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E.R.Friday, May 22, 1998. 12:30pmThis has just been a really weird week for me. First all the buggy problems, and now this. I woke up at three this morning, with my lungs full of crud. This had happened just a couple days ago, but everything was pretty easy to cough out. The only thing that worried me was the taste of blood in my mouth when I'd finally gotten rid of all the congestioin. I figured it was because I'd been coughing a good long time, and I'd just irritated the bronchial lining, and I tried not to worry about it. Yes, I'm good at denial. This morning when I started coughing, though, I tasted blood right away. After about an hour, I finally got myself convinced that I really had to go in and get checked out. One of the cats woke Mom up just about that time, and when she asked if I was okay because she saw the light on in my room, I told her what was wrong. After hugging me and trying to get me calmed down -- I was pretty scared and crying by then -- she got dressed and ready to go. I'd gathered some things together and put them in a plastic grocery sack while I was trying to convince myself to wake Mom and tell her. I took the sack, and grabbed the great big teddy bear Jev gave me when we first met, said goodbye to the cats, and we were off. On the forty minute drive to the hospital (we have one here in town but it doesn't have a good reputation, and all my docs are at the other one anyway), the radio played my current favorite (country) song, "Holes in the Floor of Heaven" by Steve Wariner, and the last few minutes of the trip, they played Jev's current favorite, "This Kiss" by Faith Hill. Music always helps distract me and calm me down when I'm stressed, but as soon as we parked and got out of the car, I felt my body preparing for flight or fight again. A very nice male nurse took us into the ER, and once I'd had a chance to use the restroom, he got me all settled in one of their 'beds' and hooked up to all the monitors and such. The monitor went into panic mode when it saw my O2 sat -- around 70% instead of the 100% or so a normal person would have -- but he convinced it that I was okay and not on the brink of dying, after I told him what my sat normally was. After he'd checked me all over and done a quick EKG, I asked if he could cover my feet, which were bare after he'd take my socks off to put electrodes on them -- something else the machine didn't like, because it apparently wasn't getting a good enough reading down there. He not only covered my feet ("piggies," he called them) but he also went and got me 3 blankets out of the warmer and covered me. Pretty soon, my body responded to the comforting warmth and Ralph's efforts to get me calmed down. After I was all settled in, then came the procession of doctors to look at me. First, one of the doctors on duty in the ER came and asked me all the same questions Ralph had. Then he had the Attending come in and he asked all the same questions. Each time, Mom told them about our air conditioning (we have central air) having smelled funny when she first turned it on; then one of the cats getting sick and wheezing and the vet saying it was allergies or asthma; then each of us getting "croupy" being in the air conditioned house, and her suspicion that there was some sort of mold or something in the ducts that had possibly caused this problem. The Attending -- who happened to be the same doctor who saw me a couple years ago when I had a mini-stroke -- got someone from cardiology to come in and look at me, and the cardiologist went and talked to my cardiologist. She wanted a new echo (ultrasound of the heart) and so they got orders to get a technician down with an echo machine and do me all up. She took the tape from the echo out to my doctor, who wanted more, and so the tech came back (add about a fifteen to twenty minute wait between each of these... seems it was a very busy ER yesterday morning) and started getting more of what my cardiologist wanted on the echo, then my doctor showed up and did a little bit of the echo herself. After she'd seen what she wanted to see, and gone and looked at the chest x-rays and results of the blood sample Ralph had taken earlier, she came back and talked to us. Mom had told her about the air conditioning, and she agreed that could have been the cause. She said she didn't see anything majorly different in the echo, my hematocrit (level of red blood cells I think) was good (it gets too high and my blood gets thick and doesn't flow very well, then they give me an "oil change", taking out some of the old blood and replacing it with saline and plasma), and that my lungs looked okay as well. She suggested that I was more than welcome to stay and get comfy in one of the beds upstairs, and that she wanted to have some of the pulmonary (lung) specialists come in and look at me. I okayed the lung specialists, wanting to be sure that I really was okay, or as okay as they could figure out, but didn't agree to the hospitalization just yet. The two lung specialists who came in couldn't find anything particularly wrong with me, and after they'd talked to my doctor, she came back. Again, she gave me the option of staying overnight for observation, apparently thinking I'd have another of the coughing fits. She also said she knew how very much I disliked hospitals, and since there was nothing they could find wrong with me, she wouldn't beat me over the head and make me stay. I knew she wanted me to stay, but I said I'd rather go home. She asked if I'd stay for one more lung specialist to come over from one of the clinics across town and check me out, and I hesitantly agreed. I'd been in the ER since 5 in the morning with four hours of sleep and no food, and by then it was about 10:30. She did say I could get dressed, so I did that and finally got up and moved around after being in the hospital bed so long. I sleep on a featherbed, so the firm hospital bed was very uncomfortable on my back. Mom was going to give the other doctor til 11 to get there. He got there around 11:05, had a look and a listen with his two colleagues who'd seen me earlier, and he said that other than my congenital problems, I seemed to be doing quite alright. He suggested I didn't try to be any more active than usual for a couple days, but my usual level of activity should be fine, and he said he didn't want to keep me overnight. Six hours after I'd checked in, after a call to my doctor (she wanted to schedule a follow-up appointment for me, but agreed to let it slide when I told her I was going on vacation soon) I was finally free! Mom asked where I wanted to go for lunch, and Subway sounded good, so we found one and ate, and now we're nearly home. As soon as I call Jev and let him know what's going on, I'm going to soak in the tub, then curl up with my teddybear and take a nice long nap. [I wrote this entry in my little notebook on the way home, and I had to laugh as I was reading the last line. I must have had a nice long soak on my mind, because I wrote "I'm going to curl up with my teddybear and take a nice, long bath." I don't think the bear would have appreciated the bath, much. I must have really been exhausted.] || Home | Journal Index ||
 
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