Syncope

It's the fancy medical term for fainting. It sounds so much more serious, though, when called syncope (sink-o-pee).

Last weekend Aiden had a fantastically awful cold. Well, he had it all week but last weekend it made him sleep pretty much the entire day. Both days. I was slightly irritated. Of course, this week I have got the cold. I studied for a few hours and then decided to go to sleep.

Why is it that I can fall asleep during the best show that I WANT to stay up for but the minute I get sick and decide I should succumb to the awful debilitating exhaustion I cannot sleep?

So I finally fell asleep around midnight.

I was woken up by a very loud crashing and the bathroom lights on at 1:30. I jumped out of bed and was a little disoriented. I looked over and saw the Aiden laying on the floor half in the bathroom and half in the bedroom. He had a glazed over look in his eyes and he was quivering a little bit. I asked him what happened and he didn't answer or look at me. He was looking off the corner of his glazed eyes just staring at.... something. I had to touch his stomach to get him to answer me and then all I got was a very weak "I think we need to call 911. I feel like I'm going to pass out".

I'm pretty sure he already had and was on the return trip to conciousness when he said that.

I am now feeling very panicky and of course cannot find my freakin' phone. I finally did and started explaining the situation. They dispatched all the appropriate folks and then said to call back if anything changed. I knew this would end up in the ER and NO WAY was I going to send him alone. So I started trying to figure out who to call.

First thought, MOM. Riiight, the ambulance will totally take longer than Mom to get here. Great idea, Genius.

Next, Matt and Shaila. They don't have anything else to do and NO ONE could get here faster since they live on top of us. Literally, not practically. So I called them. And they slept through it.

Now I'm getting more antsy, trying to move the Halloween decoration tub and everything else that might be in the way of the EMTs out of the hall. I realized it's Saturday night at 1:30. Priscilla is up. Of course she is. As long as she's not passed out drunk, she'll do.

I called her and asked if she could come over. She said yes and asked if everything was okay. I said no and then I hung up. Not for the drama but for the police woman who was responding to the call. She came in and tried to talk to Aiden. First she asked me what happened, out of earshot of Aiden (who knew "out of earshot" existed in this tiny apartment!) and then she asked him. He was very incoherent. She asked what day it was and he said "technically now it's the fifth". This was funny because we had discussed it earlier that night. He thought it was a day earlier. Then she asked him who the president is. He said "um, I want to say Bill Clinton but I know that's not right". After a few seconds of a strange look at me from the cop (but they felt like ETERNITY) he said "George Bush".

The cop hung out until the rest of the responders showed up. I went out to make sure they could find the right apartment (I'm choosing NOT to share how I went out into the parking lot and waved them down. DUH! I'm standing right next to a police car). "Them" being two ambulances, a firetruck, and a fire captain/cheif/whatever's truck. Anyway, they ended up talking to him, getting his vitals and asked if we wanted him to go to the ER.

Now, let me tell you something about Aiden and I: we tend to read each other really well. I guess it doesn't work that well when there's three large men in between us and about 4 more behind him. I knew he didn't want to go. Well, I thought I knew. He's a typical man, never wants to go to the doctor until it's unavoidable.

I also wanted to get his opinion on it but I did NOT want to be the woman the EMTs got to talk about the rest of the night who let the guy that just passed out make the call about whether to go to the hospital. It's not that I was jonesin' for a trip to the ER in a college town full of drinkers on a Saturday night. But I had to make him go.

Later, he told me that he knew I would make him go so even though he really wanted to stay home he just agreed at the front of it all. In fact, what he said was "I knew I'd eventually lose so I might as well just give up now".

I followed the ambulance and had to go through the front doors of the ER (SO not what happens on any tv show!) and check in at the desk. The man behind the counter had just finished checking in an extremely inebriated girl who I could (and may) post an entire blog about. Anyway (and it's killing me to bypass all of that story right now), I sat in the waiting room for about 15 minutes or so until I was allowed back to his room.

While I was waiting one of our neighbors showed up. Have I mentioned I love living in this complex? I do. She had seen the action in the parking lot while waiting for her husband to get home from his shift at the vet hosipital. When she saw the van pull out to follow the ambulance she thought I had the kids with me. SO SHE FOLLOWED ME TO THE ER TO OFFER TO TAKE THE KIDS. I had held it together really well until that point but I almost cried when I was talking to her.

The nurse finally let me back to Aiden's room and we commenced the "Holy crap we are tired and this is silly because we are pretty sure we know why this happened and we could have taken care of THAT but in case we are wrong we're sitting here WAITING all night while Priscilla and her friend stay at the house with the kids" ER game. The good news was we had the nice nurses, one male and one female, who I had when I went in with pancreatitis. So we knew we were in good hands. We also had the ER doc who diagnosed my gall stones super quick and was VERY giving with the pain meds (thus endearing him to me for life). We knew we were in good hands. There are some very unfriendly staff members in the ER, too, so you never know what you're going to get. I guess Saturday is the night to have a problem, if you're going to.

Like the show ER we were put into one of the trauma rooms that has doors leading to the hall and to the rooms on either side. One side held a guy who was sleeping off a bad round of drinking games (oh, I really want to post about the drunk girl at check in!) and SnOrInG. The other side (we were lucky enough to be in the middle room) had a 50ish year old woman whose 911 call came in while we were in the hall at home with the EMTs. She was having severe abdominal pain, she didn't know why and it was "unclear whether it was chest pain" according to the dispatcher on the radio.

Yeah, this woman had not pooped in over 5 days, apparently. (I am reminded of a similar story of my Grandma's second husband and my mom but that's neither here nor there). The sliding glass doors between the rooms don't touch the floor so we could hear MOST of what was being said. Every time she was asked a question about whatever she had just said she would answer it by adding another issue to her LONG list of problems. Some of them were not even relavent. She had to make sure they (and we) knew she'd been in for a sleep study several years ago and that she has no appendix (I do know that was relavent). Aiden and I, okay mostly I, considered sneaking though the sliding glass door to smother her with a pillow since she was clearly dying anyway. That way she'd be out of her misery. All because she hadn't pooped in 5 days.

I swear, I know I was tired but I SWEAR she told one of the nurses that there's "a cat in there with rocks".

In case you missed it, "A CAT IN THERE WITH ROCKS".

And she is in for constipation.

I don't want to know how that happened but I repeated it to Aiden to see if he had heard the same thing. He hadn't. What he heard was "someone put a pad up there and it's blocked". He kept looking at me like I should understand what that means or how it is in anyway better than the cat with rocks. But I couldn't. So I asked. He didn't know either.

Everything with Aiden is fine, he's got a brain (proven with a CAT scan last night) and it's not swelling or anything. The whole problem came from a blood pressure medication he takes for night terrors coupled with low blood sugar from basically skipping dinner last night. He got light headed and passed out. So. Much. Fun.