Okay, um, here’s an update from my life. I went to the hospital. I was at the hospital. I was actually discharged like 30 hours ago, I guess. But yeah, I was at the hospital for about nine days.
So here’s what happened.
I caught a cold. I thought that everything would be fine. My ears are sensitive, and they almost always get affected, so they get blocked and whatnot. But this time, it was also like six-ish months after I last got my ears professionally cleaned and vacuumed, if that makes sense. And thus, I had earwax.
And I thought, okay, I’ll just have to get it cleaned. That’s fine.
If only… if only that was the case.
But no, it was not. Spoiler alert.
Unfortunately, I got sick on maybe July 7th or 8th, something like that. And for a couple of days, I just thought it was a cold. So, I mean, I was tired. I ate mostly whatever I wanted. I also barely did anything.
But then, unfortunately, I had to start a new job on Monday the 13th. But that’s a story for another time. It only lasted for a day.
I mean, I wish I could give you more details in this article, but maybe I should write another one about this job, even though I’m probably not supposed to talk much about it.
But anyway, um, pretty much until Saturday, July 18th…
Actually, no. Let’s go back to July 14th. Yes, you know, the national day in France.
Basically, I accidentally scratched my ear because it was itchy due to the earwax. And unfortunately, I started having pain in my ear. So I had to rush to the first doctor I could find.
For the next couple of days, so Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, I kept going to the doctors. Like, literally, I went to the ENT three times and to my GP on Thursday because I was in pain.
I had ear pain, I wasn’t really getting better, and I still had a cough.
And then, on Saturday, July 18th, I was still in pain. I mean, I wasn’t in massive pain, but I was not really getting better.
I don’t necessarily remember exactly what happened, but my parents were like, okay, you need to go to the hospital.
I thought about going to the emergency service, like an emergency hospital. My parents eventually arrived pretty late at night on Saturday, and on Sunday morning, we went to the emergency room.
Guess what happened after that?
It turned out that I had fluid behind my eardrum, behind my right one, and that I could have to get, like, a piercing, if that makes sense. Like, I would possibly have to get it pierced for the doctor to extract the fluid.
So they immediately admitted me to the hospital, and they put an IV catheter in my hand, which I finally got off on July 27th.
So, for like eight or nine days, I was stuck with a catheter in my hand. And I had to go for daily IV infusions at seven o’clock in the morning and two in the afternoon.
I wasn’t exactly stuck at the hospital because I would go in, have my infusions, and then, when they were done, I would go home. I still slept at home, ate at home and whatnot.
But let me just tell you that, for someone like me who hadn’t been to the hospital for something like this in over 20 years, it was pretty traumatizing.
I really felt robbed of my everyday life.
This virus started on July 7th or 8th, and it’s insane because it also overlapped with me thinking I had finally gotten my dream job.
It turned out that it wasn’t a dream job. Then I was constantly sick and not really getting better. It turned out that my inner ear was affected, and from then on, I was stuck on a bunch of antibiotics and daily infusions.
Even when I was home, I still had the IV catheter in my hand. I had to protect it, think about it and organize everything around my next infusion.
I just couldn’t wait to get the IV off because it was exhausting. I really just wanted some normalcy. I wanted my body and my routine to feel like mine again.
And if it wasn’t for me pretty much deciding to use the option called bodily autonomy, or basically having to exercise my bodily autonomy, I probably would have been stuck going to the hospital until Thursday.
But I exercised my bodily autonomy. I said that I felt better, and the doctor was like, you know what, let’s just discharge you. You are better indeed.
And I got discharged, even though they could have kept me for another two or three days.
Honestly, one of the things that made my stay at the hospital pretty miserable, even though it wasn’t a full-blown stay with me sleeping there overnight, was the nurses’ attitudes.
Honestly, the nurses were…
Okay, don’t get me wrong. I understand that the nurses where I live are overworked, and apparently one nurse has to handle at least four patients on average, which is a lot for a nurse, from what I know.
But that does not give them an excuse to be rude and dismissive, to the point of me being practically terrified to open my mouth and say, “Hi, I need to use the toilet.”
It got to the point where I had to pretty much hold my pee for hours.
And on top of that, my IV catheter was a child-sized one. I also had issues with slow drip flow, and thus an infusion that would take maybe not even an hour for most patients would take me over two hours, if not two and a half.
And I was constantly in pain pretty much every single day at the hospital.
I was crying every morning because I was in pain. I mean, I was not in agonizing pain, but I was in pain. And the nurses were often rude, which just didn’t make things any better.
I even almost blacked out at the hospital because I was late for an infusion.
They told me I had to sit on a chair because allegedly there were no beds available for me. They hooked up the IV, and I thought, okay, I’ll just sit on the chair and read my book.
But guess what?
Not even five minutes later, I started feeling sick. I felt lightheaded. So I was like, “Call the nurse. Call the nurse.”
Luckily, I was eventually put on a bed.
But let me just tell you that I literally felt like all of my nightmares were coming true with this hospital stay.
Every single day, seven o’clock in the morning, four infusions, including an antibiotic. Pain in my right hand, aka my dominant hand.
And yeah, I forgot to explain some of the other things the nurses did.
You know how hospitals have those buttons you can press when you have to call a nurse and whatnot? Not every nurse wanted us to use them.
So I was trying to remember which nurses liked it when we used the buttons and which nurses didn’t.
But the thing is that the nurses also instructed us to turn off our infusions as soon as the bag was over and to call them if there was anything that needed to be done.
One time, I called the nurse using the button because the infusion was over.
But it turned out that this nurse was the kind of nurse who didn’t like it when people used the button.
So, after she changed my infusion, she literally threw the remote, like the button, away from me.
It was kind of like how Abby Lee Miller practically tossed a chair at Paige Hyland in, I believe, season one or two of Dance Moms. It was kind of like that.
So yeah, that’s just one of the many examples I documented.
And I just want to say that, I mean, I took notes, okay?
I made sure to document the times when the nurses were rude because I kind of knew that I was going to expose this kind of rudeness. I didn’t want to forget what happened or later convince myself that I had exaggerated it.
At one point, I remember thinking, it’s not fair. I don’t want my future kids to grow up like this.
I don’t want them to feel afraid to ask for help when they are sick. I don’t want them to feel as though they are annoying someone simply because they need medical care.
And I know it might make me sound privileged or stupid, you know, to the point of being dumb and literally retarded.
But let me just tell you one thing.
Not being able to function, not knowing when this was going to be over, not knowing what was next and not being able to do the things I would normally be able to do made me feel terrible.
It made me feel like I was wasting time.
And I know you guys are going to be like, you had to heal from that illness.
Well, yeah. I mean, I know that logically, but it still felt like I was wasting precious time.
Summer is not going to last forever. I’m not going to be a 27-year-old again on, let’s say, July 15th, being happy and just enjoying her life.
I’ll forever have the memory of those few weeks, practically an entire month, of me having so much uncertainty in my life.
Because, as of now, I’m still practically jobless. I’ve technically been jobless for a little over six months.
And just when I thought I might have gotten my dream job, it turned out that it was fake.
I’m still waiting to see if I’m going to get a new job, and I’m still trying to build what I was meant to build according to my natal chart.
Honestly, with this illness, I think everything just kind of piled up together, and it was too much for me to handle.
I constantly felt tired from all of my medicines, and I couldn’t properly move my right hand for a really long time.
It really felt like I was wasting time, just lying there doing nothing, when I could have been doing so much more.
Luckily, on Saturday, July 25th, I finally somewhat resumed my normal life.
I started writing again, and I actually wrote almost 2,000 words, which was really good considering everything that had happened and the fact that I still had the IV in my hand.
Then, on July 26th, I wrote another 1,000 words.
On July 27th, the first day after my IV was taken off, I wrote almost 800 words.
And today, July 28th, the second day after the IV was removed, I’m about to sit down and write more. Hopefully, I’ll be able to reach at least 1,000 words today.
So, I am catching up.
I still have a lot to catch up on, but I’ll get it done.
I’m also trying to submit some of my personal projects, and hopefully I can land some new opportunities.
I’ve been trying to catch up on all of the things I need to get done. I had to postpone a call with a recruiter several times because of all this uncertainty.
And yeah, we’ll see what happens after that.
Hopefully, everything will be okay in the end.
More than anything, I’m just relieved that the IV is finally out of my hand and that I’m slowly returning to my normal life.
But I also don’t want to forget what happened or the way I was treated while I was vulnerable, frightened and in pain.
I understand that nurses are overworked. I understand that they are tired.
But patients should not be afraid to ask to use the toilet. They should not be afraid to press the call button they were instructed to press. They should not be made to feel like an inconvenience because an infusion has ended or because they feel faint.
I documented those moments because they happened.
And that is only one of the many things I have to say about those nine days.