Wednesday was a day I didn’t want to experience. The day started off with gastrointestinal discomfort which moved into diarrhea. Then a stomach ache. I thought that it was gas in my deep gut as I’ve been on a diet and the nutritionist just switched me onto a new regime. The pain came and left and moved around most of the day, I ate lunch and about an hour later it got worse., about 3 pm the pain really ramped up, and by 5 p.m.when i left work, i was in some serious discomfort. I got home from work and still had to put together dinner for the family, which i was unable to eat. I took my temperature because I was feeling chilled and it was 99.8. In the back of my mind I of course am thinking Covid19. But I wasn’t ready to submit to that fact.
I went to bed took my temp again a around 9 pm...still 99.8. My husband came to bed about midnight. I had gotten out of bed to go to the bathroom and noticed the pain had now centralized to a very specific spot very low just above the pelvis on my right side and I couldn’t stand up straight. I laid down in bed and rolled to my right side thinking if it was gas the pain would move to the left side….it didn’t. Appendicitis now has come to my mind but I don’t know where the pain should be, I always thought it should be higher. My husband got out of bed and looked it up. yes, turns out I have the classic symptoms of appendicitis. My mind is now trying to make the decision. Do I go to the emergency room where all the COVID19 cases are and risk exposure? What if it’s just gas? Logic and the intense pain makes that decision for me. We choose a more rural hospital instead of going towards the city knowing they will have fewer covid cases in that hospital.
The nice people in the emergency room refused to let my husband come in with me. I called him in the parking lot after talking with the nurse in the room and told him to not wait, this is going to be an all night endeavor, go home and get some sleep. I’ll call him if i need him. Turns out I was right, had appendicitis and needed to have emergency surgery. But this isn’t the interesting part.
The ER nurse asked me if I had been given a COVID test (...I hadn’t...) and then we got into a discussion about testing. What he told me was surprising. He said they are not testing people unless they come in with all the symptoms AND have respiratory distress. He said if anyone comes in with a fever and cough ,they tell them to go home and self quarantine. There are not enough tests, so they are only testing the worst cases. So all these number in Georgia you are seeing….there’s absolutely no accuracy to them as far as how many infected people there are in the state. He was telling me about some study he knew where they were trying to figure out how pervasive COVID was in the homeless population (he didn’t say where this was) so they tested 400 homeless people and the results came back with about 195 of them having the virus.
Just something to chew on when you listen to Governor Kemp saying they are going to reopen the Georgia economy. Expect that within 3-4 weeks, we’ll see a huge resurgence in COVID19.