My First Christmas In The Hospital

Sorry for the late blog, but I have a good excuse...

Two days before Christmas I woke up in the middle of the night feeling very nauseous. I vomited and tried to go back to sleep, but then it happened again. I wasn’t worried about it, I just figured I ate something bad, so I went downstairs to our basement apartment where I tried to go back to sleep again. I just kept thinking it was one of those bad nights that we all have occasionally. Morning finally came and I felt much better so I brushed it off as nothing, but then that night things went downhill. I woke up nauseous again, but this time I had an agonizing pain in my right kidney that hurt so much I was yelling. Fabiola had to come all the way up to our third floor bathroom where I was just to check on me. I was in pain for the rest of that night but kept ignoring it because I’d felt this and it had gone away before, but by about 6:30 in the morning I couldn’t stand it anymore. I went into our room to tell Fabiola that I really did need to go to the hospital now.

I was in so much pain that I thought I’d need an ambulance (and in hindsight I remember feeling like I actually might be dying) but Fabiola somehow helped me get dressed and to the car. By the time I got to the car I was hyperventilating because of the pain and stress, so I rolled down the windows which helped me feel a little better. Unfortunately, I did not make it to the hospital without vomiting again, so it was a tough ride (and the first time that I ever did that out of a car window). Thankfully the line at the hospital wasn’t too bad since it was so early, but when you barely have the energy to stand up, any wait feels like an eternity. Once they did my intake I finally saw the doctor and was sent upstairs to the room that I ended up staying in for five days.

The first two days were awful. They gave me fluids which helped the nausea and vomiting a little bit, but my chills got so bad that it felt like I was standing naked in the arctic. Once they finally got the results back from the culture test they were able to give me antibiotics that were so strong they made my hand swell up when I would cough, and my fever stayed around 102.6 degrees. Finally, the doctors figured out that I had a kidney infection, pneumonia, a UTI, and sepsis. No wonder I was feeling so bad! After the nausea ended, the fever and headache took over for a few days, but the coughing was the worst. My cough was so ferocious that I couldn’t sleep through it at first. After this hospital saga I was reminded of a very important lesson: take care of yourself because when you have your health you feel like you’re king, and when you don’t have it, you don’t even know if you’re going to live.

I hope that you all had a more pleasant Christmas than I did, but I know that many others can relate to the health issues I experienced. Let’s focus on the new year and starting it off with as much compassion and understanding for others as possible.

Happy New Year!