So, I have a long health history. I think that has been established. I also have some crazy stories about hospital stays. I'm pretty sure that I've never had a normal one. Here is one for your entertainment. I'll write some others in the next few days.
When I was 14 I slipped on the stairs of our home hitting the middle of my back on the edge of a stair. It knocked the wind out of me, and I felt like I might pass out, so I tried to call for my mom. In the effort to call for help I fell down the stairs, literally head over heels. This was an older home and the stair case was really narrow, so I hit the sides of the stairs a lot on the way down. The stair case ended at a very small landing where the hallway teed. There was a metal ladder leaning against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, I hit my head on that. The landing at the bottom of the stairs was cement. My sister found me unconscious, ran over, and lifted my head up and then dropped it on the cement floor. Then she ran and got my mom. They called 911. At some point I had a seizure.
We lived about 35 minutes outside of town. The ambulance service in the small town was all volunteer (still is). By the time they got there I was conscious and felt really bruised and headachey, but otherwise fine. As the volunteer ambulance service came in I could see that they were all in their 60's, and all very nervous. They were extremely worried about making sure I didn't move (for good reason). They got me on the stretcher and put one of those brace things around my head to keep it from moving. They picked me up only to realize that there was no way to turn the stretcher to get up the stairs, the area was just too skinny. They set me down and huddled up to figure things out.
There was no other way out of the house so they decided to take me off of the stretcher, put the stretcher on the stairs (it was partway on the stairs and partway on the landing, braced by the wall), and then try to scoot me onto the stretcher. They got the stretcher all set up but then felt that it was on too steep of an angle to safely lift me onto it, and they couldn't lift me onto it without me bending my legs or something. they were also worried about getting me up the stairs. They were really steep and narrow. Only one person could go on them at a time. They were worried about being able to lift me and get out without dropping me. (Remember, they were all in their 60's; retired). It's a good thing that I only weighed about 95 lbs.
They huddled up again to think it over. I'd commented several times that I could just get on the stretcher myself, but they didn't want me to move a muscle. So, while they were all huddled up and looking away I quietly shimmied myself onto the stretcher. After a minute they turned around and saw me there. They were all very upset and gave me quite the lecture about not moving around.
They strapped me down and then started up the stairs.There were a few little stumbles, but they didn't drop me. I remember being on a really steep slant and desperately praying that I wouldn't take another trip down the stairs!
They stuck me and my stretcher on a bench in the ambulance and away we went. My mom sat in the front with the driver. There is one part of the road that sunk a lot where it connects to a bridge, creating quite the bump. The driver was going 100 mph (so my mom tells me) and they started coming up on the bridge. My mom started frantically yelling at the driver to slow down, but he didn't. We hit the bump in the road and the ambulance got some air. When it landed my stretcher (which wasn't strapped down to anything) flew into the air and then hit the bench, BAM, bam, bam, bam, bam! Boy did my head hurt. I remember thinking that if I didn't already have a concussion I certainly had one now!
We got to the hospital, and I had a CT Scan; all of that went fine. They had just contracted a traveling MRI and they decided they wanted to use that too, so off we went in the metal hospital bed to have an MRI. On the way there the tech kept telling them that they were not to let go of the bed for any reason because if they did the machine would suck me down the hall and slam me into the machine. He repeated these instructions several times. They got me in, the tech let go of the bed to prepare the machine and asked that the door be shut. Both of the other people let go of my bed to shut the door, and my bed flew down the hall and slammed into the machine. Ouch. They then instructed me to not fall asleep, but I did.
Thankfully the rest of that stay was normal.
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