Very scary hospital visit

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So, this morning, the 5th night in a row of not sleeping because of extreme stomach pain, I got up and asked my husband to take me to the hospital. He told me that it was just heartburn and to go back down to the sofa and prop myself up. I was in way too much pain. I finally drove myself to the hospital. By the time I got there, I was in huge and severe pain, I could barely talk to them and tell them what was wrong with me.

Now, what frightened me was that I was obviously in severe pain, but I told them that I was Asperger's and I was getting sensory overloaded from the pain. They were still very frustrated with me when I was having difficulty pulling up the pictures in my brain to give them answers to things. When my husband finally showed up (2-1/2 hours later) he was able to help them more. I was just very frustrated with myself for not being able to answer things. I kept trying to make funny quips, but they definitely weren't coming out right and even my answers were not coming out right.

I don't know if my husband noticed how weird I was. Maybe he's actually really used to me by now, and he didn't really think much about it. He was much better about dealing with me and trying to deal with the hospital stuff, too.

What scared me was that I have never been THAT overloaded and I was really struggling. For the first time in my life that I can really remember, I had the huge urge to scream and flap. I don't know why I thought that it would make me feel better, but it just seemed like it would help. I didn't do it. But that was prolly because I was a little busy trying to curl up in a ball and make myself as small as possible in the hope that it would stop hurting. I kept trying to flip through the picture cards in my brain to retrieve the answers but I couldn't seem to find the right ones. It was like I was looking in the wrong boxes or something. It was very weird. I've never felt that way ever. It was scary to me that the hospital staff did not seem to get it about the Asperger's and I was very concerned that they were so impatient with me while I was trying to answer things. I'm going to set up some training for them. (I can do this through my job).

I was very scared for me and just kept thinking this evening that I was very glad for my husband to be there finally because he was able to bridge the gaps that I was not able to bridge for some reason. I'm usually pretty high functioning and very verbal, but I really wanted to find some other way to communicate. It wasn't working the way I was trying to do it.

What do you guys think? Have you ever been so sensory overloaded that you have issues trying to connect with other people? And especially if you are normally high functioning and you have had a moment that you felt your functioning level was WAY decreased. I know that when under stress our functioning drops, but I've never had such a severe discrepancy before.

oh yes..... sometimes i can hardly speak when i am nervous. its like a switch flips off in my mind and i struggle to find the right words. it feels like i'm going stupid. If i know the other person well enough to relax, i can talk perfectly fine at will. Otherwise, its almost like my body and brain go into a flight response, but I cant be rude and leave. So i listen, and hope to heaven they dont ask me any questions. I literally cannot find the right words at those moments.

I've spent my morning on the phone trying to set up some training for the hospital. I figured that I might as well turn this into a positive experience. I'm waiting for them to get back to me on a good day. They thought that it was an excellent idea!

Do you know what the pain in your stomach was?

Liverbird,
am not sure how much it would help [especially if the medic people have no knowledge of it] but what about getting a emergency bracelet [not sure if that is what they are called exactly],it has the name of the persons conditions,medications etc whatever they want engraved on it,so if are not able to tell them they will see it.

I have the opposite problem when in sever stress from pain or other things... I can't stop talking... and it's pretty much the only time I do talk... of course I still run into the same problems as doctors want to know why I'm there or where it hurts instead of about how Heinlein influenced Robinson and Gibson and you can see their influence on the latest round of authors.

Paper and metal. Confront me with either and I cease to function in a normal manner. I can be talking just fine and someone starts rubbing paper together and I no longer have words or the ability to speak them. It totally shuts me down. Same with metal, such as if someone is scraping metal against something or vice versa. Or worst of all, if someone rakes their teeth down a fork!

The pain, I dunno, I have an extremely high pain tolerance so it doesn't affect me much in terms of my ASisms. But I think to some degree we all have something that locks us up.

Now, what was the terrible pain from? Are you okay?

I have somewhat similar reactions to pain and other sensory overloads (radio static, bright lights, etc). when i was younger i would be more prone to meltdowns if i was in pain, and i found it hard to talk to people. Now i am usually irritable, although i won't seem that way because i've learned to hide any appearance of anger, irritability, etc (and sadly through this i think i may have taught myself to hide all emotion). When i got kidney failure in september i was in incredible pain, the worst pain i've ever felt, and i found it hard to communicate. describing my symptoms was easy though, i just kept repeating to myself "pain in the kidneys, around this area, lots of pain" so that when someone asked me about what i was going through i could just tell them.

Thanks for all the concern. Apparently I had a gall bladder attack. I have gall stones. Now my husband is trying to play diet control and I'm really unhappy about it. I just want a half a Coke.

I think that I panicked when I started to feel my functioning level slide downhill. That made things worse for me. Watching that happen. I'm thinking, "You need to say this when they ask this" and I can't. I couldn't even figure out how to get myself up on my feet from a lying position. I kept telling them that I couldn't figure out how to do things. By the time my husband showed up and they were doing the ultrasound, I was pretty much just crying non stop and couldn't talk at all.

I learned that I do not do well in extreme pain. I have a pretty high pain tolerance and I know this, so it was in the back of my brain that it must be really bad for me to be hurting so badly. That's why I was so aggravated with my husband telling me that I shouldn't go to the hospital for a "little" pain.

I still think that a training will be very helpful for hospital staff and the hospital seems to think so as well. I am going to get an ID bracelet with Asperger's and my drug allergies as well. This little thing scared me that badly. It's things like this that make me think that it wouldn't be such a bad idea for us to have little chips on us with our med histories. It would solve some problems. I'm trying to figure out how to make some bit of jewelry out of an SD card so that I always have something. The problem would be making it wearable, waterproof, etc. Hmmm....I'm going to think about that a little more. Sounds like it could be a good thing. Maybe I should just wear a flash drive with only my med info on it. I'll have to think about it.

Thank you again for all of your good ideas and your care for me. I really appreciate it.

Are you going to get your gallbladder removed?

My sister had gall stones and she had to get hers removed. her quality of life hasn't decreased much, she just has to be mindful of what she eats. she knows that some foods will be very uncomfortable later on (she'll get diarrhea) and has decided, in some cases, that eating them just isn't worth the discomfort. she really only has to avoid high fat foods like pizza, excessive amounts of creamy sauces, etc. which could be a good thing in the long run.

I had another attack this morning and was in the doctor's office. They are going to do surgery early in the week. Unless I have another attack over the weekend. Then they will do emergency surgery.

Can't they do an emergency surgery regardless of you having another attack or not?