Meningitis Take 1

Monday December 19th was just like any other Monday. I didn't want to wake up, I didn't want to get the kids ready for school or go to work but since I'm an adult, I did what I had to. I was completely fine all day. Work was work, house work was house work and helping the kids with their homework was all par for the course. I made the fam dinner and had a meeting at church. The meeting was just like the rest of my day, fine. After the meeting, I came home and sat down to eat dinner with a book. About 10 minutes into dinner and my book, a headache struck like lightning. I'm a pro at headaches and realized immediately that this one was going to be a doozy. It was so bad that I didn't even take care of my dinner plate, I just popped three Tylenol and laid down. This is when things get crazy and hazy and not so good. Maybe 30 minutes later I woke up and realized that I had gotten sick. My poor husband, on the couch watching football and absolutely oblivious, didn't realize that this was just the beginning of his life of drudgery and nursing his sick wife. Immediately I started shaking so badly that I could barely speak. Jimmy acted fast and had both the ambulance and my best friend on their way to our house.

The ambulance ride was surreal. I knew I was sick, I knew it was bad and yet I could barely focus on the here and now at the time. I was so cold, it felt like I was never going to get warm again. The EMT was baffled because my skin felt cool to the touch but the thermometer kept saying my temp was 102. This was just the beginning of my medical mysteries. Note to self: baffling medical professionals never turns out well for the patient. Or their insurance company. At this point, all I wanted was to get warm again and go home. I knew what the ER held in store. I couldn't bend my head to my chest and that meant a spinal tap. I had been tested once, several years ago, for meningitis and it was a very unpleasant memory.

If possible, I started to get even worse once I arrived at the hospital. I was so ill that Jimmy overheard a nurse saying they were going to treat me like a chemo patient and automatically put me on antibiotics. This made the spinal tap results almost pointless because once I was on antibiotics, they wouldn't be able to grow a bacterial culture if it was indeed bacterial meningitis. Still, they forged ahead with the spinal tap and apparently, I was a guinea pig for the ER resident. He made three separate attempts to get fluid and caused a leak of spinal fluid in the process. They ended up having to send me to radiology to have a spinal tap done with an Xray. At this point, my mental facilities were almost gone. While I was getting the first three spinal taps, I started to lose my ability to speak. I didn't recognize my husband. Eventually, I became unresponsive. By about 2:30 that morning, they had moved me to ICU and put me on oxygen.

Jimmy spent that night pacing and praying and hoping that I would open my eyes and talk to him. Sadly, for his sake, Tuesday brought no good news and if anything, my condition worsened. The hospital staff wasn't able to tell him if I would even make it.....

Medical Adventures

Someone (my family physician actually) recently told me that I should write a book about the medical journey I've been on in the last few months. I laughed at her and wondered to myself, "Who on earth would want to read about my medical drama?". Isn't it enough that the poor souls on my Facebook have been subjected to it day in and day out as I whine and moan about the newest development? I've shared this story with numerous doctors, hospital staff and nurses. I've shared it to a group of high school leaders at my church. I've talked about it for what seems hours on the phone to my friends and family, my coworkers and church members. I've emailed the story. Haven't I spewed enough? Now mind you, this comment was made a few weeks ago and now it has had time to stew in the back of my mind. Maybe it would be therapeutic for me to vent it all in one spot. Maybe some other person is suffering through something similar to what I've gone through in the past two months and this could encourage them. Heaven knows I could have used some encouragement when there seemed to be no end to the pokes, prods, problems and tests. And maybe, just maybe, I could get it all out of my system.

So in honor of the fact that my life has been like a House episode for the last two months, I've decided to resurrect my blog yet again. This poor, forgotten meme has been sitting out in cyberspace, ignored for over a year. I trot it out when I feel like being witty, or trying my hand at writing and promptly forget about it when life gets, as it is prone to do, very busy. I haven't worked in almost two months due to this illness, so I have plenty of time on my hands at the moment. In fact, I have so much time on my hands that I am tired of reading, tired of watching tv and tired of living what I had supposed would have been a life of pure leisure. Over the next few days as my meningitis story unfolds, maybe someone will see the story and realize that they are not suffering alone. Or maybe no one will read it and it will just be a spot for me to salve my wounds and work out the tangled knot this has made in my heart and mind. Either way, it ought to be interesting.............