MistyAnn McMillan
It wasn’t my intention to pray, but as I rocked back and forth on my knees with my elbows stretched up the side of my bed, that’s how it would have appeared, and that is exactly when I realized I was in trouble. I had been sick for a couple of days with nausea, and a general unwell feeling but this day was worse than ever. I was alone in my bedroom with my children in their rooms doing the things teenagers usually do when their parents aren’t hovering.
I grabbed my notebook and started writing from my position on the floor. “This pain is not menstrual, it’s kidney stones. This is bad.” I wrote the words out and then read them back. This message didn’t come from inside my brain, however, I was too ill to really understand where the message was coming from, or from who. I read the words again, trying to register their meaning.
Fighting for consciousness, I brought my hands to the floor and arched my back on all fours, trying to find enough relief to get me to my phone to call for help without alarming my children who were blissfully unaware of the frightening situation unfolding just down the hall. After a few moments, I collapsed onto the floor, alternating between the fetal position and a straight-legged position. A lightbulb illuminated inside my head as I suddenly understood what it means when someone is ‘writhing on the floor in pain,’ because that was exactly what I was doing. At that moment, pain enveloped my body and mind. Tears began to stream down my face, because the gravity of my situation was becoming clear, desperately praying that my partner would walk in before I had to ask my teenagers to call for an ambulance.
All at once, I felt an overwhelming pang of nausea consume my body, numbing the pain coursing through my body long to get off the floor and hobble to the washroom situated halfway between where I was, and where my children were in their own worlds with their own worries. As a mom, I was faced with the most difficult situation I had ever been in. Toeing the line between saving my life, and traumatizing my children, I was desperately searching for a way I could get medical attention for myself. I was fading quickly, and so were my options.
Making it back to my bed, I found my phone, however couldn’t see through a blurry vision to write any words. In a distant room of our townhome, I heard the front door open and a grand announcement that my partner was home as if they had heard my silent prayers for them. After a half-conscious conversation, and feeling safe again in the presence of another adult, we decided it was time to go to the emergency department. Luckily for us, Covid protocols had been relaxed between the initial wave and the eventual second wave, so my partner was able to wait with me.
When I finally made it to the treatment area, a lovely student doctor came and assessed me and ordered bloodwork. When the results were back about an hour later, she came back with the supervising physician to tell me that my blood levels indicated sepsis and that I needed an MRI to determine why. When the MRI results came back, the doctors came to give us an update: I would be staying in the
hospital for a while. They indicated that I had a kidney stone that ended up causing sepsis, and they were calling in a surgeon. Things began moving pretty quickly after that, and in my dazed state, the only thing I could grasp was I was going in for surgery.
A rush of nurses came to me to give me morphine, the first pain relief I had been able to be prescribed since I had gotten there about 7 hours prior. In the flurry of action, I did what any mom would do at 2 am in an emergency room. I sent my partner home to be with my kids, assuring them I would be fine alone, and that the kids would need comfort more than me. I had to trust my family to hang on while I did the same a few kilometers away. I was now all alone, and all I had left was kindness for the people working hard to see me live.
Eventually, there was a man dressed in jeans and a polo T-shirt standing in front of me. I wondered how someone could choose such a smart outfit at such an odd hour. One of the nurses told me he was the chief of surgery and head of the urology department of our health unit and I remember thinking how unfortunate it was to be so high up in the hospital seniority and still have to take a turn on call during the nightshift.
The next thing I remember is coming out of surgery and a lady with a kind face was telling me how much infection was in my body. Left alone in the recovery room, I started to hear my monitors beeping, but I was so sore and quite honestly exhausted I couldn’t do anything about it until I heard a voice down the hallway say hello in a confused and urgent tone, followed by the sound of quick-moving flip flops coming toward me. She kindly but firmly had me change positions to stabilize my heart which was racing too fast. I don’t ever remember seeing her face, but she walked quickly, had a kind voice, and was gone just as quickly as she came, replaced by another nurse who sat by my bedside as I cracked half coherent jokes, making light of the situation.
I was eventually moved to a private recovery room, where I spent 6 agonizing days, not really understanding the seriousness until much later when I found out that my room was actually an ICU bed.
My partner looks back and remembers the incredible value of my free upgraded private room, which was amazing and we were grateful for every day. What I remember most about those 6 days is the sun setting over the farmland that my hospital window overlooked. It reminded me every day that someone or something bigger than myself has a plan for me that is far bigger than my ability to not drink enough water.
