So… today actually started out pretty good.

We were getting predictions of rain and thunderstorms. At one point, my weather app told me it was raining right that moment.

It wasn’t.

So I went out to water the garden in the morning. In the process, I gathered what I would call our first real harvest of the year, with everything weeks behind.

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I picked a few of the Rainbow Mix carrots. They’re still small, and it was more of a thinning by harvesting action. The baby carrots will taste just fine!

I was very happy when I started checking the bush beans. The yellow ones seem to be ripening the fastest, and I picked a decent amount of those, plus a few green and purple ones. Then I grabbed a few of the turnips that were left and a bunch of Golden Boy celery. I’ve been picking a bunch of celery every now and then, along with harvesting some turnips, but nothing that I would really consider what would be a typical harvest I would normally get from the garden, until today.

After watering the main garden area, I left the harvest on the chest freezer in the old kitchen and went back to watering the garden beds around the east and south yards, and the old kitchen garden. The Arikara squash is looking amazing, and I can see more Blueberry tomatoes starting to form.

About half way through, I was starting to feel pain starting to kick in, but it wasn’t too bad yet. I messaged my daughters asking them to put away the harvest, and if they could make me a breakfast. By the time I was inside and finished eating, it was definitely time to take some pain killers and try lying down.

It didn’t work.

It just kept getting worse. Quickly. Bad enough that I finally started talking to the family about driving myself to the ER.

They agreed.

My brother and SIL were still here and I was updating them, but it turned out they had their Messenger off. Which is fine. I was just keeping them informed.

The girls got the truck to the house and unloaded of market inventory, loaded my walker for me, put my prescriptions and a charger cable for my phone into a bag for me to bring along, and took care of the gate so I didn’t have to go in and out of the truck as I left. The only time I started having issues with the drive in was when I found myself stuck behind someone doing 65kph in a 100kph zone and couldn’t pass.

When I parked at the hospital, I was so incredibly glad for that walker. Sitting while driving wasn’t too bad, but once I was walking, I found I couldn’t straighten up.

Once by the admissions window, I started getting my health care card and the woman at the desk waved me over right away. When I handed her the card through the slot under the window, my hands were shaking violently. I couldn’t stay standing, and my face must have been a sight, based on how quickly she got me processed.

From there, it was a brief time in the waiting room and then I was in the triage room. A nurse got my vitals and asked me all sorts of questions. My BP was, understandably, a bit high, but not too bad. Considering the pain I was quite obviously in, it was not a concern.

Then it was back to the waiting from for a bit longer before they took some blood, and then it was a wait until the results were in. That’s when I got to talk to the ER doctor.

We went over the details again, including the whole background about how this started with those anti-inflammatories I had started taking, a while back. They had worked so well for what I was taking them for, too!

The doctor then found herself with a bit of a conundrum. The things she normally would have done – the tests, the referrals, etc. – were things that were already done, or in progress. There was that one ultrasound that showed abnormal, and it’s why I was being referred to a specialist in the city for a biopsy.

So what, she asked me, did I want her to do, in context of being in the ER?

We talked about the pain levels some more. I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t even lie down, to get any relief. She did prescribe tramadol and she wanted me to fill the prescription right away, to use in stead of the T3s. She even made sure that it was not anti-inflammatory, and that it wasn’t contraindicated with anything else I was taking. The pharmacy was still open for a couple more hours, and she was ready to send me home with the prescription.

As we talked more about how bad the pain was, and she looked at the ultrasound results some more, she realized that my doctor’s referral was something that could take months to be fulfilled. I needed to be seen right away.

She knew of a specialist at the hospital in the smaller, nearer city. She told me to stay until she had a chance to get through to the specialist and see if I could see her right away.

The pharmacy closed while I was waiting.

When she came back later, she told me the specialist wanted me to have a CT scan, and that I should get a curretage.

*sigh*

She wanted me in either tonight or tomorrow. Which I was actually quite happy to hear.

The next while in the waiting room was for the appointment for the CT scan. I was there long enough that I was starting to become hungry to the point of getting light headed. Of course, I kept the family up to date on all this (my brother and SIL had seen my messages by this time). My husband and daughters were suggesting that, if I was going home, to make sure I grabbed food somewhere first, even before I mentioned getting so hungry. Frankly, I would have just gone to the truck for the beef jerky in our road food stash, but I didn’t want to miss someone coming back with information for me.

One of the nurses came by as soon as they had the appointment made. It’s for tomorrow morning, and my daughter and I will have to be on the road by 9am. I’ll need to fast, plus make sure to have a liter of water to drink before the CT scan.

My daughter, meanwhile, has called the clinic for her own appointment in the city tomorrow and left a message about rescheduling. I can’t say I feel too badly about that, since this is the clinic I found so creepy and actually felt was unsafe, while in the waiting room during her last appointment, which was essentially a meet and greet. This is something we disagree on.

So that’s where we’re at now. I’ve just finished having something to eat with my evening meds and supplements and will now start my fast. I’ll be going to bed pretty much as soon as I’m done this post.

Tomorrow should be… interesting.

Hopefully, this will finally bring an end so the issues I’ve been having! Or at least tell us what’s going on, so long after I stopped taking the anti-inflammatories.

Meanwhile, all my brain can do is list off the things I want to, or should be, doing that I physically can’t right now. The pain did eventually recede, but just getting up and walking around it enough for me to feel it threatening to come back.

I need to lie down before I start doing tasks I really should not be doing.

The Re-Farmer