Post by Rich Waugh on Nov 26, 2010 2:32:05 GMT -5
Got a big scare a couple of weeks ago, and it ain't plumb done with yet. I do think the worst is behind me, though. Here's the whole story for those with the patience to wade through it:
Getting Ready for Thanksgiving
by
Rich Waugh
Well, today is Thanksgiving, 2010, and I must say that I truly do have reason to give thanks this year. Most years I don’t get too damn excited about Thanksgiving, as I don’t much care for turkey, prefer people in small groups and honestly resent any “obligatory” holidays. So I generally just fade into the woodwork a few days in advance and let others have their fun, poking my head back out only after the smoke has cleared. This year, however, events conspired to make me actually feel thankful just to be around and have a few good friends.
For the past couple of months I’ve felt a bit under the weather from time to time – oh, nothing bad enough to go to the doctor for, just enough to feel cruddy and have no energy. I kept telling myself it would pass, and it would, for a few days. Up and down, up and down, so I went.
On Wednesday, November 10th, there was a tour group booked for the museum, despite flash flood warnings posted by the National Weather Service for the island. Of course, the museum is located in a valley, with access by a bridge over a runoff gut. Despite seeing rising water in the gut and knowing its propensity for flooding, the tour bus driver saw fit to come into the site. Within twenty minutes the rainfall rate had risen to more than 5”/hr and floodwaters were raging over the bridge at the rate of nearly 2000 cfs. Shortly thereafter, the floodwaters had undermined the driveway on the Museum side of the gut to the point it was unsafe for vehicular traffic of any kind. Great – we now have fourteen Danish tourists and their guides trapped on-site with no way of knowing when the waters might recede sufficiently to extricate them. Even better, three of them, all over 70 years old, are in critical need of medication they neglected to have with them. Fine planning, I say.
I reached the Rescue Group headquarters by telephone and let them know the situation and that I would attempt a lifeline extraction as soon as the waters fell just enough. That plan actually came together and I got all of them out of here without incident. Using alternate transportation they were whisked away to their cozy hotel rooms, I suppose. I was just glad to be shut of them, quite frankly. I was cold, wet, exhausted and miserable and only wanted to bathe and rest.
On Thursday I was feeling more than just a mite peaked and running a moderate fever. I attributed that to the stress and wet of the previous day and ignored it. By Friday, the fever was up to 102.5° so I decided to err on the side of caution and go to the doc. By the time I reached his office an hour or so later, the fever was now up to 103.6° and I was feeling pretty low. The doc did the customary poking, prodding, peering and listening and said he thought I might possibly have Dengue Fever, a mosquito-borne nastiness nobody wants. He drew some blood to be tested and sent me home to rest. That “rest” lasted until Sunday afternoon when Sally insisted I go to the Emergency Room. I really don’t like hospitals, but I had to agree that I felt pretty poorly. Off we went.
Upon arrival at the ER, they took one look at me and ran me straight into Triage. Within minutes they’d done a chest X-ray, determined I’d had a spontaneous pneumothorax (collapsed lung), and shot me half full of morphine. The ER doc was a very engaging fellow and tried his best to give me a snow job about how the lung re-inflation procedure was very routine and nearly painless. No sale – I know better, unfortunately. So we spent a few agonizing minutes while he struggled to ram a sharpened ½” tube between my ribs and I screamed and whined like a frightened little girl. He finally prevailed and the chest tube was in and I was in line for admittance to the hospital proper. Sounds simple, right? Not for me, it wasn’t.
Oh, they got me admitted to a room on the Progressive Care Unit (think Intensive Care Lite) and started tests to see what all else was wrong in there. No surprise; I had a raging case of pneumonia at that point, so they jacked me full of IV antibiotics in an attempt to deal with a white cell count somewhere north of 27,000. That was good for a day or so until I started running a way bad fever and becoming delirious. Add more antibiotics, of course. No change. Pack my bony body in ice packs – damned uncomfortable, that. Somewhere along in there the heart rate suddenly leaps up to 155/min. Then 165/min. When it got to 177 on the third day they finally decided there was no other choice than to do a “cardioversion.” That’s a delicate way of saying, “We’re going to electrocute you to stop your heart completely and then we’ll try to re-start it, hoping it comes back in at a righteous rate like 60-75 or so.” That was another of those “simple” procedures. Zzzzzzap! About 20,000 Joules front to back with the super bug-zapper and I was back to ticking like a well-oiled Swiss watch, I’m happy to report. Couldn’t have told you squat about it at the time, however, as I was out to lunch both mentally and physically.
A brief note here for prospective pneumothorax patients: hooking your chest drain to the IV pole and then walking away is neither the recommended removal procedure nor is particularly comfortable. To say nothing of the fact it really annoys hell out of the guy who is responsible for it. I owe someone an apology for that bit of delirium-induced drama.
At that time, somewhere around Wednesday the 17th, I think, they acknowledged I was going into sepsis and not doing too well, in fact. Medical shorthand for, dying unless we get damned lucky somehow! Out to lunch or not, I already knew that at a very intimate level – I could actually FEEL myself dying. I wasn’t happy about it, either. I couldn’t express it, since I was incapable of making a coherent thought come out of my mouth. No surprise there, I guess. I had hallucinations, too. Not everything I saw was a hallucination, unfortunately. Looking at Sally’s face and seeing the look of abject terror there just about ripped my heart right out of my chest. I’ve never seen her so totally, unreservedly terrified. I vowed then and there that I would NOT let this shit kill me, no matter how much of a relief it would have been to just let go.
More blood tests, sputum tests, tests of every nasty thing that comes out of a human body from any possible orifice, in fact. More bad news – my lungs are not only infected with pneumonia, but also with pseudomonas, a particularly virulent and drug-resistant gram-negative bacteria. (I probably picked that up from the flood waters in the gut while getting the Danes out.) Add another couple antibiotics to the stew they’re dumping in me. Of course, the effect of all these radical antibiotics on my guts was nothing short of nightmarish. Suffice it to say I really, really didn’t want to be me right then. Finally took more than ten days to feel like I could cough without danger of embarrassing myself. In the meanwhile I was embarrassed - a lot. Enough said about that.
Days and days of continual IV antibiotics, one after another, likewise oral antibiotics. A total of five different ones, I believe, in an effort to kill what was killing me. An endless nightmare of tubes, hoses, needles, pills, tests, X-rays, and each morning hoping that the damnable white count would be down from the day before. On or about Saturday the 20th it finally started to drop – not far, not fast, but definitely a drop for the first time. The next day a bit more, then a slight rise, then another drop, and so on. It began to seem as though I might actually be released someday. Finally, on Wednesday the 24th, I was able to leave the hospital; achy, shaky, sore, tired - and immensely grateful just to be alive.
I came home and spent almost thirty-five minutes in the shower, repeatedly soaping up and then rinsing, trying to scrub that whole experience off me. That failed, but I did smell better for it.
There are those who say that health care on St. Croix is sub-par. They are wrong. All the doctors who attended me were consummate professionals and did their very best for me. My nursing care was variable, from fine to superlative. The hospital food really and truly sucked – I’d probably have been disappointed if it hadn’t. (Would you really trust a hospital with good food? Me neither.) In the final analysis, the medical professionals at the hospital here beat some long odds and saved my life – the result of damn good medicine, not good luck. I owe them my life, but I’ll probably cheap out and just pay the bill.
With terrific medical care, an absolutely wonderful wife/nurse/Rock of Gibraltar, and a small group of friends without peer, I came through what was undeniably the most terrifying episode in a rather long and most checkered life. I have much to be thankful for and I truly am.
While it may come as a disappointment to some, the estate sale has once again been postponed indefinitely.
I'll be slowly getting back into the stream of things, but it's gonna be a while. Takes nothing to tire me out. Gonna get better, though! I need Rob to bust his tractor again so I have stuff to read! ;D
Rich
Getting Ready for Thanksgiving
by
Rich Waugh
Well, today is Thanksgiving, 2010, and I must say that I truly do have reason to give thanks this year. Most years I don’t get too damn excited about Thanksgiving, as I don’t much care for turkey, prefer people in small groups and honestly resent any “obligatory” holidays. So I generally just fade into the woodwork a few days in advance and let others have their fun, poking my head back out only after the smoke has cleared. This year, however, events conspired to make me actually feel thankful just to be around and have a few good friends.
For the past couple of months I’ve felt a bit under the weather from time to time – oh, nothing bad enough to go to the doctor for, just enough to feel cruddy and have no energy. I kept telling myself it would pass, and it would, for a few days. Up and down, up and down, so I went.
On Wednesday, November 10th, there was a tour group booked for the museum, despite flash flood warnings posted by the National Weather Service for the island. Of course, the museum is located in a valley, with access by a bridge over a runoff gut. Despite seeing rising water in the gut and knowing its propensity for flooding, the tour bus driver saw fit to come into the site. Within twenty minutes the rainfall rate had risen to more than 5”/hr and floodwaters were raging over the bridge at the rate of nearly 2000 cfs. Shortly thereafter, the floodwaters had undermined the driveway on the Museum side of the gut to the point it was unsafe for vehicular traffic of any kind. Great – we now have fourteen Danish tourists and their guides trapped on-site with no way of knowing when the waters might recede sufficiently to extricate them. Even better, three of them, all over 70 years old, are in critical need of medication they neglected to have with them. Fine planning, I say.
I reached the Rescue Group headquarters by telephone and let them know the situation and that I would attempt a lifeline extraction as soon as the waters fell just enough. That plan actually came together and I got all of them out of here without incident. Using alternate transportation they were whisked away to their cozy hotel rooms, I suppose. I was just glad to be shut of them, quite frankly. I was cold, wet, exhausted and miserable and only wanted to bathe and rest.
On Thursday I was feeling more than just a mite peaked and running a moderate fever. I attributed that to the stress and wet of the previous day and ignored it. By Friday, the fever was up to 102.5° so I decided to err on the side of caution and go to the doc. By the time I reached his office an hour or so later, the fever was now up to 103.6° and I was feeling pretty low. The doc did the customary poking, prodding, peering and listening and said he thought I might possibly have Dengue Fever, a mosquito-borne nastiness nobody wants. He drew some blood to be tested and sent me home to rest. That “rest” lasted until Sunday afternoon when Sally insisted I go to the Emergency Room. I really don’t like hospitals, but I had to agree that I felt pretty poorly. Off we went.
Upon arrival at the ER, they took one look at me and ran me straight into Triage. Within minutes they’d done a chest X-ray, determined I’d had a spontaneous pneumothorax (collapsed lung), and shot me half full of morphine. The ER doc was a very engaging fellow and tried his best to give me a snow job about how the lung re-inflation procedure was very routine and nearly painless. No sale – I know better, unfortunately. So we spent a few agonizing minutes while he struggled to ram a sharpened ½” tube between my ribs and I screamed and whined like a frightened little girl. He finally prevailed and the chest tube was in and I was in line for admittance to the hospital proper. Sounds simple, right? Not for me, it wasn’t.
Oh, they got me admitted to a room on the Progressive Care Unit (think Intensive Care Lite) and started tests to see what all else was wrong in there. No surprise; I had a raging case of pneumonia at that point, so they jacked me full of IV antibiotics in an attempt to deal with a white cell count somewhere north of 27,000. That was good for a day or so until I started running a way bad fever and becoming delirious. Add more antibiotics, of course. No change. Pack my bony body in ice packs – damned uncomfortable, that. Somewhere along in there the heart rate suddenly leaps up to 155/min. Then 165/min. When it got to 177 on the third day they finally decided there was no other choice than to do a “cardioversion.” That’s a delicate way of saying, “We’re going to electrocute you to stop your heart completely and then we’ll try to re-start it, hoping it comes back in at a righteous rate like 60-75 or so.” That was another of those “simple” procedures. Zzzzzzap! About 20,000 Joules front to back with the super bug-zapper and I was back to ticking like a well-oiled Swiss watch, I’m happy to report. Couldn’t have told you squat about it at the time, however, as I was out to lunch both mentally and physically.
A brief note here for prospective pneumothorax patients: hooking your chest drain to the IV pole and then walking away is neither the recommended removal procedure nor is particularly comfortable. To say nothing of the fact it really annoys hell out of the guy who is responsible for it. I owe someone an apology for that bit of delirium-induced drama.
At that time, somewhere around Wednesday the 17th, I think, they acknowledged I was going into sepsis and not doing too well, in fact. Medical shorthand for, dying unless we get damned lucky somehow! Out to lunch or not, I already knew that at a very intimate level – I could actually FEEL myself dying. I wasn’t happy about it, either. I couldn’t express it, since I was incapable of making a coherent thought come out of my mouth. No surprise there, I guess. I had hallucinations, too. Not everything I saw was a hallucination, unfortunately. Looking at Sally’s face and seeing the look of abject terror there just about ripped my heart right out of my chest. I’ve never seen her so totally, unreservedly terrified. I vowed then and there that I would NOT let this shit kill me, no matter how much of a relief it would have been to just let go.
More blood tests, sputum tests, tests of every nasty thing that comes out of a human body from any possible orifice, in fact. More bad news – my lungs are not only infected with pneumonia, but also with pseudomonas, a particularly virulent and drug-resistant gram-negative bacteria. (I probably picked that up from the flood waters in the gut while getting the Danes out.) Add another couple antibiotics to the stew they’re dumping in me. Of course, the effect of all these radical antibiotics on my guts was nothing short of nightmarish. Suffice it to say I really, really didn’t want to be me right then. Finally took more than ten days to feel like I could cough without danger of embarrassing myself. In the meanwhile I was embarrassed - a lot. Enough said about that.
Days and days of continual IV antibiotics, one after another, likewise oral antibiotics. A total of five different ones, I believe, in an effort to kill what was killing me. An endless nightmare of tubes, hoses, needles, pills, tests, X-rays, and each morning hoping that the damnable white count would be down from the day before. On or about Saturday the 20th it finally started to drop – not far, not fast, but definitely a drop for the first time. The next day a bit more, then a slight rise, then another drop, and so on. It began to seem as though I might actually be released someday. Finally, on Wednesday the 24th, I was able to leave the hospital; achy, shaky, sore, tired - and immensely grateful just to be alive.
I came home and spent almost thirty-five minutes in the shower, repeatedly soaping up and then rinsing, trying to scrub that whole experience off me. That failed, but I did smell better for it.
There are those who say that health care on St. Croix is sub-par. They are wrong. All the doctors who attended me were consummate professionals and did their very best for me. My nursing care was variable, from fine to superlative. The hospital food really and truly sucked – I’d probably have been disappointed if it hadn’t. (Would you really trust a hospital with good food? Me neither.) In the final analysis, the medical professionals at the hospital here beat some long odds and saved my life – the result of damn good medicine, not good luck. I owe them my life, but I’ll probably cheap out and just pay the bill.
With terrific medical care, an absolutely wonderful wife/nurse/Rock of Gibraltar, and a small group of friends without peer, I came through what was undeniably the most terrifying episode in a rather long and most checkered life. I have much to be thankful for and I truly am.
While it may come as a disappointment to some, the estate sale has once again been postponed indefinitely.
I'll be slowly getting back into the stream of things, but it's gonna be a while. Takes nothing to tire me out. Gonna get better, though! I need Rob to bust his tractor again so I have stuff to read! ;D
Rich
