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Last Thursday, after my home oxy unit died and was replaced, I began to have trouble getting my breath under control. I was gasping very fast and could not get a full breath. Tina, my wife suggested we call an ambulance and I had to agree with her.
The rescue squad arrived very quickly and carried me down a tricky set of stairs that would not accommodate a gurney bed. They whisked me into the ambulance and immediately put me on oxygen and inserted an I.V. and off we went to the hospital.
When we arrived at the E.R. they diagnosed me and found I had punctured a lung somehow. They examined me thoroughly and found a couple other things. A kidney not acting right and a partially blocked Bladder, also a faintly "wrong" heartbeat.
They zoomed me into the ICU and began treating me there for all that. Managed to incubate the lung to get it to reinflate. Got my breathing back to what I laughingly call normal and then gave me time to de stress and relax a bit. they kept me in ICU for a couple of days before shifting me to a private room for further treatments including virtually draining me of blood, or that's how it seemed to me. Blood draws every 20 minutes for two days!
I never fancied myself a good patient and I hope I wasn't too rough on them, but I was worried and stressed and not feeling well at all, so... Anyway, another two days passed and I was finally allowed to have the lung tube disconnected since it appeared to reinflate and stayed that way. Then they took out the line that was draining my bladder and successfully completed a bathroom break.
All this time, my Wife, Tina was a ROCK for me, bringing me all the things I needed, laptop, shaver, clothes, food, since their kitchen is absolutely horrible, headphones, and my cel phone. She took time that she should have been working to do all that for me.
So....I am home now, AMA.(against medical advice) They wanted to keep me there, but I couldn't take another day or days of being away from home and subject to the next torture that came to their minds. Yeah, I am THAT stubborn! I will have to take more pills and stuff, but it just feels more comfortable for me at home. Oh yeah. About the heart thing.
It seems that, for my age group, normal is considered to be 50 percent efficiency. I'm around 30 to 35 with a little skip or double beat now and then. It can be helped with medications and I'm going that route.
So we left the hospital and went straight to MCDonalds where I treated myself to a MC RIB!!! GOD, I love those things!!! Then home for a rest and a smoke. Can't smoke in hospital ya know. Just TOBACCO you bunch of wild women! Sheesh!
I've had an uninterrupted night of sleep and feel much better today. I want to thank Ariel and Erin for keeping you all in the know about what happened to me. Don't worry overmuch please. I will be following the medical procedures and pills religiously and working on curbing my tobacco use little by little. Cannot go cold turkey...not after 63 of my 74 years as a smoker. Tried all the pills, patches, Chantix...none of them worked permanently or even worked at all.
So I'm still out here and plan to be for as long as I can manage. Thanks to all of you who might have been concerned. You are my family and I love you all.
Comments
Glad To See That You Are OK
I'm happy that you are feeling better.
Gwen
Ya know, by leaving when you did
you probably left with some blood left :D Just think of those poor starving vampires you left there :(
Really though, glad to hear you escaped and are doing better /hugs
Tina, Don't pamper her too much
Knowing Cathy she will expect it from now on if you pamper her too nicely. Pets get spoiled too easily and then demand one keep it up. Probably to the standards she thinks she deserves even when she doesn't.
Hugs Cathy, next time you want to scare everyone..., DON'T.
Love you sweety. I proposed to a couple nurses today but they didn't think their wives would approve. I've changed my sexual orientation. Lesbians are more fun then guys. Can I ask Tina if she wants to go stepping out while you're indisposed?
Hugs Love, get well, get back on track, and damn it kiddo, watch the diet. If I do you do also. I stepped on the scale at the hospital today, ten pounds overweight.
"That's really great." Says the happy little nurse who isn't carrying ten pounds of cat food. I rescinded my marriage offer.
Barb
God has a sense of humor. I know because she made me.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Glad you're doing better
And home!
I'm a few years younger, but old enough to have a few of those problems myself.
Sitting in the hospital with the constant beeping and whirring of all the machines around you, is not fun. I swear the questions the nurses ask you now were designed with the sole intention just to annoy you!
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
You've got one scary collection of "stuff" ...
I'll agree, hospital food is more than horrible - Less than a year ago, I had a hospital encounter. The menu was "lethal dose 50" - 50% of the people eating it will DIE because they eat it.
Maybe 5 years ago I teased my hospital's "Vampires of Dawn" that if they kept taking my blood, eventually they'd have to put some back. About week later, they rolled in an IV pole with a large red bag ...
Your low heart efficiency worries me. Five years back, my mitral (heart) valve was sort of shredding itself. I needed help to get out of bed. >That< is low heart efficiency.
You'll want to do the very best you can to take care of your heart. Your first stop (but keep going) is here: https://www.pcrm.org/health-topics/heart-disease Bonus: everything that is on this site is also good for your kidneys. You don't have to do a "heart thing" and a "kidney thing" because they are exactly the same "me-health" thing.
Once you've read the bad news/good news page, here is the "how-to" page: https://kickstart.pcrm.org/en. >Free.<
Dr Barnard's whole site, all the info is free. Oh, you might want to buy *cough library* a book. If they want you to pay, you took a 'wrong turn' in to an on-site seminar or residence program. Don't pay, back out, use the free info.
You will want to start as soon as you can, like before your next meal. For sure, your coronary arteries are clogged. And your brain arteries, and your kidney arteries, and ... All are pretty jammed up.
Dr Barnard knows his stuff and talks sense. And no pills, no 'weird' or 'magic' foods. Nothing special to buy. What he gives us is a new way of eating and living. So it's not a "diet". It's just a way to get and stay healthy/er.
Dr Micheal Greger (books: https://nutritionfacts.org/book/how-not-to-die/ and https://nutritionfacts.org/book/how-not-to-die-cookbook/) at "https://nutritionfacts.org/" has over 2,000 3-6 minute >free< health videos, searchable by topic. And, he is a hoot to listen to. Also free.
DrMcDougall.com has a similar view and guidelines. And free, until you want to attend a seminar or program. But much is recorded.
===
No matter what you decide, including blowing me off as a 'nut job' ...
> Please do start and continue a Vitamin B12 supplement. "Everybody" is low, and if we go too low, our brains fail big time. Not pretty.
Hospitals
Hospitals are places where patients go to not get any rest. Loud, uncomfortable, disturbed at all hours to be poked and prodded, and then fed items which are not always identifiable as 'food'. More of 'food-like-substances', really...like some mad alchemist attempted to force carbon and other random elements together in a way that was almost - but not quite - like meatloaf. Which can bounce if dropped on the floor.
Glad you're home (though AMA makes me worry, but I'd do that anyway). Take care, rest up, and recover!
- Erisian <3
Hospital wake ups
First, hospitals were organized to maximize Doctors efficiency. Concentrate the sick in one place and the doctors travel time evaporated.
These days insurance companies have converted hospitals into factories. You were the product.
There exists a special elemental diet where food is created pre-digested. Just so you know. Hospital healthy diets vary widely. Yours was heart healthy so no salt and very low fat. Fat, salt, and sugar provides most of foods flavor, so….
And last: Sleep. Desired but difficult to provide. Those monitors watching you second by second are finicky and have alarms. Just a little movement and the nurse has to visualize and fix it. That will wake you again and again.
Sorry. (Retired ICU and ED nurse.)
BAK 0.25tspgirl
"Fat, salt, and sugar ..." for flavor.
"SOS" (Salt, oil, sugar.)
Which is how the Big agri-PLAGUE-death industrial "food" complex traps us... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Sugar_Fat:_How_the_Food_G...)
But there's also the flavors of just the food itself, and then add spices. So many flavors in just my simple mixed beans (garbanzo, kidney, green peas, black eyed peas), squash, napolitos (had other veggies mixed in), fire-roasted tomatoes, celery, sauteed mushrooms & onions, rice, liquid smoke, dab-o-mustard, veggie broth, soy sauce, and garlic, veggie stew. And I wasn't even trying at all for {stereotype} "Italian Grandma generational secret recipe".