Hello,
My name is James D. Gray.
The following will be written in many parts, and at some point soon, also recorded for a netcast. I'm doing this to tell the story of what happened to my health. More specifically what happened to my lungs.
Sometime in August of 2016, I got sick. I was coughing a lot and having more trouble sleeping than usual. Eventually I started periodically waking up in the night covered in sweat. The coughing got so bad that I started to expel a substance that was building heavy in my lungs. Other people around me said that they had been experiencing something very similar and that it was just allergies. The following month, the coughing got so bad that I was unable to continue to work. I was self-employed as a private contractor, painting interiors and exteriors of houses. This job included working around a lot of dust and paint particles.
I decided that I had had enough one night and checked myself in to the E.R. I could barely speak without feeling like the substance was breaking free and forcing its way out. The E.R. nurse checked my vitals a couple times. They removed the first O2 censor from my finger with a curious look and placed another one on. Then they looked at me and thought I looked fine on the outside. When the censor displayed my heartbeat and O2 again, they removed it as well and placed another one on my finger with the same curious look. When the O2 had read the same on that device, they asked me to follow them to one of the E.R. beds.
As I climbed up on the bed, a rush of nurses and doctors entered the room and started me on antibiotics. "I may have gotten an x-ray first" Shortly after the I.V. had started, I felt my arm burning and it started to turn red. I notified the nurse and they immediately removed the I.V., gave me some Benadryl, and put me on a different antibiotic. "This could also have been the time that the x-ray had been taken" A doctor came in to talk to me. They told me my x-ray showed that the bottom of both of my lungs were clouded and that this was pneumonia. The doctor also told me that my O2 was low and that I would need to be put on oxygen while I stayed at the hospital to recover for the next few days.
So I was checked in to a room at the hospital hooked up to an I.V. of antibiotics and oxygen. I also had another needle in my arm where they would occasionally draw blood for further testing. While my blood work was looking good my O2 was still very poor.
Staying in a hospital is hard. I don't think it really matters if you're very sick, hurt, or connected to tubes or not. Most of your day is spent in bed with the possibility of visitors coming and going if they have time. The meals are very general for a wide range of people but if you're on a special diet like myself "mostly no citric acid" then you struggle to find anything to eat at all. While I could handle a lot of foods that were not on my diet in small doses, being sick encouraged me to leave them out entirely. Every time I needed to use the lavatory I had to adjust my bed, clear my way of any tray tables or cables, and maneuver my I.V. and oxygen tube around the room and under the lavatory door.
Also for some reason, right in the middle of my stay there, my ex girlfriend "whom I still really love but can't even say her name because it hurts too much" decided to message me on FaceBook to tell me to stop telling people that she's dead. I don't know where that came from and she couldn't have known at the time that I was in the hospital but it was very rude and of poor timing. I had a heart monitor on and as soon as I saw her name in my messages the nurse freaked out and rushed in to see if I was dying or not. I said I was okay and she told the doctor about my heart rate and he tried to get me to take a CT scan to check my body for blood clots. My heart rate didn't go back to normal the rest of my stay at the hospital. Just saying "poor timing" could have ended me right there. Thanks. And who said that I said you were dead? I can't even say your name! This issue will come up again.
After a few days of being in the hospital, my anxiety started to overcome my will. I found myself being unable to get comfortable. I couldn't lie on my side, I couldn't shower with the needles in my arms, I couldn't eat, and my obsessive routines were not being satisfied. I expressed my frustrations with my doctor but they advised me to stay in the hospital until my treatment was complete. I refused and the doctor sent me home AMA with a prescription for home antibiotics and told me that I should come back if I get sick again. They also set me up with a followup appointment to check on my lungs and see if they had cleared up.
The checkup went well and the doctor heard no obstructions in my lungs.
This was just the beginning for me. Little did I or anyone know, at the time, that the pneumonia had caused a much bigger problem.
to be continued
My name is James D. Gray.
The following will be written in many parts, and at some point soon, also recorded for a netcast. I'm doing this to tell the story of what happened to my health. More specifically what happened to my lungs.
Sometime in August of 2016, I got sick. I was coughing a lot and having more trouble sleeping than usual. Eventually I started periodically waking up in the night covered in sweat. The coughing got so bad that I started to expel a substance that was building heavy in my lungs. Other people around me said that they had been experiencing something very similar and that it was just allergies. The following month, the coughing got so bad that I was unable to continue to work. I was self-employed as a private contractor, painting interiors and exteriors of houses. This job included working around a lot of dust and paint particles.
I decided that I had had enough one night and checked myself in to the E.R. I could barely speak without feeling like the substance was breaking free and forcing its way out. The E.R. nurse checked my vitals a couple times. They removed the first O2 censor from my finger with a curious look and placed another one on. Then they looked at me and thought I looked fine on the outside. When the censor displayed my heartbeat and O2 again, they removed it as well and placed another one on my finger with the same curious look. When the O2 had read the same on that device, they asked me to follow them to one of the E.R. beds.
As I climbed up on the bed, a rush of nurses and doctors entered the room and started me on antibiotics. "I may have gotten an x-ray first" Shortly after the I.V. had started, I felt my arm burning and it started to turn red. I notified the nurse and they immediately removed the I.V., gave me some Benadryl, and put me on a different antibiotic. "This could also have been the time that the x-ray had been taken" A doctor came in to talk to me. They told me my x-ray showed that the bottom of both of my lungs were clouded and that this was pneumonia. The doctor also told me that my O2 was low and that I would need to be put on oxygen while I stayed at the hospital to recover for the next few days.
So I was checked in to a room at the hospital hooked up to an I.V. of antibiotics and oxygen. I also had another needle in my arm where they would occasionally draw blood for further testing. While my blood work was looking good my O2 was still very poor.
Staying in a hospital is hard. I don't think it really matters if you're very sick, hurt, or connected to tubes or not. Most of your day is spent in bed with the possibility of visitors coming and going if they have time. The meals are very general for a wide range of people but if you're on a special diet like myself "mostly no citric acid" then you struggle to find anything to eat at all. While I could handle a lot of foods that were not on my diet in small doses, being sick encouraged me to leave them out entirely. Every time I needed to use the lavatory I had to adjust my bed, clear my way of any tray tables or cables, and maneuver my I.V. and oxygen tube around the room and under the lavatory door.
Also for some reason, right in the middle of my stay there, my ex girlfriend "whom I still really love but can't even say her name because it hurts too much" decided to message me on FaceBook to tell me to stop telling people that she's dead. I don't know where that came from and she couldn't have known at the time that I was in the hospital but it was very rude and of poor timing. I had a heart monitor on and as soon as I saw her name in my messages the nurse freaked out and rushed in to see if I was dying or not. I said I was okay and she told the doctor about my heart rate and he tried to get me to take a CT scan to check my body for blood clots. My heart rate didn't go back to normal the rest of my stay at the hospital. Just saying "poor timing" could have ended me right there. Thanks. And who said that I said you were dead? I can't even say your name! This issue will come up again.
After a few days of being in the hospital, my anxiety started to overcome my will. I found myself being unable to get comfortable. I couldn't lie on my side, I couldn't shower with the needles in my arms, I couldn't eat, and my obsessive routines were not being satisfied. I expressed my frustrations with my doctor but they advised me to stay in the hospital until my treatment was complete. I refused and the doctor sent me home AMA with a prescription for home antibiotics and told me that I should come back if I get sick again. They also set me up with a followup appointment to check on my lungs and see if they had cleared up.
The checkup went well and the doctor heard no obstructions in my lungs.
This was just the beginning for me. Little did I or anyone know, at the time, that the pneumonia had caused a much bigger problem.
to be continued
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