Very sad tale of rocks where they should not be

This is something I wrote a while back - in January or February. It is a sad retelling of a sad story, but here it is anyway.
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Coming back from Chile, I got stuck in Miami for two days because of an enormous snowstorm in Boston & the rest of the East Coast. Finally, to my delight, I actually made it home! So I get home, and shortly thereafter I go to bed, curl up under the piles of blanket, and just feel really happy to have finally made it home where I could sleep in my own bed.

Unfortunately, that relief was not to last. At about 5AM I woke up with really horrible pain in my abdomen and side. I had no idea what was wrong with me, and the pain just kept getting worse. The first thing that occured to me was: what side is your appendix on? I tried calling the after-hours info. line at the health services, but they weren't helpful at all, and they kept asking inane questions such as: how long would it take you to get to Cambridge? (at least 2 hours considering the 3 feet of snow, also it was snowing again, and I didn't feel like driving through the whole city in excrutiating pain...)

After a while of not knowing what to do, I heard the upstairs neighbors (also my landlords) walking around, and I rang their bell and asked my neighbor if he would drive me to the emergency room. There's a hospital about a mile from where I live.

He seemed perplexed and agreed to drive me to the hospital. By this time it was snowing again, adding more layers to the huge piles of snow already there. We drove around looking for the emergency room, and finally we found it. My neighbor dropped me off by the door and went to find a place to park. At this point, I was truly in excrutiating pain. I went in the door to find something that looked like an abandoned waiting room. Nobody was there and opaque doors were closed on all sides. I stood there for a while, achieving the zen-like calm that only horrible pain can provide, and finally a large set of doors opened by themselves and I was able to look into a place that looked more like an actual emergency room.

I went in and spoke to the first person behind a desk that I could find. She started to ask me questions. Meanwhile I was practically collapsing in pain. The questions had more to do with what type of health insurance I have rather than my symptoms. I asked if I could sit down. Since apparently my insurance sounded good enough, she said I could go lie down in area #12 - a bed area off to the side. So I did, or rather, I collapsed onto the bed thing. Someone came and brought me one of those flimsy hospital gowns. I took off my coat (which I had luckily put on over my pajamas) and my pjs and kind of threw the gown thing on. I was really in too much pain to care that it was falling off; unfortunately, it was pretty cold. Someone brought me a sheet to cover up, but I was still really cold.

A woman came over to ask for my insurance card. I said it was in my bag (my little purse which I had luckilly grabbed before we left). Since it was clear I wasn't getting up to get it, she kind of rifled through, then brought it to me, and I got the card out. She left. Then I waited around for a long time. Then she came back and put my card back in my bag. Then I waited around for a long time. I still didn't know what was wrong with me, and there weren't any doctors that I could see. I waited some more. I asked if I could have a glass of water, and the nurse said no, I couldn't until we knew what was wrong with me. I was cold, thirsty, and in horrible pain. So, in sum, not a good day so far.

Later the nurse hooked me up to an IV, which I didn't really even notice because I was distracted by the primary pain source. Later, a doctor wandered over. He said I probably had a kidney stone, but we would have to do a CAT scan to make sure.

"How long does a kidney stone last"? I asked

"Oh. It varies" he said nonchalantly.

Since I was in the worst pain of my life, and I wanted to know when it might end, I pressed the issue: "How long does this typically last?"

"Well" he said "Sometimes they last twenty minutes" It had already been over an hour, so that seemed unlikely in my case. "Sometimes they last a few hours or a few days" he continued. "And then sometimes they take weeks to go through".

I looked at him as if to say - how could you say something like that at a time like this!

Many things about the hospital are blur. At some point, I relized my neighbor was probably still there, and I asked the nurse about it. I asked my neighbor to call my husband, who was supposedly going to fly in from the West Coast that night (though the rapidly accumulating snow was suggesting otherwise). "Good luck" my neighbor said as he left. He gave me his work phone number.

In fact, I'll skip through the rest of the hospital stuff. That's too long. All you need to know is that they gave me morphine, which didn't completely get rid of the pain, then they gave me some more. So the shifts have changed, and the new doctor finally shows up and tells me it's a kidney stone, it is probably passed. I can go home now. I am groggy. She gives me a prescription for Vicodin. I ask if I can fill it there but I can't. I have no way to get to the drug store (I'm in pain, in pajamas, it's snowing, I have nobody to drive me, my car is under a 5 ft drift of snow, etc.) They seem really suspicious. Finally they give me 2 to tide me over until I can get the prescription and they show me the door (and give me a plastic strainer for my future attempts at pee - try to catch the stone) in a plastic bag. How am I going to get home?

I have to ask a receptionist for a cab number. I call: they say:watch for a cab - and hang up. It's snowing. I sit in the waiting room in my pajama bottoms (thin flannel with a fairly cute moose pattern). I call my husband to tell him it was a kidney stone and I'm not dead. I wait. Each time I see a cab anywhere outside, I rush out into the snow. It is very cold. Each time it's a cab with people already in it. Cabs are scarce in the snow, and an emergency room pickup doesn't seem too compelling. I wait. After an hour, I call my husband to ask if he could call my neighbor at work for me to see if he could pick me up. He calls the office, but there's no answer there. Another neighbor took the subway to work that day. Other people we know with cars aren't reachable. I am still drugged, in some manner of pain, and somewhat in a panic. I say I'm going to walk and he keeps telling me not to, he'll call other people, it's too cold... I call other cab companies - no we have nothing available - they say. The emergency room receptionist has disappeared, though the few times I asked her if she thought the cab was coming, she was unhelpful anyway.

It's been about two hours waiting for the cab. I'm sitting in the waiting room watching the snow. I'm sitting there in my pajamas crying and the other people waiting are ignoring me.

So eventually I decide that although it is very cold out (in the low 20s F I guess) I am going to walk because there is no point in thinking anyone else will help me. And I'm in pain. And I'm drugged. And I want to go home.

So I set out through the remains of the old blizzard and the newly falling snow. I live about a mile away. I'm wearing thin pajama pants, an orange sweatshirt with hood pulled up over my head. Luckily: a coat & decent shoes.

Some of the sidewalks haven't been cleared of the 2+ feet of snow from the last time, so I have to walk in the street. I wonder what motorists think of me, or if they notice, walking up the street in my pajamas crying a tiny bit more. (They can't tell I'm crying though). At least the orange sweatshirt is visible to oncoming traffic. Do I look like some sort of escapee?

If I were to write a vignette about what it is like to feel utterly alone, I would describe a young woman. She would be walking home from the emergency room in the snow. She would be wearing thin pajama bottoms with a fairly cute moose pattern on them. She would have a plastic bag containing a plastic pee-strainer. Oh, and she would be drugged out on opiates, of course.

I got home. I called my husband to say I made it. Then I went back to bed.