It was a long, long night; besides being awake for a very long time, I had to work pretty hard. And damn! I hate it when that happens!

Interesting patient. Guy was shot in the arm, and completely surrounded by cops. They were really reluctant to take his cuffs of so I could x-ray him. Later I found out that he had killed his wife and had a shoot-out with the cops.

He seemed very nonchalant about the whole thing, joking about having to scratch his nose and laughingly apologizing to the cops about insulting them. This guy was fat and ugly, and smelled like he hadn't bathed for a while. I was glad that I didn't have to spend more time with him than I did.

To further complicate the night, there were no evening clerks, and the lady that comes in at 02:00 is on vacation... so I was unable to get hardly any of the paperwork done. Most of the time, I feel guilty about not getting everything done, but I didn't last night. I left at 07:15, happy to let other people deal with the mess that was left over. If management doesn't feel like covering when the help is on vacation, they can clean up the mess... I'd done all that I could.

I talked the doc into giving me some antibiotics and some cough medicine with codeine in it. When I got home, I decided against writing today's entry in leu of going to bed, so I took my pills and my cough medicine and did that... and, as I was about to go to sleep, I felt like someone had dropped a red-hot lump of coal in my abdomen, directly between my umbilicus and my xyphoid, 3 cm below the surface. Then they hit it with a hammer. A big hammer.

I was instantly covered with sweat... this was more pain than either of my coronaries. I got up and sat in the recliner and moaned. Tyler was up, and got me a glass of milk.

I'd read on the prescription bottle that the cough medicine was to be taken with milk or food, and I'd planned on eating a bowl of cereal, but that, like the journal entry, was put off so I could get to sleep.

Bad move, that.

My first thought was that I'd perforated my small bowel, and I really considered calling 911 immediately. But, after drinking the milk, the pain started easing. It was finally gone in about ten minutes.

So, I don't know if I've maybe developed an allergy to codeine, or if I was just stupid by not eating something. I guess that I'll try it again later, after I've eaten.

Once I got to sleep, I slept pretty good. I used the C-PAP for the first four hours, then I got up to go to the bathroom and I wasn't awake enough to put it back on, so I didn't.

I do feel pretty rested, though. Maybe it does do some good. I'll have it on all night next time.

More tomorrow....