The past couple of weeks have been quite the hospital experience for me. Two weeks ago, while Adam and I were watching the new Star Trek movie, I started having a panic attack in the middle of the film. Only it didn't feel like a panic attack, I started feeling like my throat was closing up and I was having a heart attack, and never experiencing something like that before, got freaked out enough to let him call an ambulance to take me to the ER. In the end it was nothing serious, but the experience was extremely disconcerting and uncomfortable. I have had infrequent mini-panic attacks in the past, but those things only ever last seconds and I'm able to calm myself down. This one came out of nowhere, with no trigger (unless you consider the pain I was going through watching the movie as an avid Trek fan) and was still happening even when I got to the emergency room half an hour later.
Then, serendipitously two weeks to the day of that, I started coming down with a hellacious sore throat. Assuming it was just a cold I stocked up on vitamin C and cold medicine, but when I woke the next day and I was in so much excruciating pain that I couldn't even drink liquids, it was time for another trip to visit the doctor. So here I am now, currently suffering from some as-yet undefined tonsil infection. I went to a doctor on Saturday for it and he gave me an antibiotic prescription, but having taken three days' worth of dosage for it so far it hasn't alleviated any of the symptoms at all. Another trip to a different doctor today (the one we'd been using previously was pretty far away and we happened to discover another medical center within walking distance of our apartment) got me prescription pain killers in the form of codeine. I don't know how anyone can get addicted to this stuff; while, yes, it makes the searing misery manageable for half an hour, I otherwise feel like I'm alternating between hot flashes and shivers while simultaneously having my skin sucked against the tube of a vacuum cleaner. Who finds this experience pleasurable?
I get test results back tomorrow on what this is, but I have to assume that it's something viral instead of bacterial, considering the antibiotics ain't done anything to fix it. Which is not a happy face, because this is literally the worst pain I've ever been in during my entire life. Even breathing is painful, much less trying to eat, and my diet for the last three days has consisted almost exclusively of vanilla yogurt which I swallow wincingly.
I do have to commend Australia's health system though (and may have already done so in another post, but I'm too out of it to recall right now.) Even uninsured, both regular doctor visits are only sixty AUD (though tests are obviously extra), and when we went to the ER I was handled very well even though it got clear pretty quickly that there wasn't anything physically wrong with me. I was in a hospital bed and having a nurse test me within forty-five minutes, and the whole experience was done with in about three hours (including an hour where the doctor kept me for observation). I walked out with a referral to a specialist (the doctor suggested I start taking anti-anxiety medications, which I don't intend to do, but nice gesture nonetheless!) and got a followup call later in the week to check that I hadn't had another episode. Whole thing = under four hundred bucks (about three hundred US). Compared to when my brother broke his thumb last year and went to the ER (waited for three hours to be seen) and they did nothing but wrap it in gauze and billed him a thousand US, I think these guys have a better system going personally.
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Erin-Lynn
19 May 2009 · 12:07 AM Erin-Lynn[quote this]
Hope you feel better, Babe!!!
I understand the panic attack to well! If I go into an asthma attack, I freak and poof panic attack as well. Why do we do this to ourselves?!
::hugs:: Hang in there!
Love ya!
Miss ya!
JessieRAR
19 May 2009 · 5:40 AM JessieRAR[quote this]
Yus, Medicare FTW! Too bad you're a non-res though; I haven't paid a thing for any medical/hospital visit in.. well.. other than the dentist, I'd probably say "ever".
And there's a twenty-four hour medical centre like, ~right there~ near your place. You could almost throw rocks at it, you're that close.
Hope you both getter better soon!