Last night I went to the emergency room because I was having severe abdominal pain. My OBGYN’s response to my phone call was to tell me to go directly to the hospital. So, my husband trundled my son and my pregnant self into our car and off we went. The sharp and powerful pain that had me at the point where I had a hard time seeing straight… Well, by the time the resident attending came by, it had eased and I was just plain upset as hell.

     They were baffled, just as the nurse was last week at my OBGYN’s office when I went in because of my problems with ringing ears. It’s now one week and a day of my ears ringing, with no apparent explanation. Just as there is no apparent explanation for my intermittent pain, which was crippling for about 15 to 30 minutes last night. This stuff has been going on since early February along with a few other strange things. They’re having me get a renal ultrasound because the best guess for the abdominal pain is that it’s kidney stones or some form of bladder infection. I highly doubt it’s a bladder infection because I’ve had several of those in the past and if I had one I would have known long before it went into my kidneys.

     As I was there, I felt, emotionally, like I did when I went to the emergency room with appendicitis back during my pregnancy with my first child. I was terrified that there was something wrong with me that would be harmful to the baby I’m carrying. I was also feeling that I had to prove that there was something wrong with me. I felt guilty for taking up their time and resources, especially when I was going in there and the pain went down to the mild discomfort that I’ve been dealing with for a while. I still feel guilty and like I’m not going to be taken seriously because it’s going to be assumed that I’m a hypochondriac.

     It probably sounds strange to say that I don’t expect my doctor or the emergency room staff to believe me when I say that there is something wrong, but if it’s not immediately obvious that I’m injured or in horrible pain, I feel like I need to prove I should be there. The feeling with the appendicitis was less that I needed to prove that I needed to be there and that I should be apologizing for having the audacity to become ill in the first place and use their valuable time and resources, which could be spent on a more critical case.