Ah joy
So I almost died today, and here's the nice long story leading up to my near death.
Every year the army insists that we get flu shots, so for the last four years straight I have gotten the flu every year. I've never had the flu once in my life other than these nasty poultry slime injections. And I guess that since my body is so good at keeping the flu out that once it actually does get in the antibodies are not so good at killing it. So I'm usually sick for a month to a month and a half each time.
This time was different though, this time I got my shot right before I left the island for vacation. With my weakening immune system I arrive at my mother's house, where everybody in the whole damn town has some sort of twenty-four hour plague. I managed to avoid that luckily, but I think that it sent the immune system down a bit more. I head to Columbus to visit some friends and they are all sick as well. About this time I'm not feeling too good, feel like the very beginings of a light cold. I leave Columbus and head to Pittsburgh. I don't think anybody was actually sick while I was there, but I really started to go downhill there. I started getting a lot of headaches and my throat felt like I had swallowed some sandpaper.
Tuesday night was my last night of sleep before I got home to Hawaii on Friday night. Normally I can sleep on any form of public transportation but thanks to the baby farmers I had to hear screaming children on both buses AND both planes. My first night home the coughing starts. I manage to cough so much at such a violent force that I screw my entire back up AND give myself a lovely migraine. Saturday my eyes started feeling swollen. Sunday I could barely breathe through my nose ever and I really wasn't having much energy to do anything. Monday my voice is replaced with some sort of talking frog and I decide it's time to go to the doctor.
So I get up this morning and go to first formation, I tell them that I feel like crap, I breath but don't seem to be getting any air, and that I have a doctor's appointment at 10. Their response was that since I did not have a doctors note yet I would have to run the 3.6 miles that the company decided to do today. I start running, sitting at a mighty 2% energy level. I don't even make it halfway when the air I'm breathing just stops doing anything for me at all. So I fall out of the run and sit on the side of the road for a while, gaping like a fish out of water. I finally get enough energy to walk back to the car and make my way home to shower and change clothes. Now doing absolutely anything is an exertion, it got so bad that I had to stop halfway up the stairs in my house because I couldn't breath and my heart was racing.
I finally make it to the doctor's office and describe what's going on. She orders this test for me that I can't remember the name of. Pulsoxymeter or something. Basically a test to measure the O2 saturation levels in my blood. 100% being perfect and 95% being terrible I come in at a whopping 92%. So she starts freaking out, telling me my body is just asphyxiating because my lungs aren't absorbing enough oxygen. So I get to take this nebulizer treatment (the same kind they give people with asthma) and suck on this crackpipe for fifteen minutes. When that was done my levels were only at 94%, so she started to mention things like hospitals and such but decided she wanted to give me MORE of the medicinal crack first. Finally my level came up to 97%, which isn't great, but isn't risking death either.
It's always fun to have a doctor tell you that you almost died and that you certainly would have if you hadn't came in when you did. So now I have more meds than some pharmacies and don't go back to work until next Tuesday. How lucky am I?
Every year the army insists that we get flu shots, so for the last four years straight I have gotten the flu every year. I've never had the flu once in my life other than these nasty poultry slime injections. And I guess that since my body is so good at keeping the flu out that once it actually does get in the antibodies are not so good at killing it. So I'm usually sick for a month to a month and a half each time.
This time was different though, this time I got my shot right before I left the island for vacation. With my weakening immune system I arrive at my mother's house, where everybody in the whole damn town has some sort of twenty-four hour plague. I managed to avoid that luckily, but I think that it sent the immune system down a bit more. I head to Columbus to visit some friends and they are all sick as well. About this time I'm not feeling too good, feel like the very beginings of a light cold. I leave Columbus and head to Pittsburgh. I don't think anybody was actually sick while I was there, but I really started to go downhill there. I started getting a lot of headaches and my throat felt like I had swallowed some sandpaper.
Tuesday night was my last night of sleep before I got home to Hawaii on Friday night. Normally I can sleep on any form of public transportation but thanks to the baby farmers I had to hear screaming children on both buses AND both planes. My first night home the coughing starts. I manage to cough so much at such a violent force that I screw my entire back up AND give myself a lovely migraine. Saturday my eyes started feeling swollen. Sunday I could barely breathe through my nose ever and I really wasn't having much energy to do anything. Monday my voice is replaced with some sort of talking frog and I decide it's time to go to the doctor.
So I get up this morning and go to first formation, I tell them that I feel like crap, I breath but don't seem to be getting any air, and that I have a doctor's appointment at 10. Their response was that since I did not have a doctors note yet I would have to run the 3.6 miles that the company decided to do today. I start running, sitting at a mighty 2% energy level. I don't even make it halfway when the air I'm breathing just stops doing anything for me at all. So I fall out of the run and sit on the side of the road for a while, gaping like a fish out of water. I finally get enough energy to walk back to the car and make my way home to shower and change clothes. Now doing absolutely anything is an exertion, it got so bad that I had to stop halfway up the stairs in my house because I couldn't breath and my heart was racing.
I finally make it to the doctor's office and describe what's going on. She orders this test for me that I can't remember the name of. Pulsoxymeter or something. Basically a test to measure the O2 saturation levels in my blood. 100% being perfect and 95% being terrible I come in at a whopping 92%. So she starts freaking out, telling me my body is just asphyxiating because my lungs aren't absorbing enough oxygen. So I get to take this nebulizer treatment (the same kind they give people with asthma) and suck on this crackpipe for fifteen minutes. When that was done my levels were only at 94%, so she started to mention things like hospitals and such but decided she wanted to give me MORE of the medicinal crack first. Finally my level came up to 97%, which isn't great, but isn't risking death either.
It's always fun to have a doctor tell you that you almost died and that you certainly would have if you hadn't came in when you did. So now I have more meds than some pharmacies and don't go back to work until next Tuesday. How lucky am I?