ENDURING SEPSIS with Dysautonomia Part 1 of 2

It had only been six weeks since I was last hospitalized with a very serious bacterial infection, so I was not quite prepared when I suddenly came down with those, oh, so familiar body aches and a rapidly spiking fever again 2 weeks ago. It is so amazing and quite terrifying just how fast it all comes on! It is very hard to explain how dreadful that feeling is when it all starts but I have come to know 'the feeling' very well, unfortunately. I seem to be relatively {normal} one minute and spiraling downhill very quickly the next. It happens so fast that I barely have time to let someone know and then quickly lay down, if I'm not already. Then the extreme violent shaking begins, followed by horrible nausea, vomiting and gut wrenching pain. And it lasts. And it lasts. My goodness, does it last. The pain is like nothing I've ever experienced. Childbirth was nothing compared to this!

Thankfully, this time it happened in the early evening when Bek was already home with me. Plus, D was almost home for the day. As soon as I could get settled down just a bit, we loaded up and headed to the ER. Have I mentioned just how bad I hate that place?

When we arrived, they called us back to triage. By that time, I was bawling my eyeballs out and, at times, literally screaming from the excruciating pain! In the middle of all that, the nurse was trying to get me to answer all kinds of questions. Now, after working in the medical profession for many, many years, I totally understand she was just doing her job. However, when you are in pain - you know, the kind of pain that is at least a 20 on the pain scale of 1-10 - you just can't think straight enough to answer all those questions they ask. The questions they have already asked (and usually already have the answers to in their computer) the last 15 times you were in the hospital - THIS YEAR! My chart is flagged for SEPSIS for goodness sakes!

After a quick triage, we sat in the waiting room for what seemed like an eternity to me but was actually just a few short minutes. I don't remember much about the next little while. Apparently, my blood pressure dropped to 58/34 and I lost consciousness. This was followed by a brief 'freaking out' period where all the ER personnel ran around in circles telling everyone else to find the crash cart. Of course, this is quite common for me, especially when I am SEPTIC and sitting UP in a wheelchair. However, it is NOT common for most everyone else, so it tends to send the whole ER into a bit of a frenzy, even as D stands there calmly telling them I am fine, just get give me a few minutes of laying down with my feet raised to let the blood flow back to my brain! It works every time!

When I woke, I was in a bed with a team of doctors and nurses surrounding me, poking and prodding me from every direction. It took me a few minutes to figure out where in the world I was and what was going on - again, nothing uncommon in my world these days. I was already hooked up to all the various monitors that were all beeping and buzzing because of something and it wasn't long before they had drawn all the necessary blood samples, hung IV fluids to start bringing my pressure back up to an acceptable level and had IV antibiotics flowing through my body to start attacking whatever kind of bug was after me this time. Of course, when I woke, I immediately started the awful act of dry heaving. I hadn't had anything to eat since lunch so there was nothing there to actually vomit but my body was trying its best to produce something. And it tried and tried and tried. Bless the good doctor's heart, he quickly wrote orders for meds to help with the pain and the vomiting and soon I was off to sleep for a while.

to be continued........