Buckle up for a story time on how I ended up at the Emergency Room and then two nights in the hospital. I’m okay now or at least, I’m on my way to being okay.

Last Friday evening, my stomach started to do the thing it does where it makes me want to die just a little by making everything, um, explosive. When I woke up last Saturday, I had a splitting headache that didn’t feel like my typical sinus headache. I took Ibuprofen to get rid of the headache, and it took roughly three or four hours for the headache to go away.

Between my stomach problems and headache, the day was not looking good for me.

However, my boyfriend came over to my house in the afternoon to hang out. I was hoping my day could get back on track after such a rough start. We were watching TV, and I was laying on him, as I normally do. I started feeling extremely cold, which is unusual for me. I am never cold. When I began to shiver, I knew something was wrong with me.

I took my temp, and it read 100.4. I took ibuprofen in an effort to break the fever. I really did not want to go to the ER. I re-took my temp before going to bed and it was 99.3. Before going to sleep, I felt confident that I could avoid going to the ER.

When I woke up at 3:30 am on Sunday because of my explosive stomach, I realized that I was wrong. I took my temp and it read 101.2. I called the on-call oncologist, who quickly told me, “Yes, go straight to the ER.”

I asked my neighbor to take me to a community hospital ER because I wanted to generally stay away from people. Honestly, I thought I would just be receiving fluids in the ER and sent home with antibiotics for my fever, but that’s not what happened.

They asked me if I had any cough, and I responded, “Yeah. Just a slight dry cough.” The doctor ordered a chest CT with contrast. Shortly thereafter, the doctor came back to my room to tell me that I had blood clots in both lungs, and they would be admitting me. On top of the blood clots, they diagnosed me with colitis.

It took me several moments to process what they told me. A blood clot? Blood clots? I had no idea. The doctor asked me if I had been experiencing any shortness of breath, and I replied, “Yeah, I noticed shortness of breath when I went up and down stairs, but I just thought it was because I’m fat now.” Other than that, I was not experiencing any other noticeable symptoms.

Since I was being admitted, the community hospital had to get an ambulance to transfer me from their facility to the downtown main hospital. The one tech really lectured the hell out of me for coming to the community hospital when I should have gone to main hospital location. I told him, “I thought I was just coming in for fluids. I had no idea this was happening.” Grr.

I spent three days, two nights in the hospital. I was hooked up to a heperin trip and had my left arm poked and prodded so much that I felt like a human pin cushion. The nurses had to routinely take blood from me to monitor the heperin, and they had to access my veins through my hand and wrist. I am pretty sure you could torture me for information by obtaining blood through my wrist.

After I got home, I used two days to rest up from my three-day stint in the hospital pokey. I am still processing what happened to me. Breast cancer, blood clots, colitis… oh my. Talk about an evil trifecta designed to make me miserable and tired. They sent me home with a starter back of Eliquis, and I’m adjusting to my life on blood thinners.

Once again, I am adjusting to a new normal, and my new normal now involves me being tired quite a bit. Good times, good times.