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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 1051802" data-attributes="member: 172">The thing I took home from GenCon I didn't want.Well, all I have to say to Buttercup and Negative Zero is: I hope you didn't get it as bad as me.Story follows. Stop reading if you are eating or for whatever other reason would be made squeamish by icky medical stories. You have been warned.Psion's icky post gen-con medical story, or why I STILL haven't posted any more reviews since GenCon...As established earlier in this thread, apparently Negative Zero, Buttercup, and I caught the same malady.A week passed after gengon. The fever and body aches had gone away, but I had aquired a persistent sore throat that wasn't getting any better.Saturday morning: I realized (having had a few similar ear infections) that this was some sort of bacterial infection and I needed antibiotic, or I was going to be miserable for some time to come. So I checked into the urgent care centered hoping that the healing cound begin.The PA swabbed me for strep (which turned out negative), and sent me on my way with the oh so helpful recommendation to drink fluids, take motrin, and a presription for something that wasn't antibiotics and only seem to make me less functional as a human being. I was not happy leaving without antibiotics, but I am typically not the sort to second-guess trained medical professionals when I think they are wrong (which happens all too often these days) so on my way I went.I skipped work monday and by monday evening, eating solids was absolutely impossible, and drinking was an excruciating task. I called back the urgent care center to have them take another look. This time an MD looked at me, and it only took him about 5 minutes to say "go to the ER. You have abscesses on your tonsils and they will have to get an ENT specialist to do that."Oh, great. Knowing they are going to drug me up, and added to the fact by this point that I cannot talk, I had to have my wife take me, so we quickly impossed upon some friends to watch the kids (which I feel real bad about, because the only reliabe friends in town that I knew could handle the job I knew worked the next day, but they were my only choice.)Of to the ER I went. When we arrived the ER was packed, and we were hearing tales of six-hour waits. (??)We went to see the triage nurse. He showed him the charts from our two visits to the urgent care center -- one that showed us visiting and not getting antibiotics, and another with the all-too-obvious result therof. He immediately started banging his head on the desk and said "I understand some why some professionals are hesistant the prescribe antibiotics, but dude, you needed antibiotics."So out we went to the waiting room and listened to stupid reality TV shows and bad Leno jokes... as if my suffering weren't bad enough. We got to listen to "indignant chick with colored hair" get all mad about people going in front of her, storm out, come back in later and wait in line just like everyone else. We got to listen to some crazy guy who called 911 from the payphone in the waiting room and did some other crazy stuff I am at a loss to explain.Fortunately (?), the late shift seems to be better staffed than the evening shift, so things get to moving a bit better, and we actually get into an ER patient room by, oh, 1:30 in the morning or so. But of course, the on-call surgeon had to look at me before they could call the ENT specialist in.It takes him about an hour to get there, and I am all uncomfortable and dehydrated, and my wife is fading in and out of consiousness. But I had my pain to keep me company. They plug me into IVs so they can get me some of the nutrients and hydration I have been missing and drug me up for the procedure to come.For whatever else went wrong that night, at least the ENT specialist seemed to know his business: yes, you needed antibiotics, and he could tell by looking it was not viral.So he gets us all set up with all the right drugs to get me feeling better and to drain the pus out of the absesses. It was going to involve lots of pricking and yanking around in my mouth with me fully conscious. Having had root canals recently, I thought I knew the drill. (Pun not intended, but I'll take it...)I thought I was in the clear, actually, because for whatever else had gone wrong with this particular illness, I never got stuffed up once, which is like a miracle for me, as I usually have continual sinus problems.Unfrortunately, after he sprayed the first anasthetic thing in my mouth, I started coughing and pretty much lost all ability to breathe through my nostrils. Which almost sent me into a panic then and there because it meant I was going to have to breathe through my mouth around all that BS that went on in there.He does the novacane thing, very much like what you go through at the dentist. (Here's where it get's grody, folks). He takes a huge syringe and draws out a ton of pus. He uses a knife to gash something open, and has me spitting blood-and-pus into a bedpan. Little did I know the worst was yet to come.He grabs forceps off the table, and gets close with him when he says  "This is gonna hurt." He might have said "a bit", but if he did, my minded edited it out, because what I was about to experience was anything but a bit of pain.I'm not sure what he did next, but involved opening and closing the forceps inside of some fleshy tissue in my mouth. It gave me a new defition of "10/10" pain. My wife said she could hear me groaning from the next room. If the morphine and xylocaine did anything to mask the true pain that would have been inflicted without them, then I hope I never have to live to feel such pain.The worst was then over, but it still was not about to get pleasant for some time to come. The pain from the procedure still lingering, I get to rinse and spit with hydrogen peroxide. As you probably know, peroxide foams on contact with blood or bacteria.I was spitting a lot of bloody foam by then. My poor wife stuck her head around the corner about then. I almost felt sorry for her by the look on her face.After got done rinsing, I found that I could once again feebly do things that were denied me 12 hours ago like talking and drink water. We got out of there and got home at like four in the morning, prominsing my friends much compensation for their kindness, like spare gaming swag or whatnot.For how uncomfortable the routine was, it is remarkable effective. My voice is better today than it has been in a week. I can stand to eat more than half a sandwich at a sitting.All that said, I can only think about how all this pain could have been avoided if they would have coughed up the antibiotics on my first visit.</blockquote>

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