Can I just Get a Zipper? - #Wattys2015

The Third Time I Really Almost Died

The third time I really almost died

In light of my most recent dance with the gods of death, the previous two times seem like walks in the park really—barely even qualified as a threat to my mortality. This time death threw pretty much everything it had at me, and I am still here to write the story. Apparently, I am a tough cookie.

I’ve heard flu statistics…so many people get the flu, so many get serious complications, so many die…but never really took them personally. That was about elderly people or babies, or someone other than me, a relatively healthy 40 year old.

I decided the best way to relay what I went through was to recreate what my diary would have been, if I had kept one while I was sick. The following is pretty accurate I think.

Day 1 – The worst sore throat imaginable. Nausea, extreme fatigue, fever 103. Went to the ER at 2 am. Given fluids. Sent home. (Not before someone asked: “Do you have a rash?” in reference to a kind of flushed, sunburn-like cast to my skin, but which was never followed up on).

Day 2 – Went to see my regular doctor. Told I have about the worst case of the flu ever. Sent home with flu treatments. (Not before again asked: “Do you have a rash?” Again with no follow up).

Day 3 – Saturday. Doctor is closed. Back in the ER. Fluids. Sent home. Then back again. Blood pressure super low, heart rate super high. Admitted to the hospital.

Day 4+ - Barely remember anything after being admitted. Remember doctors trying to intubate me 2 or 3 times. Felt like being struck by lightning. Don’t remember the tracheotomy, thank goodness.

Unconscious for the part where they decide the “rash” is a symptom of toxic shock—after I have multiple system failure: epiglottitis, respiratory failure, heart failure.

Don’t remember the gynecological exam. Really guys? I came in with a sore throat and that’s where you go? Don’t remember delivering a roundhouse kick to the side of a male nurse’s head either. They won’t figure out the toxic shock is from a strep infection, rather than a wayward tampon, for a while.

Unconscious for the massive outpouring of love from hundreds of people on Facebook and around town. So happy to find out later that people pitched in and helped my husband by cleaning the house, grocery shopping, or just meeting James for lunch and giving him someone to talk to. 

Blissfully unaware of the fluid filling my lungs, the chest tubes thrust through my ribcage…oh so many tubes. Unaware of the 50-50 odds or the certainty of the doctors that I would have brain damage or never walk again. No concept of how hard it was for my mother to be told not to touch me because any stimulation could kill me.

Day 14 – Starting to come out of the coma as they wean me off the drugs. Can’t talk--hole in my throat. Communicate by mouthing words or writing. My hands are curled like claws. Writing is hard. Have to really enunciate with my lips to be understood. Some people are piss poor at lip reading. Sometimes I just need to try a different word. Note: “Bed pan” is too complex. “Poop” is much easier.

Day…what day is it? – Son-of-a-bword those Fentanyl hallucinations are nasty—the paranoid, horror movie kind, not the warm dragon-hugs kind I used to get on Demerol. Somehow manage, without a voice, to exercise my patient rights to refuse treatment, because I think my head has been exploded, and I’ve been transferred to a secret hospital facility in the desert where they are holding me against my will. I want to be sent to my neurologist in Seattle, dammit! James and my mom are called in early in the morning to talk some sense into me.

Day 15 - Starting to realize that, even though it all seemed so real, the only way all the things I have been seeing makes any sense is if they were hallucinations—none of it was real. But this whole tracheotomy thing is real. What’s it going to be like having a hole in my throat? Will I ever be normal again? Will I ever speak?