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My entire hospital stay ended up being a total of about three months long.  I went through a bunch of different phases in that hospital stay, but it all culminated in finding out the answer to the question, “What gastroparesis is”.

During phase one I was a medical patient needing medical care due to a physical illness.  I remembered how relieved I had felt when I had achieved this phase.

Then there was Phase Two where I was a psychiatric patient who was experiencing treatment that was bordering on abuse by the psych unit staff.  After that came Phase Three, being a surgical emergency.  That’s when they raced me in the wheelchair down the hall to the CT scan machine and then pulled me out, put me on a stretcher, and ran me down to the OR.

Phase four was when I was a medical patient trying to find out what gastroparesis is.

I had been telling the nurses on the psychiatric unit that I was in severe pain and that my nausea was intensifying, for a good week and a half before I got so sick.  If the nurses had listened to me or checked my vital signs more often, my bowels probably wouldn’t have perforated. But I was just a kid, and I was just a psych patient, what did I know?