Well…Jo, Hoey and Siow was really worried for me. *grins* They thought I FFK them – was supposed to go out with them after my exam. They keep saying they would get a heart attack or that their hearts left them because they were worried about me. Aww…thank you, girls.
Oh…and apparently my BP and pulse is acceptable. They think I’m a very healthy person that exercises frequently that’s why I’ve got a lower pulse and BP. *shrugs* And as far as I remember, I’ve never been admitted into a hospital before…and of all places, in Glasgow. And I hadn’t familiar people with me…but at least Tracy was there. I would have felt quite lost if I had to go there alone.

10.43pm and what a GREAT August 20th 2002 it is today! Ergh. My right hand is still slightly numb. It hurts to stretch it out straight still…and there’s a little bump over where the student doctor (Patrick, if I’m not wrong) stuck the needle in to withdraw my blood to test for haemoglobin count – and no sufficient amount came out of that! Hah! There’s a full moon right outside my window now. Absolutely bewitching! My eyes feel pretty tired now but if I don’t write it now, I’d get it again – amnesia. *smirks*
Alright. I shall now fill you in with a short drama-soap show called, “FeR’s Day Out in the Hospital.”
Well…it all started with PP3 degree exam. Great. Now people would think I passed out because I was too nervous/anxious/worried/stressed about my exam. Some even thought I left the lab half way because I GAVE UP on the exam. How quaint! Anyway…while looking at the Equasym leaflet that I was suppose to give together with the tablets to my 6 year old and 6 months Aaron Daniel H. Dickens “patient”, I started feeling queasy and all funny. I shrugged it off and continued reading and thinking of what to write under my “Relevant Counselling Points”. My vision started to go a little off scale…I blinked a few more times and pressed on. Then I couldn’t take it – I stood up and walked towards the examiner’s table. Then all of the sudden, I felt better! So I turned back to my own place and continued studying the leaflet. Then “it” came back again…that creepy feeling. I could literally feel the blood moving away from my hands and my face – I felt my face turned cold and literally drained of blood. I felt cold yet was feeling warm inside. I wrote my last sentence in my counselling points – I think it was something to do with the side effects. See! I can’t even remember! Anyway, when writing the last sentence, my hands started to shake instead. At that moment, I thought, “God, what’s happening to me? Why now? What’s wrong with me? Lord, help me get through this. I have to finish this. Why of all times, now?”

I couldn’t take it anymore. With my completed paper and Equasym tablets, I brought myself to Doreen. I put my paper, the CD register and my product on the table. Doreen was apparently waiting for me to start my ‘counselling’. I said (I think I said. I don’t quite remember a lot of things now. Eeek!!), “Doreen, I don’t feel too good. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m sweating and I’m feeling cold. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” Help me!!! Seriously I just wanted to know what’s wrong with me so I keep repeating to myself, even, “What’s wrong with me?” I told Doreen my stomach felt a little upset…that I wanted to go to the toilet. So she led me out to the 2nd floor toilet. She was a little worried with me going into the toilet. Then Lynn came out from the lab…she said better not to let me in the toilet in case I go in and never come out again! Even Felice came out from the lab and 3 security men came! Woohoo!! Such a whole lot of people. According to Lynn, there has never been a time where THREE security people came at once – it was considered a lot of them! *grins* Someone came out with a chair for me to sit in…then Felice asked me to lean forward, put my head down. Lynn came with some ice and she put it on my neck. Ooo…it felt pretty good at that moment. They asked me a few questions – whether I ate, whether I got enough rest, whether is it because I studied too hard (pah! I was far from that! *laughs*), whether I got enough fluids. Then they asked if I’d like to go out for some fresh air. I agreed and just followed Lynn into the elevator and they sat me outside SIBS. I felt like I was taken out from the exam because I was caught cheating or something. Well, it would look like it for those who walked by! Lynn beside me and three security officers standing there! Argh! Such a bad impression! *grins*

Well…so then Felice came again and asked if I was feeling better. Before she came, I asked Lynn if I had to sit for the exam again and she told me I would have to…in Easter but it won’t be a ‘re-sit’…it would be my degree exam them – that the first two prescriptions I handed in would not count. I don’t know whether to be thankful or sad. The fact that I would have to go through it next year and not today – once and for all! – Ergh! I told them I felt better (it was about 3pm. I calculated that if I were to go back into the lab at that time, I might, by chance, be able to complete the last 3 prescriptions) – then Lynn asked, “You’re not telling us that you’re feeling better just because you want to go back into the exam, are you?” I wasn’t. I was seriously feeling better. But they told me it was better just to be safe to go get a check from the doctor – I was told by Dr. Lim last time I was slightly anaemic. Hmm…

So off I go on a taxi with Tracy to the Royal Infirmary. It wasn’t quite long for me to wait for the nurse to call my name. I went in alone and Tracy said she’d wait for me outside. So went in, sat on a chair and waited. The nurse first asked me what was wrong and sort, so I had to tell her (I have been telling this same story for a lot of times now!). Then she went on to take my blood pressure and my pulse. I looked at the machine and it read “BP – 107/68 mmHg” and under pulse, it was 57, I think. It was pretty low (to me it was!) that I thought I was possibly hypotensive! *grins* Then she took this little white plastic thingy – she told me she needed a bit of blood to test for blood sugar. So she took my left pinky and gave it a little rub (no alcohol swab?!) and *prick*. Ouch! It was painful! Aieeeee!!! If I had the energy to jump around like a mad woman, I would have. That was not the end (when I thought it would be already)…then she proceeded with my other pinky and gave another prick into it. *sniff* I don’t remember anyone ever taking my blood that way before and it’s darn painful! I’ve got one little dot on each pinky now as proof (but it won’t last long, anyway). I wonder how Grandma puts up with it. Must have hurt a lot that she got immune to it somehow. Ouch again!

After all that, she asked me if I was alright. I said I felt pretty okay. She left and came back with a bed-stretcher thingy. Cool! Erm…sorta. So she asked me to lie on it, and I was pushed right to the end of a line of waiting beds. So I wait. She called Tracy before I was wheeled away by a man – whom I thought was going to let my bed run right down a flight of stairs that was near my ‘waiting point’. Phew! Overactive imagination! It really felt like he was going to push me over, anyway. Sheesh. I waited with Tracy. Waited some more. And we waited some more. And waited. And waited. In between we talked a little. Tracy’s from Aberdeen and she shifted to Glasgow 6 years ago. She has a boyfriend who lives on ketchup and doesn’t like fish. *laughs* I don’t know. She told me all those things when I was talking to her so I just write what I heard. From Tracy, I hear that Lynn has a little girl. And we waited some more. Then I noticed those overalls that the nurses have on have bar codes on them – both the top and trousers. I asked Tracy what are those for and she has no idea – maybe for laundry, so that they know which department to send them back to. I told her what if it was something like our library – scanning our matriculation card’s barcode to get into the library. It would be funny because the barcode that was on the trousers is right on the butt’s cheek. So you’d have to wiggle your backside at the scanning machine to get yourself into a department?! *laughs*

Finally, wait no more (I seriously feel guilty for making Tracy wait with me also when at that time I was really feeling all like myself again already!). I asked the same nurse who took my BP and my blood itself, how long have I got to wait some more? She said there are more severe cases that came in after me – mostly heart patients, so I had to wait. After she left, I told Tracy she asked me (before bringing the bed) how was I and I told her I felt okay. Tracy said maybe I should have lied. *grins* Then I said, “Maybe I should act really distressed now, huh?” Tracy just smiled at me and said, “You could try.”
At about 5pm I was wheeled into one of the examination ‘cubicle’…after about one and a half hours waiting at the corridor! I was asked to change into this hospital garment which had “Hospital Use Only” printed all over the material. Then it was about another 20 minutes before this student doctor who introduced himself as Patrick (if I didn’t recall wrongly – I don’t remember) came to check on me. He asked so many questions and seemed rather unfriendly and fierce that I felt like instead of being diagnosed, I was being interrogated for murder or somewhat. After all questioning, he said I seem to only have experienced a simple faint and that a senior doctor would be in later to double check on me. So I waited and waited and waited and waited. I had to go to the toilet but was afraid to budge, just in case the doctor came in when I took leave – well, I shouldn’t have bothered…could have taken my own sweet time because the doctor didn’t come until about 6.15pm. And again it was Patrick with some gloves and a syringe. I cringe when I saw that packet of syringe. I don’t like it…I knew it has got to do with taking blood from me! Since I told them my GP last time said I was supposingly slightly anaemic, he said he could do an instantaneous check on my haemoglobin count using arterial blood gas. But he would need to use the blood from my ateries (he pressed into my wrist) and he said it’s going to be painful. *Panic alert* But phew! I had a choice to do it or not to do it – it was entirely up to me. I didn’t want to, of course! Pain is not exactly a word I favour! He told me if I wanted to, I could get myself registered and have my full blood count done by the GP then.

Not too long after that he came again saying, “Good news! Apparently I can use the blood from your veins to test your haemoglobin count. So do you want to do it?” I was contemplating and Tracy was telling me, “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” Patrick told me it wouldn’t hurt taking blood from the vein. Hmm…so I gave an “OK”…Tracy said not to look, then it’d be fine. He binded my arm with one of the rubber gloves. I looked away…I felt the prick…”Okay, this isn’t so bad after all.” Then I felt a stab of pain…I didn’t dare to look…then another stab of pain. *argh!* “Is he trying to kill me?” Okay…I was being overly panicky. Then I felt the pain again – I felt the tingly sensation that I normally experience when the pain overwhelms me (like when I went to tightened my braces last time – it was so painful that it passed right into the other senses!)…I felt like laughing at the same time. Then he gave up…my veins were apparently “stubborn little ones”. He took off the glove that was on my arm with the needle still in my arm…ouch ouch ouch!…then he withdrew the needle and did a direct compression on my arm. I saw blood oozing out…I felt slightly sick in the stomach and a little faint.

Then, I looked up and saw Hoey Teing’s face! I was happy to see some familiar face after being stuck so long in the hospital. I waved at her. Apparently she was speechless seeing me lying down that she just signalled to the others that I was there…she couldn’t say, “FeR’s there” instead. Tracy asked if one of them (Jo, Hoey, Siow, Sze-Mien, Hui Ping, Li May) wanted to come in…and so Jo came in. She asked how was I and sort…I said I’m fine. I asked her, “Hey! If all of you are here, who’s making the spaghetti?” *laughs* Oh…the second time Patrick came in with the syringe, he seemed less intimidating and friendlier. After the direct compression using his thumb, he asked me to help him open up a gauze packet and used one of it on my arm…took a plaster-cellophane thingy and stuck the gauze on my arm saying, “There you go. You’ve been to a hospital and there’s a big bandage as proof.” Well, geez! Emma (the senior doctor) then came along and asked me some more questions. She whispered the last one to me, “You’re not by any chance pregnant are you?” *laughs* No! So she reassured me that I was alright…no big deal. It happens to people who are nervous or tensed or stressed. If it happens to me again, I would just need to lie down. She asked me to go home, get a lot of rest. Lie down on the couch or on the bed…relax. Okay. She was really nice. I like her. *beams*

When I went out, I saw Doreen was there even! Goodness! So many people to see me…I feel so touched. So many people care for me…*sob sob* All of them walked me back…Siow was holding on to me all the way home. Basically everyone pampers me at the moment! *laughs* My right arm is still a little numb and I can’t really use it to carry stuff or do things that require a great imput of energy…but thank goodness it’s the right arm and not the left! If not I won’t be able to write! That won’t be good! So…yeap. FeR’s Day Out in the Hospital.