I almost died from hypovolemic shock and my doctor looked me in the eyes and said no you didn't.
I've been having some kind of gallbladder issue, where suddenly I'm vomiting for hours if not a couple days. The latest one on May 8th was the one that almost killed me. I had made the rookie mistake of only watching out for fat content, not knowing about processed foods triggering an attack. So I ate beef jerky.
30 minutes later I'm going up to the Pharmacist I work under, and told him, "Hey, I was trying to push through, but the cold chills are starting and I need to go home."
The second I was home and out of my scrubs I was at the toilet. I vomited almost non stop for 8 hours. The final nail was late at night, my fiancé was getting ready for his overnight shift when I threw up stomach acid.
The second I did, I knew something was Wrong. My hands and feet started to slowly lose feeling and I got so dizzy. The most I was able to get out to express the urgency was "opital".
We live close to our hospital, 7 minutes away. By the time I got there, I needed a wheelchair and my abdomen was cramping in pain. My hands were starting to cramp too. Weird positions I'd never normally do. The triage nurse was really nice and just trying to keep me calm.
Once she heard my lips were going numb I was rushed into one of the rooms near triage. I was told originally that there was gonna be a wait because of a really bad accident that had happened. It was urgent enough that I was r u s h e d back. They hooked me up to an ekg immediately as well as put ice in my hands and on the back of my neck. Something they only do to help break the shock. They gave me an antiemetic, tramodol, and benadryl in my IV and started me on 2 liters of saline.
I got to stage 3 hypovolemic shock, the stage right before total organ failure due to vomiting up 30-40% of my body fluid. Because of the stage I was in, it triggered lacticacidosis. That only triggers when your body is taking blood supply away from your liver and kidneys, causing them to overproduce lactic acid. That's what the cramping was. Lacticacidosis alone is fatal without treatment.
My lactic acid reflex test was 3.1, when its supposed to be 0.5-2.2. The nurse even got worried when she saw my numbers. I heard this nurse that had been so helpful and knew what she was doing panic a little. "Oh god your lactic acid is high."
They let me go home after 2 hours, but I ended up needing about 4 days to recover. My primary doc said because I wasn't admitted for the night that I didn't almost die. He was convinced I was just getting sick from smoking weed, despite none of the symptoms or home remedies matching up. Same with family history. I yelled at him.
My fiancé reported him. I'm still waiting to hear what happens. It's been almost 1 month and I'm still filling prescriptions with his name on them. Fuck Grant Couette.
