Op-Ed: RSV is packing hospitals with sick kids, but it can be contained
A few weeks ago, I started feeling sick. Not terribly sick, as some might characterize the experience as. But I was in need of some help. So I pulled into the ER of the small town hospital in which I work and called my doctor, who offered to call a family physician he knew in a neighboring town.
I needed surgery, but for all the wrong reasons. A few days before, I went to my doctor’s office for a routine routine appointment. When I got there, I discovered something. My doctor said, “Let’s schedule you for surgery right away. What’s the problem?”
I explained to him that the problem was that I was feeling pain in my legs, lower abdomen and abdomen. I said that these feelings started about six months ago, after I had an MRI at the Mayo Clinic. It confirmed that my appendix, or appendix cancer, was in remission. In fact, I had the surgery at Mayo Clinic and recovered very well. The day was a beautiful one, sunny but cool, and the hospital staff (my wife, husband and mother) were wonderful and helpful.
A week after the surgery, something had started to happen. I’m no good at describing it, but it was the change in my symptoms. My leg and abdomen felt tight, which is not something that I have a lot of experience with (I’m not even sure I want to go that far). More and more I was becoming stiff and unable to walk. My pain was intense. My mother and I took turns standing on my left side, holding me up as I stumbled around the hospital lobby. I also had a lot of diarrhea.
I went to see my family doctor, who did a full body exam, listened to my heart and blood pressure, and looked at my stool. Nothing was wrong with my heart, it was all over the place. I saw a pediatric gastroenterologist (my wife’s doctor), who looked at my stool, my stool was fine. I had a colonoscopy, which was fine