This week's blog was supposed to be about our recent cruise to the Caribbean (Suddenly, I've become a Travel Blogger?) But something happened when we returned home that I feel is more important. The flu.
We hear about the flu all the time, it's in the news every fall. And we usually just shrug and go about our business; it's something we all have to live with, apparently. It's just a fact of life.
But the flu is nothing to sneeze about.
It put my husband in the hospital for 2 days.
It all started on Friday, Nov 18th. The end of our cruise to the Caribbean. As soon as my hubby stepped off the ship, he started coughing. We thought it was his hay fever, which means his post-nasal drip was causing his coughing. By the time we got home about noon, he was coughing pretty non-stop, so we called the doctor.
They assumed it was his post-nasal drip, for which they had treated him all during October, and ordered a stronger nasal spray and a stronger decongestant.
Hubby coughed all night long, didn't get any sleep. In the morning (Saturday), he complained that the meds weren't working. He needed my help getting off the sofa to go to the bathroom. This was concerning, so I called the doctor's answering service to ask what we should do.
The next I knew, he had fallen onto the sofa, with his head on the seat and his knees on the floor. He wasn't hurt, but he couldn't get up. I couldn't get him up. So I called for an ambulance. The fire truck arrived first, of course, and the 2 men who came helped him get seated on the sofa while I answered questions for the woman who had come. Then the ambulance arrived, and the paramedics evaluated him.
Suddenly, "Okay, we're going to take him in now", and they were wheeling him out the door. I had to ask where they were taking him, hoping it was South Lake Hospital, because I knew where that was. That was the place. I took a deep breath, trying to settle my nerves, gathered what I needed, and headed out.
What I learned in short order when I got to the Emergency Room was that he had a fever of 104, his pulse was rapid, his breathing was rapid, he was dehydrated, his blood oxygen was low and he was low on potassium. I watched as they attached his IV port (which they had put in before I got there) to 2-3 bags of saline, a bag of tylenol and one of potassium. They swabbed his nasals to test for a variety of viruses. They x-rayed his chest. They hooked him up to a bi-pac (similar to but different from a c-pac) to help his breathing. They sent him for a catscan and sent him upstairs to be admitted.
All because of the flu.
Little did I know at the time, but I was fighting the flu, too. When I got up on Sunday, I was feverish, headachy, and coughing. I didn't want to wind up as sick as he was, so I needed to get on that tamiflu you hear about, and do it fast. How to do that? I drove myself to the only urgent care location I knew, and they weren't open on Sundays (which deserves its own rant, but not today). So I drove to the South Lake Emergency Room. They swabbed my nose and took my temperature, gave me some tylenol and confirmed I had the flu. I got prescriptions for tamiflu and a strong decongestant and was sent home. I took my first dosages and climbed into bed, with an alarm set to wake me up when it was time to take more pills.
Thankfully, we are both getting better. Hubby is home, still feeling weak and foggy-headed. I occasionally cough and can't exert myself much, but I've lost the headache and the fever. I ordered Thanksgiving dinner and went to pick it up yesterday, and that was almost too much for me. But at least I won't have to cook.
We are thankful we are managing to get through this illness.
But please, flu is not just a fact of life; it's a dangerous fact of life. Take care of yourselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment