Day 1

My first full day at Schick Shadel was anything but boring....

The days around here start pretty early.  At 5:30am, the nurse comes by to take your vitals and give you your daily meds, if you require any.   After this, you are pretty much on your own until the 7:30 group meeting unless you are a newbie like I was.  All newbies must report to the nurses station a 6:30am for orientation.  My councilor showed up at my room at 6:15am, and got things going a little early.

This is where things started to get interesting.  On arriving at the nurses station, one of the nurses tells me the Doctor wants to talk to me.  She tried to get the Doctor on the phone, but wasn't able to reach him, so I headed down to orientation.  About 15min into the orientation, one of the nurses came down and nervously motions me to follow her.   I followed her up back up to the nurses station where she quickly gave me another EKG, then took me to this room and tells me to immediately lie down and asks "Do you feel faint?"   I respond "No, I feel fine."   She leaves.

About 3 minutes later three more nurses came back looking really worried and hooked me up to an IV and tell me I need to go to the hospital ER.  I ask one of the nurses what the heck is going on and she says my potassium levels are high and my calcium levels are really low, so they decided to call 911.  Like that means anything to me.....   At this point I'm starting to freak out a little.

About 5min later, 4 EMTs show up and start checking me out.  Before I know it, I'm off to the hospital.  Still no one can tell me what the hell is wrong.

After arriving at the ER, the room I'm wheeled into quickly fills up with medical personnel and the ER Doctor starts asking me questions like "are you having chest pains," "do your fingers tingle," "do you have an upset stomach," etc, etc.   I respond, "No, I feel fine!"

In a flurry of activity, I'm hooked up to about four different machines, my blood pressure is being taking what seems like every 15 seconds, another EKG is taken, and more blood is taken.  Then as quick as everyone came in, everyone leaves.  There I am sitting there in a darkened ER room, still not knowing what the heck is going on.

About 2 hours later, the ER doctor comes back in with my various blood and scan results and says "You are fine, you can go back to Schick Shadel.   All of your levels are normal."    I ask the Doctor what the heck happened.  He thought that the blood draw taken at Schick Shadel had probably been tainted and therefore gave really bad results.   Ya think?????

Within 10min I'm back in my green scrubs and waiting out in the lobby of the ER for a taxi to take me back to Schick Shadel.

Back at Schick Shadel, I was welcomed warmly by everyone I ran into, especially the staff.  They were all happy nothing serious had happened.  Better safe than sorry, but what a morning....

At that point, I headed back to my room to relax a little and catch my breath, but my poor roommate was recovering from his last Duffy (he looked pretty green behind the gills), so I decided to give him some privacy and I headed down to the lounge.

Around noon, I was paged up to the nurses station to complete my orientation, talk to the Doctor, and watch a relaxation video (which I was VERY much in need of at that point.).

The "work day" closed out with me meeting with the lead councilor to discuss my game plan for the week.  Very nice lady.

As this day comes to a close, I was somewhat happy it is almost over, but also nervous about my first Duffy tomorrow.  I will follow my old roommate's advice and get a couple pitchers of water for the morning.