Journal Entry

I got to thinking about Mortality again, something that has been much on my mind lately, and how it affects those around us. In this case, my step kids. It's infuriating that the older three kids refuse to remember that I'm only thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen years older than they are. That I am perfectly capable of remembering that time of ones life, especially since it really wasn't all that long ago, and the differences between now and then, are cheaper family plans on cell phones! *chuckles*

 

Heh, I guess I should elaborate on this a touch. Sometime in the first week of February, I came down with what I thought was Bronchitis, that at least is what the Physician's Assistant agreed that it probably was. I was given a prescription for zithromax (sp?), which is an anti-biotic that targets the upper respiratory system, and is one pill a day for three days. This three day thing made me nervous, because every other anti-biotic I had ever taken in the past was at least five days. Anyway, I take the course of anti-biotics, and do start to feel a bit better, but it plateaus, I don't quite get to where I should be.

 

Now, you have to understand, I am a stubborn SOB, and don't like going to the Doc for anything if I can help it, so I walk around for near to three weeks short of breath, and feeling like my ribs are separating from coughing so much and so forcefully. Heh, as a side note here, as of this point in time, I had been smoking for a little over twenty three years, so no, that did not help with any of this. Anyway, I finally figure out that something got missed, and go see my family doc, whose Physician's Assistant, sends me to get a chest x-ray.

 

I do the hurry up and wait, get the x-ray, go back to my doc's office, get put in the exam room again, wait some more, and the PA brings the Doc in, who tells me in no uncertain terms that I am to take myself to the emergency room, right this very minute young man! Your right lung is seventy percent collapsed, and I have no clue as to how you've been walking around like this for so long!

 

I'm a touch non-plussed at this point. Collapsed lung? well son-of-a-b***h! That would really explain my shortness of breath wouldn't it? *chuckles* A bit upset as well, I don’t have medical insurance, a collapsed lung sounds like a LOT of money to me *wince*.

Ok, I let my wife know, she’s a nurse by the way, so not only is she doing the worried wife bit, she’s also doing the worried nurse bit *chuckles* I drive home, she in the mean time, has told her boss what happened, and her boss shoves her out of the office to go take care of me. She drives me to the hospital, and I check in.

 

The receptionist’s look at me, and one of them ask me what I’m in for, to which I reply, “Apparently I have a collapsed lung.” They look at each other, then look back at me, then look at each other, then one picks up the phone, while the other rushes me through the paperwork. *chuckles*

 

Now, Wolfie knows me in real life, and he’s going to be giggling away at the description I just laid out. To elaborate, I’m about six foot tall, weight in around, at the time, one hundred eighty or so pounds, am broad shouldered, and don’t let pretty much anything slow me down, or affect my sense of humor. So with that said, it might be easier to imagine their reaction.

 

So as it moves along, I’m in one of the ER surgical suites in about five minutes, lot of pissed off people behind me in the waiting room *chuckles*, and being prepped to have a hole punched in my chest. This part really did suck by the way, I have an insane pain tolerance, but this HURT! The Doc numbed up the skin and such on the outside, but pushing the tube through the membrane around the lung really hurt, really, really. Heh, on the plus side for the medical and nursing students that were there, they got to do all the other poking and prodding, because I’m an easy person to work on, large veins, and moving around easy enough so they can do what needs to be done. Oh! Diloted is an interesting drug for a person who most drugs don’t do anything for *chuckles*

 

Anyway, in the process of getting the tube into my chest cavity, it shocks my diaphragm, which tenses hard enough to knock the air out of my other lung, At which point I start to panic a little, I can’t breathe at all now. But as soon as the suction starts, I get air back into my lungs, and everything was hunky-dory. Pull my gurney out into the hall, drag me up to a room, plug me into the wall, go to sleep *chuckles*.

 

Five days in the hospital, four of those days plugged into the wall, before the Doc says my lung is properly re-inflated, and I can go home. So I go home, and have to take things real easy for a month or so, and I am where I am now.

 

So back to the whole mortality thing, I very nearly died a couple months back, and I watch my step kids doing all the same damn things I did to put myself in that position, and they witnessed what it did to me, and pull the old, “It won’t happen to me” bit *grumbles*. Yes, I know they will, and are going to keep doing so, but they could at least pretend to listen, ingrates.