Remember how yesterday I was talking about just having a quiet night at home, maybe watching some Castle and working on some coloring? Yeah, that didn’t happen. I wound up in the hospital instead.

So we went out for dinner last night at a local sushi place. The food there was fine, I got my sushi craving fixed. After the sushi we decided to go and get some frozen yogurt for desert. We have a YogurtLand in the same complex as the sushi restaurant, so we drove over and went to get some froyo, yo. I made sure not to get anything with nuts because its one of my huge bad allergies. Got some toppings and then we worked out way home.

At home we turned on the TV and I started to eat my dessert because I had been driving and you can’t enjoy froyo while driving. Or at least I can’t. I make a huge mess. Anyway, I digress. So I make it through most of the desert fine, and then my boyfriend wants to show me a video on the computer. So I get up and I watch the video while stuffing my face full of yogurt, not thinking about it. And then I hear a crunch. I didn’t get anything crunchy. I spit out what appears to be part of a nut.

I quickly yet calmly walk over to the sink and spit the rest of the nut out, and some froyo to. (Sorry if this is grossing you out.) I grabbed my water and washed out my mouth, making sure that I got everything out. I go and get some benadryl to take, and my throat is starting to feel tight, so I start stretching my tongue out to release the pressure in my throat. This all probably happened within a minute or two of discovering I ate some kind of nut.

The pressure in my throat is slowly getting worse, but my breathing starts to get affected, like I can’t get a full breath in my lungs. I also start to feel really itchy, running my nails up and down my arms and my legs. My poor boyfriend who I’m starting to make upset asks me for my eppi pens, and to make sure we have them because we are going to the hospital. I clear out my bag making sure we have them, he grabs the keys to the car and we are off.

Oh my god, it felt like one of the longest car rides of my life. We live roughly 9-10 minutes away from the local hospital. I’m not sure if my boyfriend was speeding or not, I wasn’t focused on that. Every time I take a breath I make a noise, my throat is still slowly getting tighter and tighter. As he’s driving I’m trying to find an asthma inhaler, but I couldn’t find one in the truck or in my bag. (We later discovered the inhaler in my bag buried under other medication).  My tongue starts to feel swollen and I can’t keep it inside my mouth anymore, my throat is just getting tighter and tighter.

We pull into the hospital emergency room and a security guard asks if we need a wheel chair, he says yes. A nurse comes out and asks what is going on and he says I’m having an allergic reaction to nuts. And everything else happens really fast. They take me to the back room as he checks me in because I can’t do it and I can’t wait anymore.

The nurse starts yelling as soon as I get in the back that we need eppi pens and a breathing bag, that I’m having an allergic reaction. I get moved from the chair to a bed and I have 4-6 people suddenly surrounding me. One is putting an air mask on my face to help with my breathing, one stabs me in my thigh with an eppi pen or an eppi shot, I’m not sure which. I have another nurse placing a needle for an IV in the crook of my right elbow. Then I’m hooked up to a bag of fluids.

I start to close my eyes, its too much for me to take in. The nurses and doctors are all talking to each other about me. I’m not sure what is being said, I’m just trying to breathe at this point. I feel my heart rate shoot up from the shot and I’m starting to shake. These are both usual things after getting stabbed with the eppi pen. Then I hear my boyfriends voice. I open my eyes and see him standing in the corner, watching with a composed yet worried face. I tried to smile at him but I don’t know if he could see it because of the oxygen mask over my nose and mouth.

I close my eyes again, starting to feel a little relive from the pain that has been growing. One of the nurses says my name and I open my eyes. They ask me how I am feeling now on a scale of 1-10, 10 being like when I came in here. I use my hands to say 7, unable to talk still. They aren’t satisfied with that number so they stab me with another eppi shot in my thigh and give me a shot of something in my arm. The nurse sees that I’m still shaking and asks if I am cold, to which I nod yes. She runs and gets me a few warm and heavy blankets and spreads them over my body.

After the last 2 shots, I’m starting to feel a little better, a little relive from the pressure and tightness that was building up inside my body. I’m not making a gasping noise every time that I take a breath now. Its only every few breaths. My tongue finally starts to feel normal again. I look at my boyfriend who is sitting down on a chair in the corner of the room, and try to smile at him again. I reach out my hand so that I can touch him. He reaches out with his long arm and wraps my hand in his.

Everything is finally starting to slow down and get back to normal, at least I feel like it is. They initally made it sound like I would be going home within an hour or so, unless something went wrong and my allergy kicked in again, which I guess can sometimes happen. So I’d be there for an hour, not too bad. At the hour mark they are happy with my improvements but don’t want to release me yet, so I have to stay a little longer.

My boyfriend goes and shares the news with my parents at this point, not sure when we would be going home. Everything starts to slow down, the nurses and the doctors aren’t as rushed with me any more, the questions are slowing down. At this point I just feel exhausted, coming off the high of the medication they gave me. My boyfriend meets with my mom who has shown up and sits with us for a while until midnight when she goes home.

One of our friends who works in the hospital came by to say hi. It was a nice and unexpected visit. She asked how I was doing and I felt mostly better. This was around midnight or 1 am, I don’t really remember. I tried to listen to my Harry Potter book to fall asleep, but every time I start to drift the emergency room gets really loud and wakes me up. I finally got released about 230 in the morning after showing good improvement. My boyfriend and I came home and passed out, the adventure of the day is done.

I woke up around 930 this morning, tossing and turning and just feeling super anxious about today. Its a little bit from last night, but today I have something stressful going on. I got up and fed Stormfly, who was a hungry little fishy. Then I worked on straightening my hair so I looked more like an adult. It took a little while but now its straight. My arms feel super tight from last night, I am basically all over body sore. I feel like I was at Amtgard for the weekend and just had the daylights beaten out of me.

I couldn’t get my prescriptions filled anywhere in town, no one takes my insurance, which really sucks. So my boyfriend was awesome and drove me over to my doctors office 45 minutes away, where we were told that it might not be covered because i went to an out of network hospital. I explained that it was an emergency and I couldn’t make it to an in network hospital without, like possibly dying. So we waited for 20 minutes or so for my medication and thankfully it was fully covered by the insurance. Yay. It was about $30 instead of close to $500 or $1000 with all the medicine I needed.

We did a detour on our way home, swinging by a doughnut shop. But not just any doughnut shop. Psycho Donuts. They do fun and crazy donuts. So we got half a dozen because we couldn’t decide on what we wanted. Well, he could, I couldn’t. I’ve been through a lot in the past 24 hours, I’m allowed to get something a little sweet.

On our way home we swung by my parents house for a quick visit and to say Hi to Gucci, who was being a little bit of a brat. But I hadn’t been out to see him for a few days so that was to be expected. I spoiled him a little bit and gave him a few carrots so that i could give him some pets and a few kisses on his nose. Maybe I’ll will swing by Gucci in the morning and give him some love then. Or after work. I’m not sure. We’ll just have to wait and see.

We came home and turned on Castle, so we are working our way through that and my boss just asked me to work tomorrow. So I guess I won’t really be getting a rest day this week. But that’s okay, I need the money. And its a short shift so it will be okay. My boss wants me to take over more shifts at my current locations for the next couple of weeks. Now I have to decide which job is more important to me, the horses or security. They both pay the same. I think I get more job fulfillment with the horses, I know I feel like I did something. But I need the hours and the money from the security job too. I guess I have to figure out which one, or which days are more important to me. I know that I need to have a down day somewhere.

Just keep swimming!