Chest X-Ray

When I first started this blog I promised myself that I’d post at least once a week. Last week was the exception as I had a very unfortunate stream of events that prevented me from computer access.

It all started the evening of March 4th. I went to bed that night with what I can only describe as a pain in my abdomen that felt like an alien trying to escape. I tossed all night long not getting any sleep at all. Throughout the night there were moments where I almost got up and drove myself the emergency room… it was that bad.

The next morning, March 5th, I noticed the pain had moved from the center of my stomach to the right side. I immediately thought to myself, “appendicitis”. After a call to the doctor, a trip to the ER, and a quick examination I was getting prepped for surgery.

Now the story starts getting out of control. As I slowly came out of the anesthesia I noticed my breathing was very labored, and I was coughing up lots and lots of blood. I’ve had surgery before and I’ve never had this type of recovery before and even in my dazed state I still remember telling everyone around me that this wasn’t normal. Three hours later I was wheeled up to my room. Yeah… you read that right, three hours. Later I came to find out the surgeon told my wife that I’d probably be in the recovery room for about an hour. Thankfully my wife has an extensive medical background and knows that “1 hour” means 1.5 at least. Still, 3 hours is enough for anyone to be worried. That long of a recovery either means they’ve coded or there is something seriously wrong. I then came to find out that every single nurse on that floor knew that my wife was waiting for me but no one had the decency to tell her what was happening to me.

Needless to say we had talks with the hospital administration regarding our stay.

So, the day goes on, I spend the night in the hospital, and I’m slowly weened off of oxygen so I can breathe room air. Through the night I was coughing up blood which was explained off as side effects from the breathing tube during surgery. Everything starts to look a little better and the surgeon shows up to discharge me. He tells me that there was nothing wrong with my appendix and that sometimes people just have pain for no reason. I thought this was really odd because it really takes a lot of me to even go to doctor let alone go to the ER. I expressed my concerns about the mysterious pain that brought me in and the bloody coughing and went on my way home.

Later that night as was laying down for bed, in the office/spare bedroom, I noticed I had a slight wheeze. The hospital staff mentioned to me that after abdominal surgery patients usually have a hard time getting back to normal breathing because of the pain from taking deep breaths. I didn’t think anything of it and tried to go to sleep.

6:00 AM rolls around and my wife, who was sleeping in our bed, was awakened by our cats fighting in the laundry room across the house. She then noticed my wheezing and grabbed a thermometer… 102.8 degrees. Calmly she pulled me out of bed and somehow got me into the car. A short car ride later and I’m back in the ER.

After some more talks and a simple, simple chest X-ray we come to find out I have a severe case of pneumonia. It was described to my wife as “the last few hours of a cancer or AIDS patient”… nice.

From the ER I get transferred to the ICU. Later we came to find out I had a 50% chance of living. It still hasn’t really hit me yet. While in the ICU I had a ton of tests to find out what caused this whole thing. Some doctors thought that I had pneumonia the entire time since it can start out as abdominal pain, while other doctors thought there was something else. After a quick ultrasound the something else was revealed. My gallbladder has an abnormal amount of stones and needs to be taken out as soon as possible. Since I have pneumonia the surgery will need to be postponed until I’m stable enough to handle yet another cutting.

I spent 2 whole days in the ICU and finally got transferred to the “floor” only to run into more problems…

I’ve had nose bleeds since I was very young and I still get them when the weather is dry and certain conditions are met. Now, with all of the nasal high-flow oxygen, plus the anti-clotting agents I was injected with, plus my elevated blood pressure from a high heart rate from the pneumonia… well, you can probably guess it was an equation that could only result in an explosion. I’ve had bad nose bleeds in my time, I even had to go the ER a few times as well as have electric cauterization 4 times, this was the absolute worst nose bleed I’ve ever had in my life. ENT ended up having to come to the room and do an emergency cauterization and suck out the clot. The result is that I can’t lay down past a 45 degree angle for 2 days or blow my nose for at least a week.

A day later I finally get the approval to go home and get some real rest.

This whole ordeal could have all been avoided if they would have listened to me in recovery, put 2 and 2 together, and gave me a damn chest X-Ray. Welcome to American Heath Care.