Well my friends I am sorry to have been missing in action the last few days. I didn’t even feel up to posting a Merry Christmas message on here.
Friday, December 22, I got off work early. I was super excited because the people we usually have to spend Christmas Eve with were going away this year so I was expecting to have a terrific Christmas weekend with Milo watching movies, wrapping presents, having sex, just all good things.
Then as I sat down to watch my first Christmas show that Friday evening, my cough suddenly came back with a raging vengeance. I got coughing so badly that I lost oxygen, I lost consciousness, and my laptop slipped to the ground. I became aware again because Milo was in front of me freaking out and saying I’d had some kind of seizure. I was convinced I didn’t and that it was just because of the cough. Somehow I convinced him not to take me to the hospital and I seemed okay.
The next morning, Saturday the 23rd, I was a little weak but okay, and as he went to his garden I wrapped the rest of the Christmas presents I had to do, and then when he came back we went to the grocery store to finish up food shopping for Christmas etc.
When we got back, we both started feeling kind of bad but I was worse. I went to bed early that night though I didn’t get much sleep because I couldn’t stop coughing.
Christmas Eve morning, Milo got up and started the laundry (we do laundry on Sundays), and then brought me some tea to bed. I was feeling terrible and nauseous and I threw up phlegm. As he was sitting there with me I had another huge coughing fit and I started to have another fit where I acted like I was having a seizure. When I came out of it, he ordered me to get up and get dressed as we were going to the ER. I agreed, so we headed off to the ER. I was very weak and wheezy and feeling horrible.
They took me in quite fast and did some tests like an EKG (my heart is normal but my heartrate was up because of the albuterol I have been taking). The doctor came in and Milo told her what happened. She said since I wasn’t confused she didn’t think I had a seizure but rather this thing where you pass out/lose consciousness when oxygen doesn’t get to your brain when you are coughing really hard. It can cause the person to mimic seizure movements, the jerkiness Milo witnessed, and also I was going uh-uh-uh-uh during them. They only last a few seconds but for people like me with asthma it can happen (or COPD).
The respiratory therapist came in and gave me a breathing treatment which really helped, they did blood tests, and a chest x-ray. Doctor came back in and said I had bronchitis so she was giving me a Z-Pack, and a huge huge dose of prednisone for my lungs. I have to be on the steroids for 25 days. She said the stuff I took before wasn’t strong enough and I needed to be on it for longer. So they gave me stuff in the hospital, and then I went off to the pharmacy for the rest. I am also going to be on a daily asthma med.
After I got home I had three more of these coughing passing out “seizure” episodes. Milo starting feeling worse and worse and his throat started killing him. He went to bed before I did. I finally went to bed but I didn’t get any sleep because I could not stop coughing and the steroids were also keeping me up.
Christmas, he felt even worse, but we headed off to the family with gifts. He stayed as long as he could, then went home to bed, to come back later in the afternoon. We made it through the day as best we could, with him wearing a mask so he couldn’t infect anyone.
So we get home, and I am unloading gifts from the car, and the bag had tipped over on the drive home, and a small bottle of champagne I had gifted to him in his stocking, fell out and crashed to the pavement and literally exploded up at me, glass giving me a huge, deep crescent shaped cut on the top of my hand and another more shallow cut beside it. It hurt so bad. Still does, if you touch it. It’s really nasty and maybe it should have had stitches I don’t know.
At that point I’d had enough, and we both called out sick for Tuesday. Milo woke feeling so bad he called his doctor and got an appointment right away. He has strep throat. So now he is on antibiotics too and he has to sleep in the spare room because I can’t be infected while taking the steroids because it lowers your immunity. So we are a complete mess and had such a crappy Christmas. I had such high high hopes.
Needless to say my holiday stories are not complete, though I hope to work on them soon.
Thank you my friends. Hugs.
Spirk (with a small dose of Pinto) 