I slept through Christmas

To say that this was a memorble Christmas would be an understatement - in a way. It was certainly memorable - I just don't remember it. Doing this blog today is a kind of therapy I guess. I'm trying to get back a few motor skills as well as putting together a few pieces of the story.

The Saturday evening before Christmas, the 22nd of December, I started having trouble breathing. My new stent had been in a few days and I had really been coughing a lot. I mean - a LOT. I won't go into descriptions, but its the kind of stuff that lab people look and go "OHHHH.....". I told Jay I was having issues so I paged my pulmonologist. He didn't answer his page which really was no surprise because I knew he was taking the week off. So, we loaded up into the car and headed to the hospital where my stent had been placed. I figured I would find somebody there who would know what was going on. After filling out the paperwork and sitting down to wait, somebody must have taken a look at what was going on and they quickly escorted me back to a triage area. Before I knew it, I was back in an emergency room and they were numbing up my throat to do a broncoscopy to see what was going on. I wasn't sure this was a good idea - but I"m just a rookie so what was I to say. The next thing I remember after that, it was the following Wednesday morning, the day after Christmas and I was waking up in ICU with a bunch of tubes down my throat.

Jay helped me fill in the blanks. They started to do the broncoscopy but it wouldn't go down because my throat was too small. Then they started to try to run the tube down through my mouth and I was gagging etc. I'm really glad I don't remember this. They soon realized they were in "over their head" and wisked me away on a gurney to ICU. Jay I made some comment in the elevator about this being just like Grey's Anatomy. Cute.

They finally got in touch with my pulmonologist early Sunday morning. He came in and saw that the stent was indeed still in place but that there was some "gunk" covering it making it hard for me to breathe. Upon further analysis, they found out I had MRSA and pneumonia. They kept me sedated through Sunday, Monday and Tuesday so that it gave my throat a chance to heal and the swelling to go down. They were feeding me through a tube into my stomach and breathing for me through a tube into my lungs. I was apparently out of it. Jay would show up several times a day but they just told him that there wasn't any need for him to hang around 'cause I wasn't going to wake up until they wanted me to. Well, Wednesday afternoon they wanted me to and when I found out that he wasn't there and that I had slept through Christmas, I cried. They called him right away. I couldn't talk because of the tubes going down my throat but they had this handy dandy little thing that you could point to the letters of the alphabet and spell things out. The first thing I spelled? Poop. Yep. Poop. I had to poop. :)

It was really hard to find the correct letters - it wasn't like a keyboard. The letters were in order of the alphabet so I was confused. And Q's looked like O's. My brain was/is very foggy. I had a hard time making sense of things. The other thing was is that they kept checking my blood sugar. Apparently they didn't have much experience with gastric bypass and since they were feeding my carbs directly into my pouch, my body handles things differently. It sends out insulin rapidly so they were getting all sorts of screwey readings and they thought I was diabetic. They kept asking me how long I had been diabetic. I didn't know the answer! I was pretty sure I never had been. At least, I was pretty sure.

Eventually, they transferred me out of ICU onto the floor and finally was released a week later on a Saturday morning. I needed to get home. They said I was the healthiest one there. I needed out.

I"ve needed to do things like try to read and focus and type to get my brain to react properly. I've had to try to unscrew lids off of things because my motor skills are shot. I've had to start pumping in protein instead of carbs and get the water flowing again. I've taken pills and antibiotics and sleep. Finally today, I feel alittle more like normal - closer anyway. This has really been an adventure. I'm not diabetic - I remember now. I take nebulizer treatments four times a day to keep my airway moist - and I just allow myself time to heal.

The one thing I know - is that I really missed Christmas. Jay kept the tree and lights up and he turned on Christmas Carols when I got home. We opened up gifts Saturday evening after Christmas and I'm finally able to feel like I've had enough of Christmas.

Yes - it was a memorable Christmas - one that I slept through.