I am grateful for good health. You don't realize how lucky you are sometimes until it is taken away. While brief for me, it did give me perspective!
A couple of weeks ago while wrapping up our vacation at the Lake, I came down with a bit of a bug. I started getting the flu on Saturday night, throwing up Sunday, achy and tired Monday. By Tuesday while driving back from the cabin, I felt like someone was sitting on my chest and just couldn't get a deep breath. I went to the doctor and she thought that I just had the flu and possibly could end up with Bronchitis. She did though take some blood test because I had been having a few weird abdominal pain for a period of months. By Wednesday night that pressure in my chest had turned into stabbing pain in my upper back whenever I took a breath. I called the doctor Thursday morning because I was really short of breath. She had blood work back and was very concerned about the back pain but also my blood work showed that my liver enzymes were up.
Anyway, after getting to the emergency room, they did an x-ray which looked normal. So they decided to do a CAT Scan next. This went a bit south when I had a reaction the the Dye they inject and it put me into Anaphlyatic Shock. Suddenly my throat and nasal passage totally constricted. I couldn't get a breath and it was killing me to even try with the pain in my back. I could feel my lips swell and then my entire face. My body turned totally red and I felt like I was on fire. It was like a scene out of ER as the wheeled me back into the ER yelling for nurses and doctors and everyone was surrounding me giving me shots and oxygen. I caught Rick's face for a moment and I could tell I looked scary! Anyway, it took about 45 minutes to get my breathing back on track etc. It was probably one of the freakiest moments in my life! At that point I had bought myself a few nights in the hospital!
They determined that I had Pleurisy (inflammation around the lungs) and treated me for that with breathing treatments and steroids. But still had to figure out what the story was with my liver enzymes. Test after test and still no real answer for that. 3 days in the hospital and I insisted it was time to go home!
My mom had flown in because Rick was scheduled to leave for Washington DC (I will talk about that in another post!) It was a good things she had come, because my body had taken a beating, mainly from the Anaphylactic Shock episode. It took a good 2 weeks to get my strength back and feel like myself!
In the end I learned a few lessons! A few of which are that I make a terrible patient and I will never take my good health for granted!
