Hospital visit Friday night.

 Went back to hospital Friday night as was still experiencing breathing problems and was worried. I tested negative for covid Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.

I was checked completely both lungs and heart. They did electrocardiogram, blood tests to check for blood clots in lungs and heart and xray. 

Pneumonia is clearing as it should. I suspect my shortness of breath is pollen allergy related. At home I get phlegmy cough. After 8 hours in AC at hospital waiting... no phlegmy cough. 

I ended up talking to a Sacre-Coeur hospital cleaning lady. She works in the ER cleaning exam rooms between patients and had broken a rib doing so. She got COVID-19 March 2020 at the same time I did. She was also born in 1962. We talked about our symptoms and the ones that remained. 

I've been saying my arthritis is 10 times worse. She said same exact thing. More problems sleeping. Extra fatigue and unexplained shortness of breath. All the things I've been saying for the past year. 

The doctor I saw Friday thought I was fine... my oxigen saturation was 'better than his'. Meaning it was 99% ... I mean i'm always told how in poor shape my lungs are in. But apparently they still do an ok job. 

I'm taking next week off work to regain strength. After 3 weeks being sick in bed... I need to get back healthy. Want to do 2 daily walks and get my body back in shape. 

 

Feel like I've been hit by a truck.

 Between the medication and the pneumonia I feel like I've been hit by a runaway train. Between the epic nausea, there's the epic hunger, the sore tummy and runny stools. 

I feel good mid afternoon onwards but as soon as I try to sleep then the coughing starts and I feel I can't breathe and I can't tell if it's my anxiety fucking with me or I'm really experiencing breathing difficulties. The ER doctor said to come back if I experience breathing difficulties and I know if it is covid, you can deteriorate rapidly. 

I also seem to still have fluctuating low grade fever. Up to 37.5 again... anywhere higher than 37.1 and I get the cold shivers constantly. 

Because May fourth was not with me, and could not get my COVID-19 vaccination, I joked that there's an Epic battle going on inside of me... all episodes of star wars.. 

Going for 2nd Covid test today. Did not take my nasal steroids yet just in case it helps give false negatives.

Budesonide - my friend

 I've been taking budesonide under it's various forms now for over 30 years.  Until 5 years ago, I took it mostly during allergy season or if I had breathing problems. Since the pneumonia of 2016, after seeing respiratologist, I've been taking it as pulmicort all year round and symbicort during allergy season (May- October). But since March 2020 been taking symbicort exclusively. 

When I was talking to ER doctor Sunday night, he picked up my Symicort inhaler and said, you know budesonide is excellent for treating COVID-19. 

Told him that when I suspected getting covid March 2020, that I has doubled up on my inhalations when I started feeling my lungs heavy and am still taking 2 inhalations twice a day since. 

After looking at my  Xray he said I have a spot of pneumonia in my  lower right lung but the spot in my upper right lung that was concerning them in December is gone. 

He also said I don't currently have covid lungs and even if I tested negative on the test they gave me at hospital, I should get another test on the 5th. 

He had my blood tested for CRP (C-reactive protein). High levels of CRP with patient spitting yellow-green sputum, is a sign of pneumonia. My CRP was extremely elevated which could mean I have covid but also just plain pneumonia. That's why he wants me to have 2 negative covid tests. 

The good thing is despite having pneumonia and feeling miserable, my oxygen levels were at 99% So my crappy bronchiectasis damaged lungs are still able to keep my blood well oxygenated.

The antibiotic-steroid cocktail I'm on is keeping me agitated, unable to sleep, nauseous and with upset stomach and runny stool. Prednisone, 30mg a day for 5 days. Amoxi-Clav  875+125 mg for 7 days, and azithromicyn 250mg for 5 days. 

I've been having low grade fever again. Early this morning  I was at 37.5. It sucks because it gives me nasty shivers.

Hello pneumonia my old friend

 One of the features of being autistic is often missing the words to explain what's wrong with you, especially physical ailments. When you seek medical treatment, your face and body language often do not match what you're feeling or what you are trying to put into words. 

 This is the third time I have pneumonia. The two times prior, though I felt 'off', I had to cough up blood to seek medical help. This time I was able to notice it before it got that bad. When asked by triage nurse why I thought I had pneumonia I said... it felt like it and I didn't want to wait till I was coughing blood. Got a strange look.

 Another thing I've noticed is... I'm so used to coughing, hurting myself coughing that I really don't pay that much attention to my coughing. Eighty percent of the time I end up seeing a doctor because a family member or friend tells me my cough is worse and I should get it looked at. 

 It's more or less what I told ER doctor. Cough worse bf insisted I be seen. It also never helps that when I get pneumonia, I don't register high fevers. The past 2 weeks I had low grade fever that peaked at 37.6. It's also what clued me in because I never 'look' like someone with pneumonia.

The sucky part? I had to cancel my COVID-19 vaccine. ER doctor said to wait till I'm better. 

How concidental?

Don't know if I've ever blogged about the fact there's a woman in my HR department who is born the same day as me but 20 years later.  She and I have some weird kind of complicity?  Synchronicity. Not sure the right word to use.  She even has 2 children, though boys, 18 months apart!

The funny thing is we are a lot alike and have many things in common. Including a predisposition to asthma and lung problems.  When I told her I had a broken rib, she empathized, she's broken a rib before.I had seen her briefly earlier in the week and she said she wanted to ask me some 'weird" questions.

Turns out that she had walking pneumonia this fall after having laryngitis. Just like me. More interesting even, I'm the 5th person she knows that had both since this summer.  I had strongly suspected that it was the flu that gave me laryngitis that developed into pneumonia.  Now I'm convinced of it.

HR girl was only prescribed antibiotics for 5 days at the Statcare so she ended up with a 2nd pneumonia 2 weeks later.  And then she got the bronchitis with the sinus infection that I had in December during the Christmas holidays with a gastro in between just to make her life more interesting.

I've always said I have a hard time breathing at work. Some days are worst then others, after she came back from New Years, she found it was so dry she couldn't breathe. Ended back at the clinic, where they said she has no infection, but her bronchi is so inflamed from the 2 pneumonia's followed by the bronchitis that she is now on asthma pumps. The red rescue pump like I'm currently using until I see the dr in 2 weeks.

A week of Antibiotics. Bleah

Today was the last of the antibiotics. I have been so nauseous, had heartburn, and all sorts of stomach pains, cramps and diarrhea.  Taking antibiotics often feel like you are being burned from the inside.

But my lungs feel good. I'm not spitting up anything other then clear mucus. I guess I did have pneumonia, even though I had no fever and no big difficulty breathing like when I had pneunomia in 2003., That time I'd been on asthma meds for 3 weeks by then and had had a low grade fever.

Here no fever, just some nasty coughing but no real issues breathing. No wonder they called it ATYPICAL!

So I spent the night at the Lakeshore General Hospital

Last night around 9pm, I was sitting around listening to music and I had a coughing fit, at which point I spit up mucus, that had some fresh blood in it.  After checking it wasn't bleeding nose, or bleeding gums, and it happened a few more times, Terry insisted we go to the hospital. We arrived at the Lakeshore General Hospital at 10:20. and I was  # 98. Whether it meant I was the 98th patient they saw at the ER that day or if their numbers restart at #1 all the time?  No clue.  I was seen by the triage nurse around 10:30 and by the emergency registration person 5 minutes later. They confirmed the info they had on file for me was still accurate and printed me a new hospital card.

I was seen around 1am by a resident doctor who asked me a plethora of questions. She decided I needed blood tests and a chest x-ray.  I had chest pains on the right side, which I had assumed were more muscular from banging into a glass door at lunch time yesterday, because I assumed it was unlocked. It was locked.  After the blood in my mucus I didn't know anymore.   I had to wait another 30 minutes until the intern consulted the night ER doctor to make sure she hadn't overlooked anything. Then the nurse came in and took 2 vials of blood from my left arm and left a giant bruise that's still coming out today.  After which I was sent to Xray. No lineups there, and we returned to the ER desk to give them the XRAY tags, after which I was sent back to the waiting room and told to wait till I was called.

There was signs up saying that blood tests results take 2 hours so I figured I'd be there till 4, but around 3:30 they called me in. I was told I showed signs of being a long term 'heavy smoker', and that I needed a CT scan first thing in the morning, like around 7am. I asked if I could go home to sleep, I was told they wanted to keep me  in case the coughing up blood got worse so they could monitor me. That they would find a spot where I could get some Zzz's. Terry went home at that point to put Zoey to bed and came back after she was sleeping.

They had found a stretcher in the corridor near the nurse's station marked by the letter "L", where I was put at that point. I was told I had to wear gown but I didn't need to remove my pants.  So I took off shirt, put on gown and tried to sleep. Terry came back and found me.  Stayed with me till 4 and he went out for a smoke and said when he came back I was sleeping under the watchful eye of a nurse, so he went back home to get sleep figuring I'd call him the minute I woke up. 

At 6:30 AM they got another patient and moved me to "N" instead, and moving me is what woke me up. I was asleep cradling my purse. I'm surprised I slept in a corridor for about an hour in a half. But after I was moved I was put under bright lights and the person that got my spot was this moron heading to Cuba who got so drunk at the airport, he fell on his face and the plane would not left him on, his choices were probably police or ambulance.   He kept saying he wanted to leave.....

At 6:45 a nurse came to take my pressure and temperature and otherwise check my vital signs. Around 7:45 AM the head day ER doctor came to tell me I was still on the list for the early morning CT scan, asked me about the coughing blood the night before and if I was still, I told him yes. He said that I looked in really good health and that the CT scan should provide answers after which I'd be seen by a lung specialist.

I was pretty anxious at that point, especially since my phone was dead, so I had no way to keep my mind from thinking the worse. What comes to mind when people cough blood is lung cancer.  I didn't think though that someone that sick couldn't be in as good a health as me. I went to see Egypt Falls and did the skyline trail in Cape Breton in early August. I also did this advanced trail in Mauricie national park earlier in the season. Both were up and down very mountainous trails and while I had to stop to catch my breath at times, I have always had to do this going up mountains even as a teen.

I had the CT scan around 8:30AM. When I was about to be put in the machine, the nurse looked for a tube in my arm and no one had prepared me. So she put a tube in.  Where they put iodine inside you  for the scan. It feels weird when they put the iodine you feel like you're about to pee yourself and drool all over yourself. Sensation lasts for 30 seconds but it's weird.

ARound 9:45 the lung specialist came to find me and asked a bit of my history again. Said it was possible I have atypical pneumonia and also bronchiectasis.  That the bronchiectasis was caused by some really bad infection I may have had years ago and that due to that, I have parts of my lungs that have a harder time clearing the crap inside the bronchi and that it could cause bleeding.

I have been put on 2 types of antibiotics. One in the penicillin family and the other in the tetracycline family. I was given more blood tests, 5 more vials were taken out of the tube left in my right arm after CT scan.  I am also going to have to go take a sputum test at the chest institute. They will call to give me an appointment.  I will be seeing the Lung specialist again 2 weeks after that test. He also told me to call if the bleeding got worse.

It's stopped for now thankfully. It's really unerving to cough up fresh blood even in small amounts. And while I thought it was the right side ,where I have some muscular pain and it hurts at time to breathe, the bleeding is coming from left side.   Could be near where I broke the ribs. He noticed I had "Overlapping" ribs. Told him I had broken a rib back in February, but I hadn't seen anyone for it.  He commented "There's nothing we can do for a broken rib except to give pain meds"

So I was discharged around 10am. Was there 12 hours.  I'd have more heavy coughing since the laryngitis a few weeks back and I'd commented more then once to Terry that I wondered if I might not have pneumonia. I had some of my work colleagues and underlings who have been commenting the past few weeks how my cough wasn't improving. The irony is that I hadn't coughed as much yesterday and I thought I was finally better!