Another Tuesday Night In April

Content warnings: hospitals/medical stuff (including needle mention), asthma/lung stuff, death, near-death experience. 

 

I spent most of Tuesday night/Wednesday morning in the hospital.

 

There's a lot to unpack here, and I'm mostly writing this to sort things out in my brain.

 

On Easter Sunday, we went to the in-laws' place for an Easter meal. This had been planned for a couple of weeks, so we dutifully woke up early to make the drive out. When we arrived, we found that 90% of the family had either had a cold within that past 48 hours or were actively in the throes of one. My husband's sister sounded like she'd been chain-smoking for centuries. If it wasn't for that, we may never have known. Nobody said a single word about being sick. Even the sister said at first that she'd just lost her voice yelling during a hectic card game the night before. Less than five minutes later, she was saying she caught it from her son.

 

Within hours, my husband was showing symptoms. He took it upon himself to sleep in the spare room to spare me. He had a very sore throat and complained of headache and joint pain -- just a regular, annoying cold.

 

Tuesday night, April 7th.

 

I was sitting at the kitchen table playing Core Keeper (I LOVE THIS GAME) and my husband was beside me at his desk, playing Valheim/Helldivers, depending which of our friends on the Discord call needed more help at the moment.

 

I started coughing more than usual around 7:30 or so and my immediate thought was 'oh no, I'm getting that cold too.' But the cough felt different than both my usual chronic cough and the cough I get when I have a cold. It was an abnormally dry, persistent cough that moved absolutely nothing, and it was happening after every. single. breath I took. Not intermittently, not every other breath, every single breath.

 

I noted that that was weird, but kept drinking my tea and kept playing the game. I took shallower breaths to try to avoid triggering the cough, and while that sort of helped, that also meant I was not getting as much oxygen. Focusing on the game became harder and harder, even though I tried to switch to more mindless in-game tasks like gardening. Finally I quit the game and rested my head on the table. Breathing was taking every ounce of my focus and I no longer had enough spare brainpower to hold up my head.

 

I slid to the floor and literally crawled to get my blue inhaler (maybe ten feet away, if that?). I laid on the ground for ten minutes trying to gather enough energy just to shake it. I managed one dose, at 9:30pm. My lungs were burning, like a chemical burn, like there was acid in my chest. I was trying to breathe slowly and calmly to avoid triggering a panic response on top of whatever was already happening.

 

The entire time I lay on that floor with the inhaler in my hand, I kept thinking of the girl who lived in the room next to mine in my freshman year of college. She was a bit of a writer too, energetic and empathetic, with that determined zest for life that many depression survivors have. I remembered reading the news stories that ran after she died of influenza in January 2020. Healthy to dead in eight hours. She had only been married for a few months. She had been so happy for those few months.

 

Was this what influenza felt like? Or was I just overreacting again?

 

My husband asked if I should go to the hospital. I said 'maybe,' and started packing a bag. Phone charger, extra sweaters, extra pair of warm socks, water bottle, my daily meds in case I wasn't home by morning.

 

Around this point, my chest muscles were becoming fatigued. After every exhalation my muscles were so exhausted that I didn't have the physical energy to trigger an inhalation. I would sit there in a fully exhaled state for a full 5-8 seconds before my automatic nervous system would kick in and force an inhalation. This was happening every breath. I considered calling an ambulance to transport me due to the fatigue, but the hospital was less than ten minutes away, and the decision to go to the hospital had given me enough adrenaline to stand. I drove myself.

 

By then it was 10:15. There were exactly three other cars in the entire parking lot. The place looked abandoned. I parked as close to the entrance as I legally could, shuffled very slowly to the door (wondering the entire time if I was overreacting by coming here), pressed the 'night call' button, and lurched through the automatic doors into a dark and completely deserted emergency room. A nurse appeared at a door to the side.

 

"Are you here as a patient?" she asked. I had no breath left to respond, so I just nodded. She beckoned me into the room behind her and got me registered and triaged, then led me straight into a room.

 

I fully expected them to do bloodwork and 'diagnose' me with anemia, the way every other doctor in the country has for sixteen years. But no needle appeared. The nurse listened to my chest in several places with a stethoscope, then the doctor came in and did the same thing. He quickly formed the opinion that I had a virus, and I feared I was going to be sent home to struggle, but I was not officially released. The doctor swabbed my nose for a COVID test, then left. After some interval of time (I was so focused on breathing that I didn't track how long), the nurse returned and deposited a pile of inhalers and a cup of water on my little side table.

 

It was then that I learned I was having a legitimate asthma attack.

 

She gave me a spacer and careful instructions on how many doses to take of each inhaler, then brought me a cup of applesauce with a Reactine and a Prednisone crushed and stirred into it (because I can't swallow pills). She returned yet again with a needle -- not for bloodwork, but to inject Toradol. I tried to argue that the pain wasn't that bad and probably a standard Advil would suffice, but I did not officially refuse so she went ahead and gave it to me.

I took all the inhalers as instructed, then got the medication slurry down (Prednisone tastes awful, even in applesauce).

 

Then... nothing, for a very long time. I drifted in and out of sleep, wrapped in all the sweaters I'd brought with me. The pain in my joints and my chest did ease up, a little.

 

Sometime around 1:00am, the nurse poked her head in to ask how I was feeling. I asked what exactly we were waiting for, and she said the doctor wanted to keep me for observation for a few hours.

 

That felt strangely validating. It meant they were actually worried about my condition and didn't feel safe just handing me a prescription and sending me back home. Content with their level of concern, I texted my husband an update and drifted back to sleep... no easy feat on such a hard bed.

 

Around 2am the nurse went off shift and was replaced. Shortly after, the doctor came in and gave me the option to stay the night or go home and rest there. As much as I wanted to ask to stay the night, the bed was so hard and the burning in my lungs had indeed gone away. He asked how far of a drive it was. I told him not even ten minutes. He asked if I felt safe to drive that far. I said yes (after all, I had driven to the hospital in far worse shape). He then gave me a run-down.

 

The COVID swab would not get back for testing until late the next day (there are no testing facilities in this region; all specimens are picked up daily and trucked in to the capital city some 3-4 hours away for actual testing). His educated guess was that I had a viral infection, so he prescribed three more days of Prednisone. This as-yet-unnamed infection had triggered an asthma attack, so he directed me to keep the inhalers I had already taken -- two puffs of one twice per day and two puffs of the other one every 4-6 hours as needed. They would contact me with the results of the test once they had it, if it was COVID or influenza, I might be asked to return for further treatment. (Personal aside: I don't think it's COVID, as I've had it twice already and both times it presented like strep throat. This does not line up at ALL with my experience this week. But maybe a different version would cause different symptoms?)

I packed my colourful collection of new inhalers and went home.

 

The next day (yesterday) I was tired but feeling surprisingly good, considering. I took all the inhalers as directed and filled my prescription. My boss had already found someone to cover all my shifts for the week and told me to focus on resting.

 

I thought a lot yesterday about my cousin. Playing with her siblings at the playground across the street one Tuesday evening at 7:30, dead in an ER bed by 10pm. Tuesday nights were tainted for years following that one. Tuesday nights in April were the worst of all. And here I was fighting the same monster that killed her eleven years less three weeks before.

 

The losses echo in my head. Eight hours to dead. Three hours to dead. Healthy to ER in three hours. It seems hours aren't really that long, and yet within each one hangs an entire life in suspension. When lungs hit a wall, they hit it hard and fast. Somehow Brittney lived like this every day for 22 whole years.

Today I feel measurably worse than yesterday. I've set a timer for the 4-hour inhaler and am taking it EXACTLY every four hours (not seeing if I can stretch it to five or six hours), but I'm not sure it's helping as much anymore. I am considering going back to the ER. The burning has not returned, and the cough is not quite every single breath yet, but my chest muscles are getting fatigued again and there is a distinct sense of pressure. At what point do you go to the hospital? How close was I to death on Tuesday night, really? Should I have gone sooner? How bad is too bad?

 

I don't feel that this will be my last post on here, however life is only dealt out to us in hourly doses and none of us really knows how many doses we have left.

 

If it is, thank you for being here. Remember me as a quiet courageous person who felt whole while writing and dancing, who loved her husband, her friends, and her family dearly, who could do nothing but rely on the scandalous grace of God (as she was not capable of earning His favour). Play some Daniel Amos or White Heart and dance for me. Maybe learn some choruses from the Nachmo Alphabet project.

 

If it is not, then I look forward to writing in this composition window again soon.

In the meantime:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMgFRTfeGYI

 

 

 

 

(Don't think I wasn't tempted to do a Rick Roll there.) 

The Quiet Miracle

Trigger warning -- suicide.


The twenty-second of December, 2009.

I was at my grandmother's house. They are trying to induce labour in my mother... again. Six times they've tried this. Six times she's been at least two weeks overdue no matter how many drugs they pump into her system. The fourth time, when I was only nine, they started inducing her over a full week before her due date. She went in for induction on 26 December that year, and I didn't see her or my dad again till 15 January, the day after my sister was born. In the meantime, my siblings and I were shuffled between extended family members with great abandon. And I, being the oldest, was expected to mind my similarly traumatised siblings, even as my own world seemed as if it was falling to pieces around me without my parents there to stabilise it.

Now, six years later, in 2009, here I am at my grandma's again, waiting for a 'successful' induction that will never be and well we all know it. But by now, the next-oldest sister has taken over some babysitting capabilities, and I am alone in my grandma's basement in the 1970s-orange spinning armchair.

The Christmas lights shine all around me -- the basement is the grandkids' Christmas decoration bonanza, where all Christmas heck breaks loose -- and the gas fireplace runs at regular intervals. This has been my place of solace for years. If the people get too much for me, I retreat here. This is my thinking space, this room, this chair, these warm-coloured surroundings. Some might find 1970s orange shag ugly, but I find it reassuring. (Thinking back, I'm surprised my looks-conscious grandmother lived with that carpet for twelve years.)

I stare at the TV cabinet, thinking, sinking deeply into the bleeding gash across my soul, the bleeding no-one will acknowledge, never mind attempt to stop. I stare at the TV cabinet, at the reflection of the Christmas lights making a plastic smile in the glass door, and I search my mind for the reasons I should live.

On the other end of the basement, in the kitchenette, in the first drawer on the right, are knives. Sharp, turkey-carving knives. I don't know how I know that's where they are, but somehow I do.

But suicide is not something to be taken lightly -- I know that much. So before doing anything, I must be sure this is what I want. To that end I'm sitting here thinking, making sure I really truly have nothing left to live for.

After at least an hour of contemplation, I come to the conclusion -- no. There is nothing.

I am convinced that no-one loves me. That no-one would notice I was gone. Or, that if I was gone, they could finally be happy because then -- finally -- I would have done something 'right.' Then I would be out of their hair and they wouldn't have to deal with needy, annoying me anymore. Perhaps my death would be the only way I could please them, and I so wanted to do well -- to please them, so then they would finally be able to love me. The irony was not lost on me -- that if I was dead, therefore they would finally be able to be happy with me and to love me, I wouldn't actually be able to experience that love and appreciation. But no matter -- at least I could be at peace knowing they would be pleased with me for sensing when I wasn't wanted and removing myself from their lives so they could live in peace, without having to deal with me.

Yes... yes. This was the only way. I didn't want it to be, but there was no reason for me to stay. They wouldn't love me as long as I was here, and all I wanted to do was to make them happy for once.

I sat there in that chair for a good hour (maybe more, I don't know -- time doesn't matter much when you're going to die), thinking it through, every angle, trying to foresee any potential hitch.

No. There was none. All I had to do was get up, cross the room to the kitchenette, and get out a knife. And that would be it. And then they -- that is, everyone -- could finally live in peace, knowing that I would never bother them again.

I sat there. And sat there. Visualising everything, how it would play out. My arms rested, fully and utterly relaxed, on the overstuffed arms of the orange chair. I sank deep into the cushion, my weight, my head, pressing against the back. Comfy. Too tired, too spent, to get up. I wasn't so much sitting in the chair as the chair was holding me. My body was totally relaxed for once. I had surrendered to the chair's sturdy padding.

I stared blankly into the fireplace, still thinking through my decision. Letting my mind wander a little, for the last time. Thinking... would there be anything I would miss? I was crying, inexplicably. But the tears meant nothing. It was only the bleeding, gaping soul wound doing a little housecleaning.

My body sank deeper and deeper into the chair. It wasn't particularly warm, but it was my grandma's and that was enough. I let my head fall back, still thinking, still feeling numb pain, waiting for the decisive moment. Giving someone, anyone, one last chance to call me up and tell me how much they loved me and how much I meant to them, like in all the stories... you know the ones, where someone's decided to kill themselves, and just before they take the pills/fire the gun/whatever, someone they know randomly calls or shows up and says, 'I don't know why, but I really felt like I needed to tell you how much I love you...'

Well, God. Give me one reason.

I waited. I waited.

No-one did.

Time passed, and the wound stretched bigger. So even God wouldn't send someone to stop me? Even God was just going to apathetically let me die?

My grandma came down and told me to come upstairs for supper. I did without a fuss. I had no reason to disobey.

The rest of the evening is lost to me. I don't remember what I did after supper. I don't remember if we stayed the night or if my dad picked us up so we could spend the night at home. He must have because on the morning of the twenty-third I was at home, ironing my mother's present before wrapping it.



Four days later, 26 December 2009.

I was at a family gathering -- the extended-extended family (my great-grandmother's descendants) Christmas celebration. Sitting at the table next to my (predictably still-pregnant) mother and my aunt, I suddenly felt horribly sick -- faint and hot.

I remember my mother calling my dad over and then everything began to shift and I closed my eyes. I heard voices around me, voices I knew, but it was too much effort to discern what they were saying. My heart felt like it was racing. I was only vaguely aware of someone taking my right arm.

"What's her normal heart rate?"

"I don't know. We've never really paid attention."

"Either way, it's too fast."

"Do you trust me?"

It took a moment for me to register the words were directed at me.

"Do you trust me?"

I couldn't breathe. My head felt like it would explode.

"I guess."

"I'm going to carry you to your vehicle and your dad's going to take you to the hospital. Okay?"

I nodded and was carried, without a coat, into the sharp December air, into the rattletrap (the family vehicle at the time). I lay limp in the seat as my dad drove the two blocks to the hospital. I don't recall if I even had the strength to buckle my seat belt.

My dad stopped outside Admitting and brought out a wheelchair for me, then wheeled me into the emergency room and went back to park the van.

The emergency room was full -- my dad took the last empty seat -- but my ashen face and irregular racing heartbeat got me in within five minutes. I realised years later that they had honestly thought I was dying.

I was given an IV -- to this day I have no idea what it was for or what was in it -- and tests were taken. An hour later the doctor came back with a verdict and a prescription. The former was a dangerously low hemoglobin count, and the latter was for the most disgusting substance on the face of the Earth. I swear they scrape the stuff out of the murky depths of Hell and bottle it and give it to the innocent populace with the wide-eyed promise that it'll restore their iron levels (which it never does, at least not enough that you can stop taking it).

Anemia. A curse that never goes away. It causes not only prescriptions for the nastiest substance in the galaxy, but it causes lightheadedness/dizziness, extreme weakness, and a complete inability on the part of the doctors to diagnose you with anything but anemia ("Fractured leg? It's because you're anemic. Take more iron. You'll be fine"). And based on the fact that I was only six points away from getting a blood transfusion, I had been crashing for a while.

At least four days.

I didn't make the connection until November 2012, when I inserted the experience as backstory in a novel (nothing is sacred). Only then did I see the miracle that happened that day, 22 December 2009.

God didn't send anyone to stop me. He Himself, who formed my body, reached down and stopped me.

That 'curse' -- that curse saved my life that day. I was already crashing, too weak to get up. And that saved my life. Because I can tell you if I had gotten as far as the knife in my hand I would not be writing this now.

An Old Nemesis Returns... Also, Dancing

I suppose I should post something more than Music Day, huh? How about a brief and rather haphazard recap of my second semester of college?

Well, the semester started off with me feeling guilty and angry at myself and basically wanting to quit. I hated being here and I hated being away from my family. But then I started to develop some friendships here. Plus, dance class happened...

See, the college is just beginning to foray into dance classes. This semester, they were offering tap, jazz, and ballet. Of course, I registered for all three. This equals six hours of dance a week, in two three-hour chunks. I was perhaps more surprised than anyone that I can actually physically handle it (most days, anyway...).

Also, at the beginning of February I ended up in the emergency room because I couldn't breathe. Despite the fact that I was struggling even to talk for lack of air, I almost had to demand the prescription for the inhaler. Yay for The Great Canadian Health Care System.

The last week of February was a break week, so I went back home and took all the dancing back at the dance school there (which, by the way, I'm being allowed to rejoin when I get back to Alberta in mid-April so I'll be in The Nutcracker with them in June), however, on the day we were driving back to college, I developed a sore throat. No big deal, I thought. There had been a sore throat going around my family that week anyway. But by the time I went to bed in my dorm that night, I recognised all too well the unique ball-of-razor-blades-in-the-back-of-my-throat feeling. The next morning it was still there. And the next. And the next. In fact, it was nearly three days before I could finally get a ride into town to see a doctor so I could get the prescription for the antibiotics I knew I needed (the rattletrap remained in Alberta at the decree of my mother, so I couldn't drive myself). By that time, I was half-dead. I hadn't eaten (due to the agony of the mere act of swallowing) in four days, and I had two papers due. I managed to get the one done (in a rather thick Tylenol haze that did absolutely nothing to kill the pain), and I got an extension on the other. I managed not to miss any classes, but every second that I wasn't in class or in the cafeteria trying desperately to eat something, I was socked out on my bed. Last time I had strep throat, I was able to live a normal life (except I couldn't swallow a blessed thing), but this time it completely wiped me out. I have never been so tired in my entire life as I was for that week and a half.

So due to spending a week and a half dying of strep throat, I got behind on a 2500-word paper and memorising the entire book of Ephesians -- both due on the same day. The latter project was worth 50% of the course grade (hey, it is a Bible college...). I'll spare you the gory details, but let's just say I'm bracing myself to fail two courses this semester.

Also, I have a (completely unrelated) word of advice for you all: never get shin splints. They hurt like heck. And I can't even really complain too much about shin splints because at least I can eat through the pain of shin splints... you can't eat through the pain of strep throat. But back to my word of advice: if you do get shin splints, never ever ever run on an uneven cobblestone sidewalk. Even if you're late for choir. Don't do it. I did last Wednesday and I'm still paying for it a week later.

This weekend is performing weekend around here: dance rehearsal on Friday, choir rehearsal and dance show on Saturday, choir performance on Sunday. Yesterday was the last day of dance classes... I didn't know that till I got there. I thought there was going to be one more, but alas...

It's funny how the world seems to stop when the dancing is gone. It's only temporary -- by the end of the month I'll be rehearsing Nutcracker in Alberta -- but dancing seemed different here. Maybe it was the group of people, maybe it was the fact that it was six hours a week (in Alberta I'm usually only taking maybe two and a half hours a week because that's all the courses at my level that the school offers), maybe it was the fact that I learnt so much about myself and where my weaknesses (and strengths) are as a performer, maybe it was because I was doing more than just ballet. But it was different -- I don't know if 'richer' is the right word for it because the dance school I'm at in Alberta has a very rich community as well, but here in Saskatchewan there was a different feel to the whole experience. Maybe it was learning how to work with a completely new group of people. I've been with the school back home for over five years, so we're all pretty close friends already. To have to learn to 'read' a totally new group is a bit of a challenge because you can't coast into it (I mean, not that I would ever do that back home, of course... *cough*). I don't know. Basically what I'm trying to say is the fact that it's basically over is making me immensely sad and I miss it already. A bunch of people from the dance classes here at college are either moving, graduating, or changing plans and not coming back next year, so that means that we will never again be all in the same group, dancing together. Back home everyone comes back to the school every year (you might lose one person every couple of years), but not here... dance doesn't consume most of these people like it does me. Their lives go on. But mine kind of stops when the dancing does. It's like the breath is snatched away. Maybe that's why I need to do choreography so much -- it's a way of dancing, even if it's just mentally, and I need that. I don't know why... I just do.

I will update on the choreography side of things later, when I have more time (because despite all odds, I've actually completed almost three dances this year and sketched out lots and lots of others). Right now, though, I need to go to bed, and I also have to somehow manage a 2500-word paper over this performing weekend. Then finals, but as long as I study, I should be okay. (Famous last words...)