I am having a very bad dream. In the dream a tiny supernova, a mininova if you may, is blooming in my lower right side. Heat waves radiate outward into my ribs and lower back.
The pain, as they say, is exquisite. What a strange way to describe something so deeply unpleasant.
I start waking up but still feel so tired and I think to myself, maybe it will pass soon and I can go back to sleep.
What time is it anyway?
The babe had skipped her midday nap and we'd gone to bed just before 19:00. I have learned the hard way to sleep pretty much as soon as the baby sleeps because you never know when you might have to cut your night's rest short to give a child medicine/freshly squeezed pomegranate juice/avocado-prawn cocktails/play dress up at midnight or charge to casualties because of a sudden high fever.
The mininova stays put, burning and stinging and stabbing into my ribs.
Glancing at the clock I see it's only just shy of 21:00 but the night was dark my friends. The night often is darkest just before a supernova...I bet.
I stagger up and towards the medicine box. I have a special little medicine first aid container but who has time to place things neatly into special containers?
Not I. Under the bathroom sink I have a fraying cardboard box chock-full of nearly empty bottles of Nurofen, old plasters, leaking cough syrup and pediatric Iliadin.
Tommie is sitting on the bed, clicking away at the mouse and doing his best I-am-pretending-to-do-something-important-but-actually-I-am-mucking-about-with-my-little-crypto-games impersonation.
"I am having very much bad pain. Do you have the Buscopan?"
"I think so, why?"
"Well gimme. My appendix is bursting"
"Are you sure it's not just a poop?"
"No, I'm not. I mean yes. I mean, just hand it over, already"
He finds it quite quickly for someone that has trouble finding things ever.
"Go stand by the fireplace, see if it helps?"
I crouch in front of the fire. The mininova doesn't give a shit and keeps supernova-ing.
"Well, I'm off to casualties, then"
"Want me to drive you?"
"Are you crazy? I don't have time to wait around for you to putter about getting dressed and looking for things. Appendix! Bursting! Stay here with the kids and await further instructions"
Driving to the hospital it occurs to me that apart from my appendix bursting and killing me, fainting behind the wheel might also be detrimental.
Despite my fraught with danger ride, I arrive at the emergency unit, where there is but one parking spot open. The reason, I presume, for it's openness, is because of its oblique angle and narrow access point.
It takes me about fifteen little forward/backward maneuvers but eventually I manage to park without pranging my or someone's else's car.
"Good evening. I am having much bad pain. Please help"
The lady at reception tells me to sit for a minute.
I do no such thing.
Instead I stand hunched to the right, groaning and drooling a little onto my shoulder while staring at her without blinking.
She seems unsettled enough to fetch a sister rather quickly.
The sister ushers me into a little room that I am familiar with by now. It is a novel experience being in it by myself instead of trying to hold onto a mad, bucking toddler, howling I AM LEGION! At the celing in a double voice.
"How's the pain, from one to ten?"
I consider the question.
1. Waking up from an emergency c-section - 7
2. Pap-smear - 1
3. Mammogram - 2
4. Mashing your second toe into the wheel of a Checkers trolley - 9
5. Contractions - 27
"Maybe 8?"
The nurse seems suitably impressed.
The emergency care unit is busy but I am the only patient groaning and shuffling akwardly to a bed. People try to stare without me noticing and I feel a little thrill at being seen. Finally a bit of sympathy and recognition!
"I am going to put a drip in to start managing your pain" the lovely and beautiful nurse tells me.
I hate needles.
You know something is terribly wrong when the notion of a drip excites me.
I actively enjoy the feeling of the drip being placed, secured and opened.
Cool liquid runs up my arm and into my brain, telling it to shhhhhh....shhhh shhh shhhhhhhhh.
My brain complies but the mininova still flickers and sizzles in the distance.
"Hello, I am Dr Blah-Blah. What seems to be the problem?"
"Well hello Dr Blah-Blah! My appendix burst about an hour ago, you see Dr, and now I fear I might die from septic shock or whatever the hell happens when poop floods your system and whatnot"
"I see. Does it hurt when I do this, this and this"
"Yes, yes and oweeeeeee!"
"Judging by your symptoms and level of pain (ah the recognition) I suspect it's a kidney stone. I am sending you for a ct scan. Please sign here"
"That sounds fancy and expensive. What am I signing?"
"That if your medical aid doesn't cover the cost, you are responsible"
"But Dr. I haven't been responsible a day in my life ha-ha!"
The pain meds may have made me a bit devil may care.
"My savings have been depleted since Jan the 2nd. What if I am admitted? Will they pay then?"
"Yes, from the hospital benefits"
As I am wheeled to radiography, I utter one of the stranger prayers of my life.
"Dear God. Please make me sick enough to be admitted but not so sick that my children might have to be raised by an evil step-mother, whom as a follow up prayer I would like to be a porker in order for my soul to be at peace in the hereafter "
The scan is exciting and indeed fancy. I feel like I am in an episode of House and supposed to have a seizure so they can queue suspenseful music and shout at each other that I am flatlining or hemorrhaging or my tatto ink is being sucked out of my skin by magnets.
"You have a kidney stone and as far as kidney stones go, it's quite large. It probably will not pass on its own. We can either admit you and book a theater (operating not operatic) to remove it (thank you Lord!) Or send you home with a sieve and some elephant painkillers and see what happens (nooooooooo!).
"Although obviously I don't want to be admitted (lie), it might be the wiser choice, Dr"
"I agree. The sister will come give you some elephant painkillers and take you up to the wards"
"Thank you, Dr" sez me, the long-suffering patient and mother of two.
Higher Power - 1
Medical aid - 0
I keep up a steady stream of chatter as the beautiful, saintly nurse wheels me through gleaming corridors.
"So, what's your name? Love your hair. Will it count as racist if I do my hair like that? Either way, what's new in your life (squinting at name-tag), Goeloe-kie-lê?"
"Blahblressbloopbgraphêhla babba-sessie" she rattles off to a guy sitting in front of the glass entrance to ward whatever.
"I'm kind of hungry. And thirsty! PARCHED actually. Any grapetizer around? Maybe a virgin mojito? Okay, I'll settle for a frappuccino"
"Nil per mouth. Theater in the morning"
"Oh I haven't been to the theater in AGES! Think the last show I saw was The Lion King. You ever see it? No? T'was amaze-balls! Gosh, the giraffe alone! Kablooyee! went my brain. Hey, why is it so dark in here?"
I notice sleeping figures in the beds around me, snoring peacefully.
"HAAAAY EVERYBODY!"
"SHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"Oh. Well whups! Guess I'll just...read? Yassss, queen"
Throughout the night I read and scroll and send WhatsApp messages to everyone in my phonebook and occasionally doze off but the Blue Whale pain meds give me the sensation of tripping over a dead badger, causing me to jerk back to consciousness, if you could call it that.
At some point during the night there is a slight popping sensation and something akin to a fetal kick in my abdomen.
I make exactly three visits to the bathroom, peeing into a white cup with mesh at the bottom that irksomely makes me urinate on my hand without fail.
And on the third visit, I hear a plink sound and look down to find a tiny pebble with jagged borders in my cup.
My cup runneth over! The joy the sight of this little pebble brings me could be likened to a tiny birth. I stare at it and talk to it and take ten million photographs, later to be edited with the utmost care and artistic sensitivity.
I delay notifying staff because of fear that they would stop my rhinoceros tranquilizer and remove my lovely drip but eventually hunger and thirst drive me to fanny down to the nurse's station to demand some coffee. It seems rude to do the emergency call button just for coffee. I mean it's not a hotel, for goodness sake!
In the morning light, the urologist visits me and is awful chipper at the early hour.
"Well you just don't take any nonsense, do you? Sommer passed quite a hefty stone right out! May I have it please?"
"But of course! She's a beauty"
"I mean to send away to the lab for analysis "
"Oh, right. I was...kidding"
"And that's you! A nurse will come to remove the drip (😞) and discharge you (😐)".
Arriving home to find disheveled, unfed kids and a tired and irritable husband harshed my high a bit.
"When are you weaning Danté so she can grow up already?"
"You were weaned after three months and you still haven't grown up"
"What's that you're mumbling?"
"Nothing "
