I’m just out of the Tower again for another recent “vacation.” This one was apparently nearly my last. It was quite scary, and something I do not hope to repeat any time in the near future. I started feeling rather unwell and under the weather that Monday, but I knew I had an appt. with BUD on Tuesday so I just laid around and waited rather than call an ambulance or go in to the ER. If I hadn’t had that appointment scheduled, I’d have taken myself to the hospital on Monday for certain.
Anyway, I headed to my BUD appointment on Tuesday, and passed out during the first round of pulmonary function testing. Not a good sign. The respiratory therapist had to go get the doctor and he said to stop the test of course, so no pfts this time for me. He asked if I wanted to come home and try to fight it, or be admitted to the Tower for the night and get IV solumedrol and antibiotics. I figured I was already there, and I’d gone prepared to be admitted because I knew I was rather unwell; these things coupled with the fact that BUD and the Tower are just over an hours’ drive for me meant I opted to go ahead and be admitted.
The admission itself was not smooth, and I sat in front of the metal detector in a wheelchair at the ER entrance for two hours while they tried to find a place for me. That was a bit ridiculous, and I’ve complained to everyone who would listen about that nonsense. But once I was finally in a bed, my care was excellent.
That night (Tuesday), I crashed and I crashed hard. My blood pressures bottomed out around 60/40 and I was really out of it and they said I was going in to septic shock. They were doing boluses of fluids to try to bring my pressures up, but it wasn’t working. Meanwhile, my heart rate was 150+ and my temperature something like 96 – all signs of sepsis and septic shock apparently. I didn’t really realize at that time just how sick I was. They decided to move me at 4 a.m. to the step-down unit so I could have constant monitoring. By 7 a.m. they decided to place a central line in my jugular vein since my IVs were blown and they needed access. *That* was rather scary, as I’ve never had a central line before and didn’t know what to expect. In the end it wasn’t so bad, and only hurt at all because the resident who did it didn’t use quite enough lidocaine and I could feel them cutting my skin to insert the catheter. Once they hit me with another numbing shot, it was fine. Just sore over the next couple of days. Scary though.
Well that night (Tues. night/wed. morning) they started worrying about my hematocrit and hemoglobin. They were really, really low and I was having kidney problems. They started talking about blood transfusions, but they were concerned as to *why* those numbers were so low, and worried that I had a bleed internally somewhere. Also very scary. They came in and did the informed consent for a transfusion, but they decided that perhaps i just had entirely too much fluid which might have diluted the h/h in my blood, and that maybe making my body release some of that fluid might bring those numbers up without a transfusion. So they gave me until noon on lasix and then they retested to determine the next step.
In the end, I didn’t have an internal bleed and was able to avoid the transfusion. My h/h numbers slowly came back up. However, the lasix threw every other electrolyte in my body out of whack – my potassium was dangerously low I know, and I forgot what else was really badly off but I know it was all a mess. So they had to stop the lasix, which meant that I had to deal with all that fluid built up in my body, and that? Was miserable as hell. My kidneys were so slow to wake up from their overload, and I think I didn’t pee for an entire day at one point. I was so tired I couldn’t stay awake (still having this problem) and just overall felt awful.
All told, I was well enough to come home after only 6 days, which is a frikking juggalo miracle if you ask me. I do/did have home nurses coming to check on me and keep an eye on things, but still. When I heard them say “sepsis” I thought I was done. I always think that it’ll be some secondary infection that kills me, or maybe heart troubles, or something like that. Not my lungs. I was left this time sitting there wondering if I should call my kids to come see me or not… is it better to give them one last chance, or better to just slip away and let them remember me happy and vibrant? I wish I knew the answer to that. Maybe it varies by child? This time I had decided that if they moved me to ICU (which they were discussing as an option on Wed./Thurs.) I was going to call xhusbands and current jerkface husbands and let them decide. I don’t know the answer, but I do need to decide for the next time. Unfortunately I know there will be a next time.
Palikari Part Two 