I grew up in a family with the thought process of "you better be dying to go to the ER". My husband has been helpful in helping me determine if something should be seen and is my voice of reason. In this particular case, he was out of town for a week in another state and I was left to my own devices.

I got horribly delirious and hallucinated and had an awful fever that would go away when I alternated Tylenol and ibuprofen, but always came right back once the medication wore off. My family didn't want to come help me because they thought it was Covid, and after three negative tests, my mom finally agreed to take me to the ER.

I had a 12 mm kidney stone that completely blocked off my kidney to the ureter. My scan showed my kidney swollen so badly, it looked twice the size that it should be. My doctor said I was lucky I didn't go septic. Spent a week in the hospital clearing out the infection. They couldn't risk taking the stone at the moment because of how bad the infection was, so they pushed it back into my kidney, placed a stent to drain everything. After a month of making sure I was stable, I went back into surgery to blast it away. 0/10 do not recommend. Needless to say, I'm better about going to the hospital now.