I woke up really early today, about 4:00am. However, I didn’t wake up to be productive, I woke up because of pain. The pain was so bad, I made my first trip to the emergency room in my life.

I had a hard time finding the emergency room. Not only I have never been to one, this is my second week in Pittsburgh, so I don’t even know the area.

I had to Google it on my phone, which brought up police departments. Then I Googled it from my computer and finally found 2 hospitals. I went with the closest one, which was still 20 minutes away.

I finally got to the hospital, parked, and walked up a ton of stairs to get to the front door. The receptionist where sleeping, so I awkwardly stood there until she opened her eyes and asked if I needed to be seen.

There was no one else waiting, so I though it would be quick. I had to wait for 20 minutes while the pain was getting far worse. Finally a nurse comes out and says my name, like it would have been hard to find me. The waiting room was still empty.

As we are walking back, she’s asking how I am, and says I am sweating. Clearly, I am not doing great since I came to the emergency room. We walked by other nurse who had a laptop tray pulled up to him…he was playing on Facebook.

The nurse was asking questions like what I ate and when I had a bowl movement. Then she told me I kept making faces and that made her nervous. She left to get a doctor and other nurse came in. This guy started asking the same questions.

Finally they put an IV in me and went to get the real doctor who appeared to be 300 years old. She pressed on some stuff asking if it hurt and then said it was my gallbladder. I got some pain kills and then had to wait for a CT scan.

In order to do the stupid scan, I had to drink that magic juice, which tasted horrible. I was beginning to think I wouldn’t be able to drink it all. When I finally finished it, I called the nurse guy with the little bed buzzer, and he said he would let them know. He never came back in.

By this time, the pain already came back, and I got to do the stupid scan with the pain. Pain killers really weren’t helping at this point. After we did the scans, I went back down to the room I was in, and waited. I kept calling the nurse telling him the pain was back and more severe than ever, and he really didn’t seem to care. He still never came back in.

That took half an hour, which felt like torture, until the doctor came back in saying the CT showed nothing and I need an ultrasound. More pain killers were on the way. Then I threw up the stupid magic juice, which was just as disgusting coming up as it was going down.

When the guy came in to take me for the ultrasound, I got nausea medicine and painkillers put into my IV. Pain killers made everything spin and then I got really sleepy. I did the ultrasound trying to sleep, but she kept telling me to hold my breath.

After that was over, I went back to the room, and I am pretty sure I slept. A new doctor came in and said I have gallstones, and that a call was made to the resident surgeon and more than likely I am staying the night.

A little while later, someone came down to move me out of the ER to a room. After that, I definitely fell asleep. Before that happened, though, I was able to text a guy I work with to tell him I wasn’t coming into work today.

After that, I got another call and let it go to voicemail. I then got a text message from the same number. This was the guy I report to finally back from the out of town trip, and was calling to set up a time for the big meeting.

The text message said he heard I was out today, and we could just do it tomorrow. Since I am spending the night, I was pretty confident I wouldn’t be in tomorrow, either.

Sleeping wasn’t too hard. The combination of the pain killers and the fact I woke up at 4:00am made it pretty easy to sleep since it was now 11:00am.

Around 4:00pm, I eventually found out that the plan is to remove my gallbladder tomorrow.