The HospitVALzation: Part 1, How It Got to This Point

Funny how you leave home for an antibiotic, and almost die. 

 

I was in the hospital from Monday, January 31, until Thursday, February 3. Bear with me while I recap what got me to that point. It's my opportunity to be long-winded while being short-winded.

Monday, January 17, I came down with a virus Hick drug home on Saturday, January 15. It was not so serious, but he breathed right in my face while arguing with me, and two days later I had A COUGH! Not a bad cough. A wet, throat-clearing cough that comes and goes. Nothing hacking. More like a HARUMPH to get that fluid out of my upper lungs. I don't feel bad, just kind of chilled. And wheezy. When I lie down, I can't sleep because I hear the crackles and whistles of my alveoli trying to expel that fluid. The nose isn't congested. No headache. No other aches. I was over it in four days. 

Saturday, January 22, I came down with a sickness The Pony picked up at the post office on Wednesday. Not a delivery that I relished! It made me sicker. I had The Pony's exact symptoms. Bloody-flecked snot, loss of taste and smell on the first day. He missed one day of work, and recovered quickly. Not me. A fever of 101 for seven days. Chills. Loss of appetite. I almost blacked out, just sitting at the kitchen table that first day. Hick offered to take me to the ER, but I wasn't that sick.

Monday, January 24, I had Hick take me to convenient care for the fever and dizziness. Got a Z-Pack for a presumed sinus infection that took hold after my Hick illness. Didn't help a bit. In fact, the day after I was there is when that fever kept going, and I got a cough, which over several days triggered my tooth nerves to throb.

 

Monday, January 31, I had Hick take me back to convenient care. Due to the continued dizziness, plus a tooth nerve pain and ear crackle. And that's where it all went to NOT-HEAVEN! 

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I was seen by a new nurse practitioner who I really liked. She discussed my tooth nerve and ear concerns, and the progression of my symptoms, and the lack of help from the Z-Pack. She agreed to phone in the doxycycline I was seeking. Then she asked if I'd been tested for THE VIRUS. I told her no, since last week the NP on duty had agreed that even if positive, there was no treatment she'd prescribe.

 

As I was getting ready to leave, this new NP asked if my oxygen levels were always that low. It was 92. "Last week when I was here, it was 94. And then the next day I got a cough, and my 3-day fever turned into 7 days." She said I probably came down with THE VIRUS. And again, that they wouldn't have prescribed anything.

 

"However, as you walk out, I want to stop you at the door, and take your oxygen level again."

 

It was about 10 feet. She called for a pulse-ox finger thingy. My oxygen was 88.

 

"I can't let you leave here like this. That oxygen is too low. You need to go to the ER. Do you think you can drive?"

 

WHAT IN THE NOT-HEAVEN? DRIVE??? Hick said later they were probably thinking about calling an ambulance if he hadn't been with me. Anyhoo... they had actually let Hick into the waiting room with me, so the nurse told him to bring the car around. That's all. I asked to use their bathroom, and when I came out, the nurse told me to hold onto her arm, and she slowly walked me to the front door. Made me sit while Hick drove A-Cad around, then stuck her head in to talk to him about getting me straight to the ER. She came back for me.

 

"Should we got right over here to the North ER?"

 

"It's up to you, but they can usually get you in faster."

 

That's where we went. About two miles down the road. Hick had to drop me off at the ambulance bay, then park. I wobbled in, unsteady, to see that they had signs saying NOT TO LEAN ON THEIR COUNTER. Kind of a problem for me, but I grabbed the wall. I said I'd just been sent there from convenient care, with low oxygen. Hick came in to lean on. He had to hold my insurance card because my hand was too shaky, and that receptionist refused to touch it. Which could be why they had something wrong, her just reading the numbers off and not making a copy.

I was told to sit in the waiting room. We took the first two chairs. Two women were paying $3.50 for M&Ms out of a vending machine. A chubbish man sat on a hard wheeled chair, mask on his chin, oxygen in his nose. In about 5 minutes, a nurse came out and told Hick pointedly, "You can't stay in here." I guess because he wasn't part of the three-ring circus. Anyhoo... she took me back to an exam room. It was maybe 15 feet to get there. I was quite dizzy and confused, and my Sweet Baboo had been take away from me!

The nurse weighed me and asked some questions that I could not concentrate on, such as my medications. Thankfully she had my records online, and could read them off for me to verify.

"We're going down to a room. It's a little ways. Do you think you can walk?"

"No. There's no way I can walk. I'm dizzy just sitting here."

The nurse brought a wheelchair. It was the most uncomfortable thing ever. The foot pads put my knees up under my chin. I don't know why she couldn't lower that, but she whisked me to an exam room, where she and an assistant got me out of clothes and into a gown and onto a bed. They slapped some oxygen prongs into my nose. Another nurse came in to get an IV valve thingy in my arm. At which point I heard the first nurse say, "When I wheeled her down here, her oxygen was at 83 percent."

TO BE CONTINUED...