Poor Ken has been so sick the past few days. I came home from work on Sunday to find him curled in the fetal position, crying. The first words he said to me were, "I need you to take me to the hospital." Now if you know Ken at all, this means something is seriously wrong. In the nine years we've been together, I have never heard him say those words. Broken ankle, flu, fist fights that left him caked in blood, having a friend think it was funny to put eye drops in a drink of his as a joke so he spent two days on the toilet... He always just deals. Even after he ended up in the ICU after having an allergic reaction to vodka, he was still insistent that we shouldn't have called an ambulance, that he would have been fine.
So when that came out of his mouth, I got really scared. I asked him what was wrong, and he said he'd been throwing up every ten minutes for the past couple hours, and his stomach hurt so bad he could barely breathe. I immediately thought "appendicitis." So after ten minutes of him trying to collect himself, I got him into the car and flew to the emergency room.
I signed him in, and told the nurses he was having symptoms of an appendicitis, so they got him back pretty quick. They took a bunch of blood and put him on an IV (he was severely dehydrated) and gave him some meds to help him feel better. They didn't really work and on top of that, they wanted to do a CT Scan to look at his organs to see what could be causing his discomfort. They thought it might have been a kidney stone. So he had to drink 32 ounces of contrast mixed with apple juice. He couldn't even keep water down, so the poor guy was really struggling. Took him about a half hour, but he eventually got it all down, then fought the urge to throw it back up for another hour when the contrast made it's way through his system. Long story short (the rest of it is just him laying in the bed and me pacing), they did the CT scan and determined there was nothing wrong with any of his organs, it just looked like he had a bad stomach bug. So they sent him home with a couple prescriptions for pain and nausea. All of this took six hours.
The rest of the night was pretty uneventful. He woke me up twice throwing up (he's a LOUD puker). I made sure he didn't need anything before I went to work and headed out. I texted him on my break to see how he was feeling, and he said a lot better. He had eaten some soup and was up playing on his XBox.
I had mentioned the night before that I had wanted Smashburger for dinner. He texted me as I was leaving work and told me we could go there to eat cause he was feeling so much better. I told him regardless of how he felt, a greasy hamburger is not something to eat when recovering from a stomach bug. We argued back and forth about it but he's so damn stubborn and insisted he'd be fine, so we went. He only ended up eating like a third of the burger before he was full.
So fast forward two hours later, and guess what? The burger made him sick, just like I said it would. He ends up in the bathroom throwing up again. And it ends up just as bad as the night before. After spending an hour in the bathroom, he came to bed with a pan so he wouldn't have to get up every half hour to throw up.
So he was literally up all night last night puking. I tried to sleep, but he woke me up once to twice an hour retching. Most of it was just dry heaving, since once he got the burger out of his stomach there was nothing left. At around five am. He woke me up practically choking. He was coughing and throwing up at the same time, and that's when I decided I couldn't go to work. I was too afraid to leave him alone and I figured I'd have to take him back to the ER at some point. So I called in sick to work and stayed home to take care of him today.
The day has consisted of me changing out his pan with a clean one after every few times he throws up, then cleaning each one. I've been to the grocery store three times to get him water, Gatorade, and different meds. I've run him a bath, fed him pills, taken his temperature... He's pretty helpless. He's so dehydrated, since every time he drinks anything he just throws it back up. There was a point after he got out of the bath where he was starting to feel better, and he was able to keep down a whole bottle of Gatorade and some water, so I'm not super worried about the dehydration at this exact moment. He's gotten some of his electrolytes back. A couple hours ago though, the throwing up started again, though he's been puke free for a little while now (knock on wood).
He said if it doesn't subside by tomorrow, he'll go back to the hospital. It's at the point now where he really needs to be able to keep fluids down. If he keeps throwing up through the night again, he's gonna need to go on another IV to re-hydrate him. It just sucks because he lost his job a couple weeks ago so he's uninsured. He's gonna get a bill from the ER for around $10,000, so he really doesn't want to have to go back. I'll probably take him to Urgent Care if he needs to go back; they can put him on an IV and it won't be as expensive.
We figure the culprit of all of this is the El Pollo Loco we ate on Saturday. We pretty much ate the same thing, except Ken got some grilled corn that I didn't eat any of, so it might have been that. Or there was a bad or under-cooked piece of chicken that ended up in our box. That was the only thing he ate on Saturday and I'm fine so it had to be one of the two.
I really don't mind taking care of him, but I'm so sick of dealing with puke. It's everywhere. It's gross. The whole apartment smells like it. I just want him to get better. I hate seeing him like this.
