so, should I get a second opinion?
Before you read any further, I should tell you that I spent a big chunk of the day at the urgent care waiting to be seen for an abdominal pain/intestinal thingie. If you don't want to know any more, then move along, dear friends - nothing you want to see here. Way too much information follows the cut.
I've been having random nausea for a couple of weeks, but I've been ignoring it - I recently restarted taking prenatal vitamins, and assumed that the iron content was jerking my tummy around. (No, I'm not pregnant, but I'm no longer doing anything to stop it from happening, so prenatal vitamins are a must.)
I woke up last night with a sharp abdominal pain around my navel. I managed to get back to sleep, but was awakened repeatedly by it. By midmorning, it was bad enough that I decided to brave the misery of going to the urgent care clinic to make sure it wasn't something like appendicitis. Wrong location, but you never know - my body has never done anything else quite normally, so I can't trust it to be perfectly normal now, either.
After much waiting, and enough time to read about half of my new book, They took me back, took my blood pressure (which was 25 points higher than normal), took an x-ray, and briefly felt my belly. No stethescope, or lengthy examination of the abdomen - just a quick feel. She said that she couldn't really see anything on the x-ray, so I should just go on home - it was probably constipation. How mortifying. She gave me some little Dulcolax-type pills to take, then sent me out the door, feeling really embarrassed. I couldn't get out of there quickly enough.
The thing is, I'm not corked up. And the pills made things even worse. I ended up vomiting, as well as being, shall we say, abundantly unconstipated. The pain is still there, sharper than ever. I finally managed to eat a tiny dinner, and five hours later, it's still sitting in my belly like I just finished eating.
My apologies for the overabundance of TMI. But here's the question: do I risk being laughed out of the ER tomorrow morning, and just go directly there, of should I try to get an appt with our family doctor first? I'm a bit concerned about it being a bowel obstruction - the symptoms all sound like what's going on with me. On the other hand, I feel well enough to type this - surely I'd be doubled over in agony with something like that? I'm in a fair bit of pain, but nothing like labor pain, for example. What is painful enough to warrant an ER visit?
Again, sorry for the ick factor. :)
I've been having random nausea for a couple of weeks, but I've been ignoring it - I recently restarted taking prenatal vitamins, and assumed that the iron content was jerking my tummy around. (No, I'm not pregnant, but I'm no longer doing anything to stop it from happening, so prenatal vitamins are a must.)
I woke up last night with a sharp abdominal pain around my navel. I managed to get back to sleep, but was awakened repeatedly by it. By midmorning, it was bad enough that I decided to brave the misery of going to the urgent care clinic to make sure it wasn't something like appendicitis. Wrong location, but you never know - my body has never done anything else quite normally, so I can't trust it to be perfectly normal now, either.
After much waiting, and enough time to read about half of my new book, They took me back, took my blood pressure (which was 25 points higher than normal), took an x-ray, and briefly felt my belly. No stethescope, or lengthy examination of the abdomen - just a quick feel. She said that she couldn't really see anything on the x-ray, so I should just go on home - it was probably constipation. How mortifying. She gave me some little Dulcolax-type pills to take, then sent me out the door, feeling really embarrassed. I couldn't get out of there quickly enough.
The thing is, I'm not corked up. And the pills made things even worse. I ended up vomiting, as well as being, shall we say, abundantly unconstipated. The pain is still there, sharper than ever. I finally managed to eat a tiny dinner, and five hours later, it's still sitting in my belly like I just finished eating.
My apologies for the overabundance of TMI. But here's the question: do I risk being laughed out of the ER tomorrow morning, and just go directly there, of should I try to get an appt with our family doctor first? I'm a bit concerned about it being a bowel obstruction - the symptoms all sound like what's going on with me. On the other hand, I feel well enough to type this - surely I'd be doubled over in agony with something like that? I'm in a fair bit of pain, but nothing like labor pain, for example. What is painful enough to warrant an ER visit?
Again, sorry for the ick factor. :)