Friday, June 23, 2006

When Moms' Night Out turns into Moms' Night In (the ER that is).

Yesterday's drama is being dealt with. I don't know how much I want to say, but dh is having a really rough time of this deployment. We're dealing with that, though.

Submitted for your reading pleasure is even more drama completely unrelated to what I blogged about yesterday.

One of the parenting groups of which I'm a part had a last minute Moms' Night Out last night. Before that, though, I took some medicine for a headache. It's not anything I've ever taken before. At MNO, I start itching. I'm allergic to some other OTC meds, so I recognized right away that I was having an allergic reaction.

I didn't think much of it. I've never had a really serious reaction. I know the hives will go away in time. Then my lips started tingling and swelling. One of the other moms there is an RN. She got freaked by the lips thing. When my lips started blistering just minutes later and my face started swelling, she insisted we needed to go to the ER. And so we did. She wouldn't let me drive, so I rode with her and my sister drove my van.

I still wasn't panicked. I had no trouble breathing or swallowing. I would have preferred NOT to go to the ER, but hey, you never know. Better safe than sorry. And all those other such cliches. While there, the triage nurse put me to the front of the line. I still felt fine, though, but I started to think maybe this could be something serious.

When another nurse explained that he was giving me the IV in part so that they could get drugs into me quickly should my reaction continue to worsen, I got a bit scared. Why does this stuff always happen when dh is away? When I was alone, I found myself staring to the right side of my bed trying to will him into existence. Didn't work. We really need to do something about that.

In the end, I got a bunch of IV meds which made me feel like I was living on the Yellow Submarine. I swear I felt high. The lights were brighter and dancing and more...more...yellow (I guess that's the best way to explain it). I could feel the blood in my veins. I could feel my heartbeat throughout my whole body. And then I was very very cold. It was a very odd experience.

It's over, though. I'm fine. I got home around 11:30. I tried to keep from feeling sorry for myself by chanting silently, "I have fabulous friends." They watched The Boy while I was in there and brought him to me when he needed to nurse. They even helped me get him situated because the IV made my left arm pretty useless.

At one point, I started to feel sorry for myself, but I remembered that for the friend who had driven me there, this was her SECOND ER trip of the day. She was there earlier with her son when she feared he had broken his wrist. And then there she was with me. So hey, everyone has their own sagas with which to deal.

I feel bad for ruining Moms' Night Out. We only had an hour to sit and chat before this all started. Then again, hey, now we have a story to tell. :-)

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