5 years 1 month 27 days

Day 1884. This day turned out very differently from what I had expected!

Because Sammy was still not feeling well, he was staying home today and was with me in bed, watching videos of himself and his siblings, when they were little. He was crying hard, when Daddy left with his siblings, as he wanted Daddy, but I was able to distract him and get him happy again.

I was still in a lot of pain and was waiting for my blood and urine test results from my doctor. I also needed to go to the school at Sammy's kindergarten, as they had their Open Door Day tomorrow. Normally I would have taken Sammy to kindergarten and then stay there for that. Now I had to wait for Randy to get home before I could leave. He was even doing a grocery store run. Sammy was the most impatient for him to get home.

Once he did, I got ready to leave the house and took the subway to Sammy's kindergarten. I was still walking more slowly than usual, as moving hurt. When I got there, I didn't see anyone at the school. Finally the director told me to sit down and wait for the next group, and that's what I did.

The director quickly knew who I was as everyone knows Sammy. She didn't know I was still coming, as she had expected me in the morning. We were five parents altogether, when she started presenting the school. And the parents had lots of questions. After having talked, she took us to three out of the four classes/groups they have. There are only 8 children in a class, but of course they all have physical challenges. THey have two classes for grades 1-4 and two for grades 5-8. One group has the more severe cases than the other. After the tour, the presentation was over.

The kindergarten director had seen me and took advantage of my presence to find out what was wrong with Sammy and to have me sign a paper. Then I finally got to leave and got home by 12:10 pm.

Sammy was really happy to see me. He again stayed on my bed with me, as Randy had to leave to pick up the other two kids. No break for Mommy. I finally received the blood and urine test results from my doctor and they were so bad and off the charts, that she wanted me to go to the hospital right away. I asked if I could wait until the morning, but she said no. I had wanted to give the kids a normal afternoon without them missing any classes. And so I continued waiting for Randy to come home with the other kids. Sammy was already very concerned that I was going to the hospital and wanted to hug me. He kept saying he'll miss me.

I made myself some chicken soup that I ate at 1 pm, and that's all the food I had until getting home rather late in the evening. Sammy wanted some too, and so I made him some. When Randy came home at 1:45 pm, he sat down to eat the soup with Sammy, while I went downstairs with the other two to print out my test result and do piano practice. I did the complete program with Emmy today, but not with Tammy. I was just not up for any major encouragement from myself to get her to do it. I was eager to get to the hospital, so we quit, and I went upstairs.

I got ready to leave the house, gave Randy a last few instructions for taking them to class, said good-bye to everyone and left at 2:20 pm. I walked to the subway, rode it downtown, then took the tram. I could barely keep my eyes open. Once getting off the tram, I still had quite a bit of walking to do to first get to the hospital entrance, and then the emergency room. It was about 3 pm, when I finally got there.

There were already a lot of people there, and I joined the line to be seen and evaluated. My heart sank, when it was the same unfriendly guy as last week who was doing the assessments, and I was not disappointed. He looked at my blood test results and acted liket those were nothing. Then he gave me cup and told me to pee in it. I came back and handed it in. Then they came to me and told me my urine was fine, no sign of an infection, and for that reason, I should go home again. I could not believe my ears! As I walked away, tears were welling up in my eyes. What should I do?

I sat down in the waiting room and wrote my doctor on several channels, then waited to hear back from her. I found out that she closes her practice at 3 pm on Tuesday, so I figured she was gone for the day. But I waited until 4 pm, so an hour. When I still hadn't heard from her, I grabbed my stuff and started walking in the direction of the exit.

I hadn't reached the elevators (that are not closeby) yet, when she called. She said she was gonna call the head doctor of the department that she knows to talk to him, then she'd get back to me. So I headed back to the waiting room and sat down to wait for her call. A few minutes later she called and told me she had talked to the head doctor. She gave me his name and gave me what I should tell them why I needed to be looked at. It was one of the blood test result numbers.

I walked back to the unfriendly guy and the lady there and passed on the message. Suddenly they were gonna take me. The measured my blood pressure, oxygen and temperature, wrote everything down and sent me to the registration counter. I had lost an hour with all this.

After I had registered, I sat down in the very full waiting room to be called. And then the call came and I went inside the consultation room.

There were two female students and a male doctor there, and they were finally nice people. I had to tell my story once again, how the past 9 days have been, and they wrote it down. I also gave them the blood test results. I told them my doctor had asked for a CT scan. I lay down on the bed, and they touched my belly to find out where the pain was. They also took my blood - again - even though the blood test results were from yesterday. The student poked around my left arm for way too long before she gave up. It looks terrible now. The other student then found a tiny vein on the back of my right hand that she used, but blood came out slowly. They also put the IV entrance there.

The doctor said that they were going to take me to the CT scan, but then he decided he wanted a urologist to see me first. That meant more waiting. And that guy was not very friendly and wondering why I was there with him. He did an ultrasound and found nothing wrong with my kidneys. But he could already tell that there was something wrong that he could not figure out.

It was time to wait again. Then I was finally sent to the CT scan. It's something I had never done all my life. By that time it was already pretty empty of people everywhere. I was given a form to fill out and told to wait until I was called. I was the only one in the waiting room.

Then they called me in to where the tube was that I've only seen on TV so far. She explained everything to me, and I lay down on the bed. Then she said they were going to send a constrasting liquid into me through my vein on the hand. She said it would make me feel hot all over, and it did. But it also hurt like crazy, when they pressed that fluid through my tiny vein. The scan itself only took a few seconds. Then I was sent back to the emergency room.

More waiting. It was 6:15, when I wrote Randy that I was waiting for the CT scan result. I was getting cold and covered myself with my jacket, but I was aware of the IV thing on my hand and wanted to be cautious. It was rather tight. I closed my eyes as I waited.

Then the young student returned and said that the scan had shown it was something with my ovary and that I was going to be called in to see the obgyn. More waiting.

Then I was called in to a young and nice doctor. Once again I had to tell the whole story. Then she did an ultrasound to look more closely at what was going on in my ovaries. She told me I had a 16 cm long cyst and she was trying to get a good look at it. But it was hard, so she said we were gonna go to another room with better equipment. There she did the whole thing again. Then she said she was gonna go get a colleage to help her. I waited way too long in that room, feeling cold.

The other doctor didn't look that much older, but she seemed more competent. She did all the same stuff again, taking pictures from the ultrasound. She even did small talk. After they were done, they told me that I could either stay in the hospital or go home and come back in the morning. They said I needed to be operated but that they would like to figure out first if the cyst was malignant. I guess that's the purpose of the tests tomorrow. Then they could suggest a way of action.

Once again I returned to the waiting room. Randy had tried to call me. It was 8 pm and bedtime for the kids, but they were all crying for me. So I called them with video while waiting and hung up, when I saw the doctor arrive. The kids were comforted to see me and talk to me and even went to sleep quickly.

The doctor then gave me an IV with an antibiotic, so more waiting. By that time I just wanted to be done and go home. I was tired and I'd been there for a long time. And I had seen different interesting stuff in the waiting room. It's too bad that they have to have security guards there now. Once the IV was done, I returned to the doctor who took it out, then she gave me the cup for another urine test. They had failed to do a pregnancy test and it was mandatory. So I got that done and brought her the result. Then she gave me a prescription for two more antibiotics to start taking in the morning and told me where to go, when I come back tomorrow. FINALLY, I was allowed to go home!

It was 9 pm, as I walked through the empty hallways of the hospital to get to the exit. I had already decided to take an Uber home instead of public transportation, and it arrived right away. It was good to sit in that car home.

By 9:30 pm I was back home. Of course the kids were all sleeping, but I know that Tammy and Emmy will climb into bed with me and then hit my hurting belly with their legs in their sleep. I finally got something to eat and told Randy the story. I got his pictures from the ball-playing class, and my one representative picture of the day, worked on them, then started writing my report. Now it's 1 am and I can hardly keep my eyes open. It's time for bed. They told me to come prepared tomorrow that they won't let me go home.