It's about this time that they decided that the Big-Bore oxygen unit was maxed out and not gett'n-r-done, so out came a diabolical contraption called the “universal fits-all but really doesn't fit anybody very well” oxygen mask. A little piece of kit I came to loath and despise over the next week, but it did keep me alive by allow them to crank up the oxygen to full throttle. I guess its one of those love hate things.
While the Docs are still conferencing a different batch of IV antibiotics arrived, with a couple more shots (like in the arm) of something. I was struggling to tolerate the antibiotics and my body was reacting in weird ways. The Infectious Doc said it doesn't matter how they get them in, they have to go in , so they tried slowing down the drips to a semi-tolerable point on one and diluting the other. It wasn't pretty, nice or pleasant but it was working, but just barely.
This is another of those - un-be-knownst to me moments, as un-be-knownst to me at the time the Infectious Doc took Cari aside and outlined a pretty bleak prognosis. This was the third hospitalization in a matter weeks for pneumonia, each time was worse than before and this time it was really bad. My lungs were completely full of infiltrates, my O2 was barely at minimum and I was having severe reactions to the antibiotics. He told her that he would do everything he could but he was seriously concerned if I would survive this time. Big pause - I'm glad I didn't find out until later as that is a pretty sobering reality that you really don't want to hear.
I was a sick puppy. I was so sick that for the first five days I had a remote at my finger tips and never turned on the TV, no Law & Order, not even for the Speed Channel! I was bombarded with IV antibiotics, massive doses of steroids, breathing treatments and a bunch of other stuff round the clock. Sixteen hours a day I was hooked up to a beeping measured I.V. dose machine hung around the waist of my newest I.V. pole friend. I still like Flo better, this one is a bit big at the hips and it talks too much, although she has five casters and can turn on a dime.
The first couple of days were literally touch and go. At the time I couldn't understand why Cari was so emotional when she was there. Knowing what I know now, I'm amazed that she was as strong as she was. Around the third day I showed a very slight improvement which was good news as any deterioration in my condition and it would be off the ICU on a ventilator and then probably the morgue.
The next day I was just a tiny bit better. Another good sign and you're probably thinking – OK good, he's out of the woods and on the mend. Here's where I will invoke “Murphy's Law” Rule #1 again.
As you know, the heart and lungs live in the same hood and hang out together, kinda like blood brothers only closer. When one's happy, the other is happy and so on. After all the pneumonia, my lungs are trashed and have crashed into the fence so what's a heart buddy to do? Step it up to help out of course. Unfortunately heart buddy got a little over enthusiastic and got stuck at wide-open-throttle pushing 180 bpm's with spikes in the 190 bpm range. – Which was waaaaaay over the rev-limiter.
At 3:30 AM I was moved down to the third floor (cardiac floor) with an array of nasty sticky things with wires for heart monitoring all locked in mortal combat with the hair on my chest. Injections of medicine to try and “chip” the revs down to normal weren't working, it was still stuck on WOT. Here's where it gets scary again. So here I am, still feeling crummy, heart pounding like crazy already and the heart doc comes in around six am and tells me I'm going downstairs, where they will knock me out, take a look inside for any sighs of clots in the heart, if no clots they were going to give me a “Jump-Start”, shock me back into rhythm with a gazillion volts. You know the old – rub, rub, rub – CLEAR – zap, thud.. . .beep. . .beep. . .beep. . .beep. I'm glad I was a sleep for that one, but it worked - heart back to normal and of course three new pills to take.