My near death experiences

[Radiant Bridge]

Last November we had employees from a heating and cooling company examine our old air conditioner because we were planning on replacing it in the spring of this year. The internal part of the air conditioner is in our attic which is not a regular room but a stretched out space with rafters above the second floor and behind walls. The area which the workers needed to see was behind the trapdoor in my room. I was upstairs when the workers were finishing up and developed a strong asthma attack because of the insulation fibers floating around. When they left, I foolishly went into my room to use my nebulizer in the hopes that exposing myself to more of the offender during a breathing treatment would enable my lungs to get over the shock and calm down. After five minutes it became clear that the mist from my medicine cup was causing me to inhale an even larger amount of insulation and enabling it to get deeper in to my lungs. Gasping for air with all of my might, I got into the hallway and screamed for my mom. When she came running up the stairs I told her to give me the Heimlich maneuver. This saved me from a hospital that night, but the horrible irritation remained in my lungs. I slept in the living room for the next month which gave my lungs a little rest, but their untreated obstruction was slowly getting more out of control. By the night of Saturday, February 5, my breathing was restricted to the point where I needed treatments every two hours, and even then all I managed to do was open up the top tips of my lungs. At five o' clock in the morning on Sunday, February 6, my lungs became too tired of fighting off the severe inflammation and started to close even more. When this happened I was in our computer room at the bottom of the stairs. Although I barely had enough oxygen to speak let alone walk, I managed to get all the way up the steps and through the hallway to my parents’ room. I woke them up and said the words which I prayed I would never need to in reference to myself: “Dial 911.” My dad ran downstairs to get a phone while my mom went with me into my room. A minute later she was explaining to the 911 operator what was happening. The operator heard my breathing, which was coming from just a smidgen of open space left in my lungs, and knew that I needed immediate help. Very shortly after, paramedics rushed into my room. I said that I needed orciprenaline, which could open up lungs even in extreme cases like mine. They explained that they had no drugs and my terror reached its peak. I frantically said that if I didn't get the medicine that instant I was going to faint, which was exactly what happened. I was carried into an ambulance unconscious. My blood oxygen level was all the way down to sixty percent. I came to on a bed in the emergency room with a ventilator over my face. A few minutes later I was able to sit up but had another scare when I was told that I was about to get an IV. In my distress I blurted out that I was aichmophobic, meaning terrified of needles, and didn't want the procedure, but the staff told me that they were still in the process of stabilizing me, so I couldn't refuse. Since I was still trying to collect myself, weak, and petrified all at once, I didn't even see when the nurse came next to my arm. I only knew what she was doing when I felt a moderate pain. It wasn't as bad as I had always assumed it was to get your vein stabbed. Later on, since it was essential to know exactly what my blood was doing, I had to allow it to be drawn from my vein and artery. The second draw was very painful and brought out a bit of my crying. (Arteries are much harder to pierce than veins.) My lungs were still very weak and badly swollen with mucus, so I once again asked for orciprenaline. The hospital had none in stock, so I was left with a choice of wearing an uncomfortable and forceful oxygen mask or having a breathing tube in my lungs. There was no way that I was going to accept the tube, so I had to spend nearly four hours trapped in a mask that was so tightly fixed to my head that I couldn't remove it on my own. The mask was designed to pump oxygen and give strength to breathing, but its speed sometimes made it hard for me to breathe normally. Quite a few times I had to hyperventilate just to catch my breath and felt like I was about to die again. It certainly didn’t help that I was claustrophobic. That horrible device was one of the most frightening experiences of my life. If I hadn’t been so jolted I would have thought to request a regular oxygen mask, but was later furious that it wasn’t offered to me anyway. When I was finally free of the torturous object, which was a BI-PAP, I was taken to the intensive care unit where I spent the night. Once there I realized that I had not even noticed when my IV was removed, and that there was another one in my shoulder that had been inserted when I was unconscious. I had to sleep with the IV, electrodes on my chest, and a blood pressure cuff that painfully squeezed my arm every hour. The next evening my vein was very irritated, so my final dose of the intravenous steroid hurt me badly. That night I was moved to a regular room. On the afternoon of Tuesday, February 8 I was permitted to go home, but not before having a consultation with a pulmonologist who was unbelievably arrogant. In his mind he was the only educated person on the planet, and wouldn't give me a second to explain my situation. I made it clear that I disapproved of him, and he left quickly. I was grateful to have been home on Valentine’s day to make the fancy valentines that I loved to every year.

Eerie but comforting circumstances were present during both of my asthmatic emergencies. On the day of my first one, my bed needed to be moved so that the workers could get to my trapdoor. This helped me to relocate a very special bag which had gotten lost under my bed. It contains a bit of the fur and a few whiskers of my late cat. She was my best friend and her death of cancer three years ago was devastating. The very issue that caused my asthma to become dangerous was the same one that enabled me to find the bag, so for the first time in a long while I knew exactly where it was when I was in my room getting worse. When I was in the hospital, age markings on the wall in my ICU room were shaped in such a way that those spelled my cat’s name. Of all the ICU rooms available, I just happened to be placed in this one. Each one of these events seemed like too strong a connection to be a mere coincidence.

I have a systemic infection which has several major aggravators including steroids. The intravenous dexamethasone that I received in the hospital made me sicker and my immune system more sensitive. My infection sometimes causes mild imitations of allergic reactions. For this reason, I wasn’t certain of what I felt after eating my Easter candy but was given an answer in June when I had a glass of hot cocoa and my throat, tongue, and lips swelled. I had been allergic to most nuts my whole life, and my body was suddenly recognizing that cocoa solids had a few things in common with kola nuts. I liked my hot cocoa rich, so I always put five spoonfuls of powder into half & half. Drinking this was the equivalent of eating a bowl of the kola nuts that I was allergic to. At the time I had no epinephrine, so if my throat had decided to close completely paramedics never would have reached me in time. Miraculously, my throat and tongue stopped swelling before those had a chance to block my airway. My worsened infection caused awful skin irritation in the summer, and combined with my skin disorder, this turned in to a nightmare. For three months my feet were a very painful, extremely itchy, bloody mess. It was a difficult ordeal just to walk around the house. Luckily it healed by early October so I was still able to go trick-or-treating. As a nod to this forum and my general love of rainbows, I dressed up as a rainbow enchantress. At least I’m not barred from chocolate completely. I can still have white chocolate which is pure chocolate without cocoa solids. With special meaning and appreciation, I wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. I am very thankful to be alive after coming extremely close to losing my life twice this year.

[Dialga-Brite]

I hate arrogant people. And why didnt they have the medicine you needed? If its as you make it sound, it was a much simpler solution than all they put you through. Its a hospital, you'd think they should have had it.

And the cat thing... is really spiritual sounding.

[Radiant Bridge]

Thank you Dialga-Brite. I really appreciate your concern and understanding. Regarding the drug that I asked for, I recently realized that it would have killed me because of my infection. My systemic infection causes excess mucus production, so it too affects my lungs. I had a massive pulmonary obstruction comprised of mucus the day of my emergency. (During an asthma attack, the lungs swell with mucus.) Reliever drugs that work by opening up lungs do so by relaxing the lungs enough to let the mucus out. The orciprenaline that I asked for would have pulled up what was already at the bottom of my lungs because of my infection into the giant asthmatic obstruction, and then there would have been no room at all for air. Even the ventilator used on me might not have been able to push oxygen through something that solid. I now know that orciprenaline is a very dangerous drug because it either saves your life or kills you, so I no longer blame hospitals for not stocking it! I also finally understood that there had been no alternative to the torture I went through with the BI-PAP. Since my lungs were so weak at the time, these would not have been able to work hard enough to take in the oxygen from a regular mask on their own. If I had refused to use the BI-PAP, I would have died of pulmonary failure. The only thing that I was still angry about was the fact that the hospital staff had not explained to me why I would have died. It would have made it a bit easier to be trapped in that awful mask if I had known that it was the only way to save my life. You were right, I had felt as if my cat was somehow a part of how I survived.