During the weekend preceding February
27th I was very much looking forward to Monday. I had hired all of the Exit Pollsters
in Arizona within two weeks of receiving the project and I was excited to
finally be given the actual responsibility of managing a project after months
of dreary, repetitive assignments.
The Saturday before the 27th I awoke with a pain in my lower
left abdomen. It wasn’t sharp, and
I pointed it out to my roommate Prasana, joking that eating five Mallomars the
night before probably wasn’t such a good idea. Prasana agreed and insisted it was the sweets making me
ill. I drank coffee and ate breakfast
assuming it would just go away in a bit of time, though a few episodes of
Downton Abbey later the pain was still there. I thought maybe getting out of the house and moving around
would be a wise decision, so I left for the Menlo Park Mall.
This most certainly was a
weekend of misfortune for me; I found out the fun way that the Menlo Park Mall
in Central Jersey is in all probability the worst place to drive to on a
Saturday, and after being unable to find parking for 30 minutes, I turned
around and set back for the condo.
The pain had gotten sharper at this point but still, I ignored it.
After maybe 2 hours of
sleep that night, it was Sunday and I had to go into work to track down any
Exit Pollsters who might have bailed on me. I drove to work around 1 pm. As soon as I sat down at my desk the pain seemed to be
getting worse. I struggled through
making about 50 phone calls despite my discomfort, and it took until almost
6:00 pm. When it was time to
leave, I thought maybe I should see someone about my pain before the work day
tomorrow.
I stopped at an urgent care
center after leaving work only to discover it was closed for the day. After calling a few other centers it
seemed that most close around 5 pm on Sundays. I wasn’t nearly ready to give in to the hospital, so I just
drove back to the condo, crying in agony the entire ride. Prasana could tell something was wrong
as I clutched my lower stomach and kept walking in circles. She immediately insisted it was stress,
and then launched into a series of anecdotes as she often does. I politely listened to her discuss her
theories based on numerable past family and friends’ various medical
situations, none of which sounded remotely similar to my pain. While Prasana was talking, all of a
sudden she mentioned a mental situation a friend or some other person was in
recently and I perked up. I
listened more closely and nodded, though my mind started to wander. Perhaps I was hallucinating the pain I was suffering from, or I
was so stressed and unhappy in general about my current work and life situation
that it was physically hurting me.
I was physically hurting
me.
Prasana was concerned about
me; our 10 year age difference had always caused her to act like a watchful
mother around me, feeding me, giving me rides when needed, taking note when I
felt ill. She gave me Extra
Strength Tylenol. I took 4 of
those and thought I felt better, so I started making dinner for us. The pain started to resurface while I
was cooking so I left the stove unattended and lied on my bed to call my
mother. She insisted I was unhappy
and depressed as usual, and that my pain was nothing. I of course began crying on the phone, while listening to
Prasana shout my name and something about food burning. I hung up quickly and ran to the
kitchen to find Prasana holding out a pot of burnt creole shrimp. After she annoyingly scolded me like a
child about how you’re “not supposed to leave a stove with a burner unattended!”
I cried some more and said I would start dinner over. She insisted we salvage the burnt food and we ate it in
silence. I didn’t care at that
point; my pain was coming in waves now, radiating throughout my body from the
small spot on my lower left abdomen, and I just wanted to get to bed.
I couldn’t sleep that
night. I took more Tylenol and
waited, but felt no relief. Every
position on my bed was agony. I
switched to the couch. I got up
and got dressed, contemplating the hospital, then changed my mind and decided
it was nothing and lied back down.
After getting dressed and undressed about five times, at 4:30 am on
Monday I got dressed for work but drove to the hospital. I packed my bag for New York City as I
had every intention of being in the phone room for the Arizona Election the
next day.
I drove to Robert Wood
Johnson hospital after Google searching 'hospital.' It was only minutes away.
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