Monday, September 30, 2024

The Day I Nearly Drowned in My Bedroom.

 Monday, September 23, 2024 just past 7:00 pm    


I was sitting in the dining room after supper with Brian, Mam, and others.  Andy had gone to the grocery store.  I was scrounging around the bottom of a pan of 7 layer bars, looking for broken pieces worth eating while still saving some whole bars for Clare.  I took a bite of a piece and almost immediately felt a massive spike of pain on the right side of my face. It felt like a lightning bolt.  There was a broken, infected tooth on the top, and I was  usually careful to chew on my left side, but a large pecan got over to to the bad side and I chomped down on it.  Hard.  Directly in the middle of the broken tooth.  I immediately froze.  It was obvious to everyone at the table that something had happened. I sat in frozen pain and carefully probed the tooth to remove the nut and assess the damage.  I thought it had broken in half or was ready to fall out.

The previous time I experienced pain in this tooth was about 5 weeks earlier.  The tooth has been infected for years, but I was afraid to deal with it, and most of the time the pain was low-key.   The dentist recommended oral surgery, which was expensive and sounded AWFUL, and I was hesitant to have it extracted.  So I was biding my time.  The last time it flared up, I took a massive dose of OTC painkillers and went to bed while it was still light out, praying that it would subside by the time I woke up and promising God I would deal with it if He would get me through the night without having to go the the ER.  

So this time I left the dining room and went up to my third-floor bedroom, by myself, to take painkillers and lie down.  Nearly fatal mistake.

Time passed - ten minutes maybe - and I noticed some slight congestion, which increased as the minutes ticked by.  I sat up and tried to clear my throat.  The congestion increased.  Soon I was clearing my throat constantly and beginning to cough up some fluid.  I caught the fluid in a paper cup and it was pink.  Not good.  I couldn't keep up with the congestion and now I realized that this was SERIOUS.  I don't remember who I called first... I think I called Andy and told him I thought I had to go to the hospital. This may have been at 7:43 and he was still at the store.

I called Natalie at 7:44 to ask her to bring me an inhaler.  I say called - it was more like the breathless, high-pitched gasp of a drowning person.  Poor Natalie.  She had been sitting in the living room with Theresa, Clare, Brian, Jess, etc.  Philip was playing at a friend's house at this time - thank God he wasn't in the house to witness this.  I stumbled through the rec room, numb with panic and fear and disbelief, and Brian met me on the steps.  I tried to use the inhaler but I couldn't draw a big enough breath.  

He helped me to the living room and I sat down on the piano bench, trying to use the inhaler effectively while the rest of them in the living room looked on in stunned silence.  I remembering noticing that Clare was there and said a weak hello to her.  Brian helped me to the Suburban and I remember Andy putting it in overdrive to get to the hospital (thankfully only a 5-minute drive) while I repeatedly attempted to spit some of the congestion out the window.

The ER wasn't busy and I walked in on my own two feet.  They provided a wheelchair and I tried to talk at the reception window, but I was gasping for air.  I had enough presence of mind to tell the guard that I had crochet scissors in my bag, which had to be surrendered for security reasons.  I'd say they took me back to a treatment room within two minutes.  As soon as I got into a bed, they put a pressurized  oxygen mask on my face, which gave me instantaneous and enormous relief. I found out later that my pulse oxygen was 74 when I got to the hospital, and the doctor told me later that people usually lose consciousness when it gets below 70.

The next four hours are a blur. Two IVs.  Two or three nitro pills under the tongue.  Two nebulizer treatments.  One Xray.  One trip for a CAT scan.  Multiple persons asking to verify if I was SURE I didn't have blockages.  Didn't have history of heart failure.  Didn't have asthma.  Didn't have COPD.  They were treating me for a heart attack because nothing else added up.  Around 11pm, not knowing what was wrong or what would happen, I remember having the presence of mind to write a goodbye message to my family.  I didn’t want to send it and scare them (even more), so I sent it in a text message to myself.  Enough of them know my pass code so I knew they would find it eventually.

Andy says it was 2:30 a.m. when I left in an ambulance for the main hospital.  The EMT fiddled  painfully with my both my hand IVs the whole way, because they kept getting blocked.  Apparently the hand has to be curved at just the right angle to keep the flow going.  I don't remember what was being administered through the IV.  

I concentrated on every curve and turn of the road to the hospital, which I have driven time and time again.  We stayed on the main highways at that time of night, and I could feel when we got to the narrows and made the turn across the bridge.  I saw the lights of the tunnel and felt the turn at the walking bridge.  Soon they came to the Advanced Medicine entrance and wheeled me up to the eighth floor.  

My primary nurse was a young man about Clare's age with a beautiful boy-band head of hair.  His name was Stephen.  It must have been a slow night, because he seemingly talked to me for the next four hours straight, asking all the intake questions and making me comfortable.  I have no concept of time from that night, but I think I remember waking around 7 and learning that I was going to the catheterization  lab Tuesday morning anytime after 9 a.m.  Gina was away at school and didn't know any of this was happening, so I called her phone and left her a message.  I tried to be cool about it, but I guess it sounded more like goodbye, because she listened to it on the way to school and broke into sobs.  She was a mess when she got to school and I think she had to visit the counselor's office.

I was aware of the risks of catheterization, especially after my wonderful cardiac nurse/daughter told me the story of the first catheterization she assisted at, a nice woman in her eighties named Ruth.  She reassured Ruth about this routine procedure, assuring her that she'd be fine.  Then the probe punctured her aortic artery and she died on the table.  It sounds like a horrible thing to say, but you have to take into account our family's morbid sense of humor.  I wouldn't have had it any other way.

I tried to get a priest to come see me before the procedure, because of the risks, but one didn't come visit me until Wednesday evening.  Oh well.  RIP me.  I was more than a little scared and feeling very mortal.  I couldn't believe when they came for me on the early side - maybe around ten?   I couldn't think of anything else but to pray the Act of Contrition and the Memorare on repeat.   

The cath went smoothly and no blockages were found - go me!  Not too shabby for someone with a sedentary lifestyle who takes butter intravenously.  I also have prize-winning LDLs, triglycerides, HDLs, through absolutely no effort on my part.  The diagnosis was non-ischemic myocardial infarction caused by Takotsubo Syndrome, otherwise knows as Broken Heart Syndrome.  I count myself as extremely blessed, because most people who get it do not survive, but if you manage to pull it off, the  recovery rate is excellent.

Those three days in the hospital went very slowly.  Most of the time I was extremely drowsy and my sheets were always damp with sweat.  I could barely stay awake on Tuesday, but every time I opened my eyes, Andy was there.  I didn't even know he had come.  Natalie and Noelle came to visit for a bit, and Clare came, bringing dinner for Andy - all he had to eat all day was half my hospital lunch - but I couldn't even stay awake to talk to her.

Over the course of the next two days, every  time a new team of doctors from another department came to talk to me, I made sure I mentioned my tooth pain and how I really wanted to see a dentist. I told my sob story to everybody that walked in the room.  Finally on Wednesday a dentist briefly popped in and I told him my story. His manner was rather brusque but before long I had an appointment to be seen in the hospital dental clinic shortly after discharge the following day.

Xrays showed that , unbeknownst to me, I had another bad tooth with a large cavity that was affecting the nerve,  right next to the aforementioned infected tooth.  It was this other tooth that had actually cause the problem.  This was September 26.  I couldn't get an appointment to have them extracted until December 30.  I don't have to tell you how careful I was with every bite I took for the ensuing 3 months.  I had to keep up heavily with the OTC painkillers as well.  

The extraction itself was a breeze.  The numbing shots hurt worse than the procedure, although there was a lot of tugging, pushing, pulling, and uncomfortable noises coming from my mouth.  I wanted to keep the teeth, but they wouldn't let me because they were classified as infectious biowaste.  I did take a picture, but no way am I posting it here.

I was discharged from the hospital with four cardiac and lung medications, which I will probably stay on for a year.  The first month was very slow going for me.  I was so easily tired that I couldn't walk across a room without stopping, walked with a cane, and couldn't lift my arms above my shoulders.  I was definitely like a new person by November, though.  I felt fantastic, like I had a new lease on life.  I had also dropped 25 pounds without even trying.  I spent 4 months doing at-home cardiac rehab.

I will update after my 1 year follow up.


P.S.  Conor never even came to see me in the hospital.



No comments: