As I stood there, my legs were shaking. The feeling in my legs was slowly going away. My sight was going blurry, and my hearing was slowly drifting away. I have never felt this way before, and I wonder to myself, what is going on?
I had gone to the doctor’s office because I had been very sick and had not gone to school for a couple of days already. My doctor said to go get an H1N1 test done. Because I had no breakfast, I felt extremely hungry and dizzy. As I sat in one of the huge couches in the waiting room, I begged my mother to take me home, insisting that I didn’t have swine flu. I looked around and saw many people coughing and sneezing. The room was gloomy and dull, like sickness was just filling up the room. I felt extremely uncomfortable, and I shuddered as I breathed in that distinctive hospital smell. I continued to beg my brother to take me home.
When the lady at the register desk called us, my mom helped me up, but I was hesitant. My mom dragged me to the counter saying that you can never be to safe, so I should get this test done. The lady asked us many questions such as what our social security number was, and if she could see our insurance card. I felt a sudden need to sit down. I felt like a way I’ve never felt before, like every last bit of energy was being drained out of me. I looked over to see where the nearest chair or couch was, but it seemed too far away. I grabbed on tightly with the little energy I had to the tall counter, and the next thing I knew, I was laying on the ground when my eyes opened. I thought of many possibilities of what could’ve happened. I had no idea what was going on. Had this all been a dream, had it not been real?
The first thing I heard when I opened my eyes from fainting was code red, code red! I saw my mother’s frantic facial expression and around nine doctors and a couple of nurses looking down at me. One of the nurses helped me into a wheel chair and took me to the emergency room. On the way, she explained some things that would happen when I am in the emergency room. She talked about how they would all be doing tests on me all at once. When I was there, I changed into a hospital gown. When they did the blood tests, the pricks really hurt. They also tried to get an IV in me and I was freaking out because I was scared it would hurt. As all this was going on, I heard my mom trying to get a hold of my dad at work. I shivered because of my high fever of 103.8. I asked for a blanket but they refused to give me one due to my fever.
I laid there for what felt like forever, but after about an hour, the test results for the H1N1 test arrived. Thankfully, it came back negative, which meant that I didn’t have swine flu, and nothing was wrong. My blood sugar had suddenly dropped because I had not had anything for breakfast. When I look back at this event, I feel sort of insecure, because I’m afraid that it could happen again. Now I know that I always need to eat a lot, even when I don’t want to, when I am sick.