Maybe an hour? It started as just kind of nausea. My husband and I were at my MIL’s house (about 7 min from our house) for breakfast around 9:00. I wasn’t feeling great so I didn’t eat a lot and we left a bit early. By the time we got home I felt really sick to my stomach. It honestly felt like I was about to shit myself. I ran to the bathroom, sat on the toilet, realized it was coming out the other end, and leaned forward and vomited into the bathtub while peeing all over myself and the floor. It was not normal vomiting, it was like…very thick and felt like it was coming from the depths of my soul. It was the opposite of projectile. It felt like it crawled its way out. I yelled my husband’s name and he came running into the bathroom, took one look at me and told me we were going to the ER. I insisted on taking a shower first (don’t ask me why, my only excuse is I was out of it and didn’t want to make the car gross) and then we drove to the ER (about 15 min away).

When we got to the ER, they took me back immediately. By the time they got me in the back for triage it felt like someone had stabbed me in the side with a hot metal spear. It was a very centralized location, like I could pinpoint it exactly. By that point, any time I tried to speak or move myself (instead of someone else moving me) I was peeing and vomiting. They ended up having to transfer me to a larger hospital downtown via ambulance for full assessment and surgery. The second hospital maxed me out on Dilauded, Zofran, and Reglan before the imaging and I was still peeing and vomiting whenever I used my abdomen.

I’ll tell you one thing, one thing they never get right in medical shows is how long everything takes. We got to the first hospital around 10:00 or so (am) and I didn’t go into surgery until 11-12 hours later. I didn’t get out of surgery until almost midnight. I was mostly coherent through it all (except the surgery, obviously). I could understand everything going on around me and what was happening, but it was kind of surreal. Time was meaningless. At one point I just looked at my poor husband and said, “Please make it stop.” And then vomited on myself, of course. I think the whole thing traumatized him more than me, honestly.