If you live in the DFW areas, especially in the southern part of the Mid Cities, and you have a medical emergency on a weekend, let me heartily recommend the ER at Mansfield Methodist. I spent the bulk of my Saturday there, and while it is never fun being ill, and I’d have preferred to spend the day comparing weight benches and confirming that the one I bought is still an amazing machine for the money, for a hospital experience it was surprisingly…nice.

First, let me explain: I’ve been feeling draggy and generally craptastic for about a week – severe fatigue, ennui, a low-grade fever that came and went, and queasiness, though no outright vomiting, that came, and…came. Yesterday morning I felt twinges in the lower right of my abdomen, I thought it was just from not moving around for a week.

Last night after dinner, the twinges became sharp pains, then waves of pain that began in the front and wrapped around my side, and no matter what I did, I felt bloated and thirsty. I took some ibuprofen, and tried to sleep, but woke up in tears around five.

My regular doctor doesn’t work weekends, so I grabbed my laptop from the beside the bed and did a web check-in thing for the local urgent care clinic. They open at eight. I was called at 7:344, and I was patient number 1. I was expecting to be told, “Hi you have a kidney infection, have some antibiotics and push fluids.”

Instead, I was told, “Your blood shows an elevated white count, and your urine shows no signs of blood, pus, or anything else that points to any kind of UTI. You should hit the ER and have a CT scan to rule out appendicitis, because while this could be nothing but a gi infection, with that location, you should be sure.”

So we drove to Mansfield. Actually, I think we drove almost to the South Pole, but the signs said Mansfield, the hospital was new and lovely, and at 9:30 on a Saturday morning, I walked into the ER, presented my notes from CareNow, signed in and was see within five minutes. They brought me to an exam room almost immediately, tested more urine, took more blood (which is a different challenge – my veins are DEEP) and stuck an IV in my hand to push fluids – I was, apparently, dangerously dehydrated despite drinking nonstop.

I’ll continue this in the next post, but I blame all the eps of ER I’ve been watching while writing in the last two days (have been on a season one kick) on the fact that a) I’m sick at all and b) I kept expecting a waiting room full of crying babies and desperate adults.