First of all I hope you all have had a great Christmas so far. Now onto other business.
Yes, you read the blog title correctly. I’m in the hospital aka “club med.” Now let me fill you in on the details. As you know I was sick and on oral Levaquin and prednisone for 2 weeks. I finished those on the 10th. I had a decent week after that. After that I started getting more short of breath so I upped my breathing treatments. Yesterday I was even more short of breath and did even more breathing treatments with no relief. We were hosting dinner for Christmas Eve so I pushed on through like I do. After everyone left and I was cleaning up I had to have my husband finish cleaning up so I could do another breathing treatment. Well after the treatment I was still not breathing great and short of breath just sitting on the couch.
I made the decision to throw in the towel and go to the ER at 9:30pm on Christmas Eve night. Let the adventure begin! It was a relative smooth process which I was surprised with it being Christmas Eve. While in triage in the ER I had a bunch of labs drawn along with the dreaded brain swab for all respiratory stuff. I later found out that it did sore influenza A. I also had a chest X-ray and a chest CT. I did 2 doses of IV antibiotics while I’m the ER, meds that I don’t usually use. Then the pulmonary doctor on duty came to see me while I was still in the ER. We discussed doing cefapime like my CF doctor talked about me doing if I wasn’t any better after doing the Levaquin and prednisone. I, of course, asked to do steroids more so specifically IV solumedrol as well because I’m very tight and short of breath. He said that’s fine. Also, when I came in my O2 sats we’re at 90% so I’m on 3L of oxygen right now to help give me a boost. I’m sitting around 97% with O2 on. I take it off to go to the bathroom because it doesn’t reach and I drop again.
I got to my room at 1am. Of course I had a parade of people in and out. Finally got my port accessed at 3am. I slept from about 4am until 6am when my nurse was in drawing more labs and hanging the new antibiotic cefapime. I think I was able to get maybe another hour and a half until it was shift change and people started coming in.
Later another pulmonary fellow came in. He was not so keen on giving me steroids. I’m hoping my CF doctor talks some sense into him when he’s able to talk to him. Haha. It’s really hard going into the hospital on a weekend and Christmas Eve to boot when you have a chronic illness and know what you need but your doctor aren’t there. I may not get started on steroids until tomorrow. I hope that’s not the case though.
I’ll be here for at least a few days to get the antibiotics on board and hopefully the steroids so my lungs can get open. As usual I hope to be out by Friday. I hate weekends in the hospital. I’ll keep you all updated as things go. Thank you for all your love and support.
Until next time…
Girl!! I just recovered from influenza a! It is a butt kicker. I’ll pray that you get some good rest and you get some relief soon.! I feel your pain of a holiday weekend when your doctors are out and you’re left with the weekend and holiday crew to boot! I’ll be praying you have a quick recovery!
Thanks! I just looked at my patient portal and it’s not influenza A apparently that chick didn’t know how to read the results. It’s a parainfluenza different strand. Oh well, it’s the flu anyway you look at it. Haha
Hope you are better soon!