The Pony Is NOT A Long-Distance Physician

The Pony sent me a worried text on Monday afternoon.

"A friend in Germany is at the hospital with suspected rhabdo. [rhabdomyolysis] Ughhh I wish I'd been more specific that it wasn't a general worry when I'd been warning her that she might've overdone it and been hurt."

"Oh no! I've heard of football players getting it."

"She'll be fine since she's there, but it would've saved a bunch of time if I'd pointed out about being weak and sore. It was a 6-7 on the pain scale when we were talking, but now while she's waiting at the hospital it's a 7-9 after the swelling started. She went to the hospital when she had the dark urine symptom."

"I'm glad she's there now."

"Yeah. Me too. She's been working on exercising and did some overly-ambitious ones a few days ago and had the soreness getting worse, like to the point of spending the night at a friend's place instead of walking home yesterday."

"At least she's in the best place now to recover."

"She'll be fine now that she's there. Just the longer it takes for them to actually treat her. The nurses doing intake didn't seem to know what it was. But she'll get seen relatively soon."

"Did she say that's what she thought her symptoms were?"

"She says she did, yeah."

 "It might be a triage thing. Maybe somebody else with a heart attack, or chopped off a finger."

"I mentioned too that not getting rushed in is a good sign, generally."

"I'm sure she'll be okay."

"Yeah. I'm just worried. Trying not to be too harsh on myself for not saying it sounded like it could be something really serious sooner, when I first had the thought."

"You can't be a long distance doctor. She's where she needs to be right now. So that's a relief."

"Yeah. I know! Just should have mentioned it existed since most people don't know."

"Yes. It's not the first thing you'd think of."

"I knew from papers and people at college. Plus as a warning from someone to look out for with going from low activity to really high activity like after the broken ankle or when I started at the post office."

An hour later, there was an update:

"It's definitely rhabdo, but her doctor said it's nowhere near the worst case scenario. Going to be kept in the hospital overnight. She has enough charge on her phone, and her friend can bring her anything she needs if it goes longer than that."

"That's really good news!"

"Yeah. It's a big relief."

The Pony stresses over things like this. Misfortunes of friends that are not anybody's fault. Sometimes, I just have to say, "No matter how much you'd like to help, you can't save the world."