On the verge of dying, an emergency room story
It was Monday. Got the bus after work to go back home. It was dark.
As I got off the bus I was alert. I was getting scared in my neighbourhood after a shirtless guy with jeans approached me one evening with a weird look saying "sygnómi", which means sorry in Greek, and lifting his hand towards me. This happened right after picking up the keys to the apartment. What a welcome event in my new home. Does this happen to guys as well? Do they go walking around in fear? Probably they have their own worries as well. But I can't help having those thoughts when I face fear, feeling in a physical vulnerable position even though I am strong.
While walking back home, I hugged myself because my stomach mouth was bothering me. As I got home I ate a soup I had made in the morning. My appetite wasn't calling for food but I had only eaten breakfast so I thought a soup for an unwell stomach could do myself good.
After midnight I couldn't fall asleep. At some point I ran to the bathroom and I threw up. It didn't make me feel better. The stomach mouth kept giving me a constant pain. I started texting my family in Spain. I normally don't do that but I decided to for some reason in a desperate call to find solutions. Meanwhile I was asking chatGPT what I could do, I was covering most of the points the text was suggesting.
The hours were passing by. I was sitting down since lying made the world turn in circles. One. Two. Three in the morning. I just wanted to sleep, I was tired from the 12 hour hike from the day before but my stomach was not letting me.
In the end I decided to go to the hospital so that a doctor could see what kind of party my stomach mouth was attending. It took me around an hour to get dressed and order a cab. We arrived to the hospital in a ride where it seemed the location was getting further as we drove. Tears started rolling down my cheeks as the tires were in motion. We stopped in front of a big building with a sign with LED red Greek letters scrolling in a horizontal direction. That hospital didn't accept emergencies. I started crying once again. The driver offered to take me to another hospital which was open.
Another ride where the location appeared to get further away as we were moving. Once we reached, he offered to help me. I said no. He drove away. I walked a few steps and took a break leaning against a pillar from the entrance. It would have been a great idea to accept that help. Classic Julia being stubborn, I laughed at myself.
Step by step I arrived to the emergency area while taking breaks every few meters. There were ambulances in front of the main door. I entered the building. They took my details and told me to wait around an hour plus. Ok. Doable.
There were people everywhere. Beds all over the hallway. A big group of people in front of a door that lead to an emergency room crowded with hospital beds. It was loud. Some people were yelling. The door kept opening and closing. The security person kept coming in and out of the room. She was moderating who entered the room by writing the numbers in a sheet of paper. She wrote the one I was holding in my hand without any verbal communication. Hospital beds kept going around the hallway.
I went outside to get some fresh air, sit down and wait there for my number to be called. People were smoking in every corner outside of the building, my body was complaining because of the smell.
After more than an hour passed, I realized that the waiting time they told me was far from being accurate. The security woman had one page and a half full of numbers before mine. I heard a guy who was more than 50 numbers before the one I was assigned that he had been waiting since 8pm. It was almost 6am. We started chatting, he also had stomach pain.
I went to the nurse in the front door for the third time begging for someone to check what was wrong with me. The pain kept increasing. I didn't know if I was exaggerating. All the health professionals in the front door looked at me with indifference. There were many others in pain as well, just like me. I had to wait. I saw the empathy in one of the nurse's eyes. She was the one who could speak the least English but her blue eyes could speak for themselves.
Meanwhile, I was sending messages to my parents of my status throughout the night. I kept going in and out of the building. Checking online for other options. Calling other hospitals, even private. No success. The guy who also had stomach pain came out and sat in front of me. He started smoking. I didn't know what to do anymore.
There was a small café across the road. I went there to use the bathroom. Walking the few meters that separated me from the small place felt like an eternity. Straight to the left. When I turned the corner, I was faced with the bathroom door separated by two steps. I thought "oh no". Holding myself to the wall, I managed to go down those two steps. The 12 hours hike from the day before seemed like nothing compared to how I was approaching that light slope.
I walked back to the emergency building and approached once more the nurse that seemed to be most empathetic with my situation. The walk from the café felt like a journey. I am in very much pain, I understand that there are many others who are sick as well but I just want that someone checks what is going on with my stomach. I insisted fighting for my life with the energy I had. The nurse with blue eyes told me to follow her. She came with me to talk to the doctor at the door of the emergency room. She fought for me in Greek, she told me to wait, the doctor was going to see me shortly.
Right next to the door, there was a paper cup glass on the floor half filled with a liquid that seemed coffee and a small water bottle. I pushed them aside with my foot to lean against the wall and to be able to crouch down while tears streamed down my cheeks. A hand touched my arm. Do you want to sit? A young girl was offering me the only seat which was free, a wheel chair. In those moments are the ones where you see humankind. Where you see that people are willing to be kind and nice to one another. I do not believe that hate speech where everyone is terrible and everything is going south in life. I choose to believe that there is good in the world because I have seen it everywhere in the world.
I thanked her and I sat down. She told me that I needed to go in the emergency room and fight so that someone would see me. She told me to lie, to say that I had fainted, to insist that I was in very much pain. We had a brief conversation that I don't even remember, there was lots of input, lots of noise, the light was bright, my stomach was yelling for help communicating that there was something very wrong. I was cringing in the wheel chair. I had adopted that pose at some point and I just kept making myself smaller as the pain kept increasing.
After some minutes, the doctor told me to enter. The room was crowded with hospital beds and people. Everything seemed hectic. I laid down on a bed, feeling victorious. He asked me where the pain was located. I told him that in my stomach mouth. He left. I started touching my belly and realized that the bottom right corner was hurting very much as well, more than the stomach mouth. I called the doctor. He inspected me once more. Appendicits. Go to the surgeon.
I went to another room which was also crowded with hospital beds. None was free. There was a doctor and many nurses going from one place to another. Again people everywhere. At some point they gave me a document in Greek and told me to ask around where I needed to go, they were going to do an ultrasound to double check that I had appendicits. All the signs were in Greek. Every time I had to walk somewhere, it seemed like an expedition.
Many mixed feelings. Was I going to get operated in a foreign country all by myself? It felt scary to not say goodbye to anyone before going into an operating room. At the same time I had a strong desire to fight for my life, I wanted to live.
There was almost no waiting time for the ultra sound. I was seeing the end close. I felt joyful with all the situation. A nurse started to inspect the bottom right of my abdomen. She put a gel liquid and was making circular motions with a device while looking at a screen. She was pressing down the device against my body. The pain was deep. I started crying once more. I was trying to breathe and have patience while she kept hurting me in the search for my appendix. In a scale of one to ten, how painful would that be compared to being in labor? How crazy it must be to give birth if this was way lower in a pain scale.
I asked her to stop a couple of times. It felt like torture. The more she pressed, the more she hurt me. This was taking longer than I expected. Expectations are the worst thing one can have. They are the source of unhappiness because when you don't expect anything, you can't be dissatisfied with the present situation.
At some point from what felt like an eternity she stopped and gave me the news. She couldn't find the appendix so I needed to go back to the surgeon and they would send me to do a different kind of medical examination. In the next one I would feel a liquid coming out of me as if I would be peeing myself. Those were the instructions. All the victorious feeling I had, quickly vanished.
Another excursion back to the surgeon. A new document in Greek and a new quest to find the next medical examination room. After asking every other person, I found it and they gave me a new waiting number. I leaned against a wall once more whining with pain. Again a hand touching my back offering me a seat. Another young girl. She was asking me what I was doing in Greece, if I was alone. Talking was also a big effort at that point. She was extremely supportive. She asked me if no one had given me any meds for the pain. I shook my head from side to side, no. She was there with her mother and her sister.
After what felt like ten to fifteen minutes I got to know that they had been waiting for around two hours for the medical examination. Two hours? I asked. I started crying. She told me don't cry, don't cry. It felt like I couldn't wait two more hours, the pain was unbearable, I was tired of being in such a big constant pain. The victorious feeling I had before had left completely my body at that point if there was any left.
At some point, I asked her to come with me so that someone could give me some medicine for the pain. She could do the talking in Greek, she had more energy and I delegated once more that someone would fight for me. I was deeply thankful. Thank you humankind.
I was standing in the second room I went after the emergency room, the one where the surgeon was. They gave me intravenous pain killers. I sat down on an office chair of one of the nurses without asking, it was the only place free to sit down. The liquid was flowing down from the hanging bottle. I started feeling high, the pain was finally fading.
At that point I did eye contact with one guy who had seen me cross the hallway multiple times, every time walking slower. Every time asking around with a Greek document in my hand. I had asked him in one of my quests where one of the doctors was. Now I was sitting down, with my arm out and a transparent liquid flowing inside. When we looked at each other we started laughing. There is something in these kind of situations where you bond more, some people are more empathetic, the world goes at a different rhythm there. We had a complicit look, we both laughed. Him in the hallway. Me sitting on an office chair where I sat down without anyone offering since everyone was busy. I fully savored that moment. Small moments, small details, make my life full.
During the night I had tried calling two of my friends. None replied. So I decided to fight on my own with the help of strangers. At some point, one called. He was going to come and help me, he asked me if I needed him to bring anything. I went back to wait for my next medical examination. The nice girl and her family were there still waiting. Some random guy started being loud and racist. With the few words of Greek I could understand, I somehow made sense to some of the things he was yelling. An old lady on one of the hospital beds in the hallway started telling people to shut up, she wanted to sleep. The whole scene could be part of a movie or a book. Everything seemed like a film that I was observing. I was seeing the perspective from the main character but I was not participating. The plot was unfolding on its own.
I got a call. Ion was in the hospital. He arrived with his tall stature, curly hair and strong energy. He sat down to hug me. I started crying for what seemed the billionth time. He told me to not cry. I felt safe, I felt I could rest for a bit, it felt liberating.
Life flows at the same tempo for everyone. We have created hours and minutes to define time. However, there are situations where it seems the river of your life suddenly flows in a complete different direction and pace. Your life will always be having a tunnel vision of your own reality. And whenever you are in deep pain, and you end up in a hospital at four in the morning, life is forcing you a certain tunnel vision.
The doctor passed by. He asked me if I was still waiting. Yes, I am. After a couple of minutes, he told me to come with him. They did an MRI which is a medical examination where you enter a white tunnel. It makes some loud noises. I went back to the room where the surgeon was. You have appendicits, we are going to operate you.
They did some other examinations. One to check my heart, where they connect multiple cables to your body. The machine didn’t want to work. Many health professionals started surrounding the device while my body was pinched with all the clip connectors. I felt like in an IT Crowd episode “have you tried turning it off and an on again?”. But I stayed quiet. In the end the doctor fixed it.
They were going to move me to a hospital room. The pain started to push its way once more, so they gave me once more intravenous painkillers. I lied down a hospital bed, I finally didn’t have to walk anymore. They started driving me to my room. We stopped to do a chest X-ray on the way. Then I entered the room. I felt saved.
This is a true story. It happened the early morning of October 15th. If you want to hear how the rest of my time in the hospital was let me know because I might do a part two of what happened next.
Meanwhile, I created another 7 day newsletter based on a true story. It will be seven days in a row and it will be a creative project so I decided to keep it separate from this newsletter. For subscribing go here. After the 7 days, the pop up newsletter will be over.
Have a good week.
I love you very much world,
Julia