I found out recently that my friend was admitted into the hospital yesterday. I received a phone call from his house but I thought it was regarding his birthday party. I was half asleep so I didn’t answer it. Before leaving to work, his brother told me that he was in the emergency because it was coughing out blood.
I had no idea what was going on. I tried to call his house to find out more information but no one answer the phone. I guess they were all at the hospital waiting. I only caught wind of it all before leaving for work. From what I heard, he had a stomach ulcer. A stomach ulcer is when there is an erosion gastrointestinal tract. The type of ulcer that he had was duodenal which occurs in the first twelve inches of the small intestine. This type is usually benign and the doctor said that he would be fine.
This little incident couldn’t happen at a worse time. He had to spend the first half of his birthday lying on the hospital bed waiting for the diagnosis. Although something like this could be very serious, he’s the type of guy that looks on the bright side of thing. He’s always looking to make people laugh. I tried to keep things positive when I went to visit him after work.
Visiting hours was from 8:00am to 8:00pm or so that’s what my friend said. When I got to St. Joe’s, the lady at the information desk said that visiting hours was from 2:00pm to 6:00pm. And because of that, she couldn’t give me the information I needed to find his room. I had to wait until 2:00pm for that information.
I had just got back into town from Mississauga and I don’t think I’ll have enough energy to walk back home and wait until 2:00pm. I needed to get to his room and I needed to get there now.
Before heading to work yesterday, I stopped by Square One to pick up his birthday present. I had that present with me when I went to the hospital, in hopes of getting to him and cheer him up a little. So I had to figure out a way to get to him before visiting hours started.
Luckily, I managed to charm the lady at the information desk to give me that information. She informed me that my friend was situated on the sixth floor. Now I just had to figure out which room he was in. I didn’t plan on popping into every single room to see if he was there so I had to use my charm again.
The sixth floor of St. Joseph’s Hospital was the Gastrointestinal Unit or the G.I. Unit for short. Sounds like the medical version of 50 Cent’s G Unit. I found the information desk and inquired about a patient that’s in their department.
Nurse: Hi, may I help you?
Me: Yes, I hope you can. I am looking for a patient on this floor. The lady at the information desk said that if I ask you nicely, you can provide me with that information.
Nurse: Normally we don’t allow visitors to see the patient outside of visiting hours.
Me: I understand and I don’t want to get you in trouble or anything but I just got off nights shifts. You can understand how bad night shifts are. I can tell you’re a good worker who follow the rules. And I’m sure you’re just doing your job but it’s my friend’s birthday today and I just wanted to drop off his present before I go home to sleep and then go back to work.
Nurse: Okay, I’ll see what I can do here. What’s his last name?
I gave the nurse the information she needed to pull up his records. Once that information was on the screen, she gave me the room number and provided me with directions to get to that room.
I get into the room to find my room fast asleep. The man in the next bed was up reading the news paper. He said that I should wake up my friend because he’s been sleeping long enough. I waited for a bit before attempting to wake him up.
The first thing that hit me once I got into the room was the smell. I don’t know how long he’s been out for but somebody in that room needed to shower. And they needed to shower badly. It smelt like someone did a #2 and left the bedpan underneath their bed. I spent most of the time talking with my shirt over my noise. It didn’t bother my friend at all. I think he got use to the smell. I did see a containers on the shelf, at the end of the bed, by the food tray. It was one of those container that you would pee into. The fact that the container was close to his food seemed a little unsanitary.
We talked a bit and he told me about what happened. From the sounds of it, it was pretty bad. He was at work when it all started. It started with a minor stomach ache. He went a bough medication for it and even bought Alka-Seltzer to help with the upset stomach. According to the doctor, that was a bad move. The Alka-Seltzer only made things worse once he ingested it. It came to the point where he was just puking blood. He managed to get to the emergency before passing out. The hospital need two tubes of blood sample from him but they had a hard time finding any. He lost a lot of blood that night.
On a lighter note, he did mention some funny stuff about the incident. Because the hole was in the intestine, not only was he puking blood but he was also shitting out blood. I’ve never heard of someone shitting out blood before. I don’t mean to laugh at it and I’m probably going to hell for it but when he told me that he told me that blood was coming out of his ass, I couldn’t help it. I found this out when the doctor visited him after few minutes after I got there.
Doctor1: So is everything okay?
Friend: Yeah, everything is better now.
Doctor2: When we extract a sample biopsy from your stomach wall we found that you had a small ulcer.
Doctor1: It’s was duodenal ulcer. Just remember D.U. but it’s nothing serious. The small hole mixed your stomach acid with the content of your intestine. That’s why you were puking out blood from the mouth and knobs from the other end.
I tried not to laugh when I heard the doctor say “knobs from the other end.” It wasn’t something that he could control either. His wife had to help me go pee but ended up peeing on his feet. He wife said that somewhere in the middle of the pee, he had some kind of anal leakage happening because he was starting to hit out blood again. I don’t think it was a pretty site.
In the end, it wasn’t anything too serious. They were willing to discharge him later that afternoon. He just told him to get some medication for the ulcer and make a few visits to make sure everything is okay. He was fine to walk around and stuff so they didn’t see the need to keep him there any longer. Let this be a warning to all you smokers out there. Smoking can be associated with ulcers and by smoking, you’re just increasing your chances of getting the ulcer. So in a way, smoking could potentially cause anal leakage. If you’re a guy, that’s pretty much the same as getting the period.