in terms of meetings, so i cleared the rest of the day and headed out to the car. when i got to the parking garage, he was already reclined in the passenger seat. he already looked pale.
the request to go to the er wasn't completely out of the blue. for the past month, he had been having severe stomach cramps, wasn't "passing" what we would expect, and had also been having trouble with painful ulcers in his mouth and throat. we had gone to urgent care a few times, but they kept telling him he was constipated and recommended laxatives.
when we left work thursday, the pain had just become too intense. we called st. john's hospital by our house, but they don't keep a gastroenterologist on call, so we headed to st. francis. travis had been able to {finally} get an appointment with a GI in bartlesville who came highly recommended, but that appointment wasn't until the next wednesday, and he just couldn't wait that long.
they took travis back for triage and left me sitting in the waiting room for quite sometime. they wouldn't let me back until they had him in an actual ER room. when i finally got back, i found him in a hospital gown in a bed. i wasn't really expecting that. we had been to the ER by our house a week or two before for travis's throat, and they had left him in his street clothes. i felt relieved, though, and hoped that we were finally going to get some answers.
the room we were in had a tv {nice} but it was stuck on one channel and one volume - loud {not so nice}. we watched dr. phil air a special about girls who had been kidnapped and held in bunkers. not really the most pleasant story to watch while you're sitting in a hospital bed.
travis has always prided himself on never having had a broken bone, a serious injury, or a hospitalization. he celebrated his birthday, and wham! into the hospital he goes. poor guy.
it turns out that my relief was short-lived. when the doctor finally came back, he told travis that he had reviewed his CT and that there was nothing they could do. that he looked "backed up." travis asked if he would like a specimen because what he was passing was not normal. the doctor's response, "i don't want to see that, man. that's disgusting." thank you dr. medical professional. he prescribed laxatives (all of which we had already tried) and a pain pill to help with the stomach cramping. a pain pill that would cause further constipation.
when the nurse came in to discharge travis and give him his scripts (for over the counter laxatives) we again expressed our concern that we had tried each of these things already. she suggested "fleet" and said it never failed to help patients. we told her we had tried it. and it had failed. she thought for a few more minutes and finally suggested max citrate. she said if that didn't help, nothing would.
we stopped and got a bottle on the way home, and now my poor guy hasn't been able to leave the restroom. he is in a terrible amount of pain, and we still have no idea what is going on. now he's starting to run horrible fevers, but i can't convince him to head back to the hospital since we have been to urgent care twice and the er once for this and nothing is being done to help.
keep us in your prayers.
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