Twenty-Three Minutes at the Allergist

I’ve been sitting here seven minutes. At thirty minutes I can leave.

I usually work on my phone for half an hour. I plan out my project and start as soon as I sit down.

I’m a little groggy this morning and didn’t get up in time to plan.

The allergist asks that patients stay half an hour after their shot. Most people come in, get their shot, and leave.

Since I left in an ambulance after my first shot, I wait the half hour.

On the way to the waiting room that first day, I got lightheaded. My husband got the nurse. By that time I was pale and sweating.

“These are not symptoms of an allergic reaction,” the nurse said. I believed her.

I started seeing stars and couldn’t feel the top of my head.

“Do you need an ambulance?”

I did.

The ambulance crew couldn’t find a blood pressure in the waiting room.

They still couldn’t find one in the ambulance. They started an IV and hooked electrodes to my chest and put me on oxygen and still couldn’t find a blood pressure.

In the emergency room they finally got my blood pressure after trying three cuffs and then putting the third cuff on my forearm.

They put in a second IV, “in case we need to push epi,” and gave me meds through my IV to bring my blood pressure up.

When my blood pressure came up and I started feeling better, the doctor said I had had a vasovagal attack. I recognized that as involving the vagus nerve, but still don’t understand why it happened.

The one thing we know for sure is that it definitely wasn’t related to the allergy shot. So I keep showing up and waiting my thirty minutes.

A month later, I haven’t forgotten the ambulance ride and the attack that caused it. But now it’s just a side note. The real story is that I get a shot in the arm every week and spend thirty minutes waiting for permission to leave.

Two minutes left.