The terrible pain started a week earlier, and she had already been to the emergency room twice.
“You need to go back to the hospital,” the visiting nurse declared shortly after entering the 68-year-old woman’s bedroom. The patient’s hair was matted, her face pale and dotted with sweat. She moaned softly as she shifted in the bed, the tangled sheets a testament to her search for a comfortable position.
The woman knew the nurse was right. The terrible pain in her gut started a week earlier, and she had already been to the emergency room twice, even though the pandemic had recently invaded her suburban Long Island town. She had to go back; something was horribly wrong with her.
On her first visit, the E.R. was crowded with people in masks. When she was finally examined, the doctor offered reassurance and sent her home with a recommendation to follow up with her gastrointestinal doctor. But she couldn’t follow up with anyone — she could barely get out of bed. She called her son in California and begged him to come help his father take care of her.
Before her son could get there, she was back in the E.R. This time she was admitted. Her blood tests and CT scan were normal, but an endoscopy suggested that she had gastritis, an inflammation of the stomach lining. She was prescribed a strong antacid, a medication to coat her stomach and another to increase her gastrointestinal motility. The woman was dubious. She’d had gastritis before; that pain was different and certainly not this severe.
Her son arrived the day she was discharged from that hospital stay. He was shocked when he saw his mother being wheeled out. She was so thin, so pale and so very weak. It took both him and his father to support her into the car, then into the house.
The medications didn’t help. The woman spent four days at home in bed in pain. She couldn’t eat and could barely drink. And then the nurse came and sent her back to the E.R. a third time.