Mortal

It's always been apparent that I have trouble with this concept as it relates to me. Logically I know all of us are mortal, but I guess I'm just too arrogant to believe that I am as mortal as all the rest of you mere mortals.

Two years ago today, I got a hard lesson on this concept.

I was one of the last 5 people at my company who was helping to close the doors. My job was officially ending March 31st. Whenever I've experience highly stessful situation, I lose my appetite, weight and all of the energy I normally have.

So I was obviously under stress, we were trying to close on some investment property and I had not yet found a new position. For weeks I had felt badly. I can remember driving home at night and hearing that tiny voice in my head repeat over and over, "I just don't feel good." I wasn't really conscience of it, but I can almost still hear that imaginary voice. I wasn't surprised because this was how I always felt when I was under stress, with one condition. My back hurt. Just a little, but I began to realize that I wasn't sleeping at night because it was keeping me awake.

At one point at work, I do remember researching it during those weeks in February and seeing something about a kidney infection. The symptoms described alot of pain in the back, more than what I had. I reached my hand to my back when I read that and pushed. Not much worse, but I noticed the skin back in the area hurt like it does when you have the flu.

Saturday I went to the gym and took my blood pressure. It was really nicely low. Good. High blood pressure under control. I get on the treadmill and before I even start my pulse was 125. Weird. Why so high? I don't know but I went ahead and spent 45 minutes on the treadmill making sure it didn't go off the charts.

After not sleeping much Saturday night, I told Bob that I would need to go see my doctor the next day. I had just felt too bad for too long and I was tired of not sleeping. I remember mentioning that I wondered if I might have a slight kidney infection.

At the beginning of church we were standing for the songs and I was noticing that the band lighting was getting lighter and lighter. Let's not make a big deal, I just lowered my head a bit to get a little blood flowing back in my lightheaded brain. OK, good to go, raise it up and...nope, lighter and lighter, lower it again. Finally Bob was getting irritated and said, "Would you just sit down." That helped a little.

At about 2 p.m. the chills started. These weren't the chills like the flu, these were racking bone shaking chills. I ran upstairs and got under the heating blanket and was out for a couple of hours. I rallied some by about 6 and came downstairs and had a bite to eat. Knowing that I wouldn't sleep much that night, I told Bob I would sleep on the couch. Early morning they hit again and I cannot describe how cold I was or how violent the chills were. Bob was trying to take my temperature, but I couldn't hardly keep the thermometer in my mouth I was shaking so hard. 103.

Knowing my doctor's office wouldn't open for a couple of hours, I ran upstairs again and got beneath the heating blanket again. Bob is telling me I shouldn't do that, but I didn't care. I was bitterly cold. Two hours later I crawled out of bed. Temp 105, of my own making.

We get to my doctor at 9:30. I have to make clear how much I love my doctor. He's been my doc since I was in my early 20's and he was a young man. We've grown old together and he knows all my history. When he first walked in, he gives me a startled look. Over the previous few weeks, I had developed severely dark areas under my eyes. I tell him my symptoms and Bob is joking with the doc. Up on the table and he takes my blood pressure.

I see the big dial on the wall while the blood pumps through the cuff. OK, I'm not good at reading blood pressure with those things, but something didn't look right. Doc's head spins around from joking with Bob and said to me, "Did you see that?" I said I thought it looked pretty low. He told me to stand up. Even worse, blood pressure 60/40.

In over 20 years, I have never seen that look on my doc's face before. Bob quits joking when he realizes something is very wrong. Doc says to go the the emergency room NOW. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. He hesitates because he knows we live on the other side of town and he wonders if we wanted to go to a hospital there. Not those hospitals, thank you very much. We tell him we'll go to the one 5 minutes away, a great hospital. He said he would call the emergency room and tell them we're coming. He asked me, "Can you walk to the car?" I said, "Well I walked IN." He said, "I KNOW YOU DID." sounding a bit frustrated with me.

Bob dropped me at the ER door and parked the car. My doc had called and talked to the physician's assistant. She was no where to be found and the desk told me to wait. Five minutes later I go back into a room and tell the emergency doc what was going on, that my doc had called, blood pressure 60/40. I don't think he believed me. They do all the normal non-emergency stuff and my doc tells me later that the ER doc called him and asked him what was going on., since he hadn't talked with his assistant. My doc was more than irritated telling him exactly what my condition was.

We were not aware of what was really going on. I knew there was one ER doc and then there was an Internist. I saw them hook up an IV and I realized they changed the first bag which emptied in what seemed like half a second. They were slamming the fluids in me. New bag, quickly emptied. Three, four, I lost count. It seemed like there were suddenly a ton of people in my little ER space. While they were slamming fluids into me, they were taking it out filling blood cultures. The internist asked me how long I had had the "rash". I looked at where he was pointing and saw weird patchy red places that hadn't been there before.

A couple hours later they tell me they are admitting me, but there are no empty rooms, so I wait in the emergency room 8 hours. I was fully conscious, but the passage of time was really odd as it seemed like only an hour or so. When they finally wheeled me up to the room, I'm thinking they are taking a short cut through the Critical Care Unit.

By the time I got there, my brothers and their wives were there and my niece and her husband. I'm still joking around and feeling a bit silly about all the commotion. One of the nurses came in and began to talk about being "septic". I finally said, "Is that like Sepsis?" She confirmed it. My family laughed when I told them I saw that in the obituaries all the time.

When the internist visited the next morning he said the blood culture also revealed bacteremia. In essence, my blood had also become a feeding tube for the bacteria invading my body. He said they would have more test results the next morning. I said, "So I'm not getting released today?" He looked at me like I was nuts. "Uh, NO." I was confused. Where is the "the hospitals rush you out because of insurance" I had always heard about?

Tuesday, Bob did not go to work, said he was up until 1 on Monday. I knew something was up. My brother and sister in law was back. She needed to get a Mountain Dew, Bob said he would go with her. The nurse was acting weird. When everyone went home Tuesday evening, I called Bob on his way home and said, "OK I'm not that sick and I'm not that stupid. What is going on?" He had told me my sister in law had looked up septic shock mortality rate Monday night and then called him. The nurse had told them out of the room that I didn't realize how sick I was, so they shouldn't tell me I'm sick. Did I look like an idiot? I knew sepsis was serious, but I was alert and.....I can't die, remember, I'm too arrogant.

My doc called me late Tuesday night in the hospital and was livid over the emergency room doc. He told the ER doc when he called, "For God's Sake man, she's in septic shock, get an internist, get IV, get her on antibiotics now." That was why the sudden onslaught in the ER room.

Early hours of Wednesday morning I am not feeling especially immortal any longer. I was in alot of pain, my heart monitor was jumping all over the place and I am passing very large blood clots. I was SCARED. Very scared. I read later that with sepsis, your blood vessels can become so thin that the blood actually "leaches" out of them. Glad I didn't know that then. They had been pumping all kinds of fluids in my for days and when I looked in the mirror I was horrified. I looked like Will Smith in Hitch when he had an allergic reaction. A deathly pale Will Smith.

I finally tell the nurse that I am used to a doc that tells me everything, good or bad, what he thinks, what's possible, what's likely. I am not used to one that walks in the room and stands back 4 feet and gives me minimal information. She must have relayed that information back to the internist because he stands at my bedside the next time and explains things.

Well, he doesn't tell me the mortality rate of septic shock is somewhere between 50% and 60%, but he does explain things a little better.




Wednesday they get things a little more stablized enough that by Thursday the internist said that technically I could get released, but he would prefer I wait until Friday. After the scary night I had had, I tell him I'm fine with waiting until Friday.

Every year now at about this time, I get the shivers thinking about how scary all of it was. Oh, I'm back to thinking I'm invincible, but February and March now give me a small dose of reality.

And I never hestitate to go to my favorite doc if I feel like I might be getting a bladder or kidney infection. They are not something to be ignored, even with the "slight" symptoms I was ignoring for weeks.