The Irony – Facing My Other Big Fear

Only a week ago I wrote about the 2 BIG FEARS I had as I entered the world of single Mom-hood. My second biggest fear -- the potential of losing my job – is one that I’ve been dealing with for the last several months. You'll remember that my first biggest fear was getting sick and not being there for my girls.

And I faced that fear just this week. I have pneumonia and was rushed to the hospital via ambulance on Wednesday night because I couldn’t breathe.

Here’s the story.

I got sick the last 3 days of vacation – a nasty cough, fever, and chills – the usual stuff. I was feeling better by Sunday (the day we were to leave). I took a long time packing up and driving home and took it easy when we finally arrived home at 7PM that night.

But then the next morning I felt awful. I had a really painful dry cough and my chest felt really, really tight. I called in sick from work and called my doctor to see if they could squeeze me in. I finally got in to see the doctor at 3 in the afternoon.

Usually my doctor doesn’t write an Rx for cold/respiratory symptoms unless I’ve been sick for over a week. After looking me over, she said my lungs sounded fine, but she did write me a script for an antibiotic. I dropped it off at the pharmacy on my way to buy groceries and pick up the girls.

When we returned to the pharmacy about an hour later I found out that they didn’t carry the mg. of the antibiotic that my Dr. had prescribed. The Pharm-tech told me they could order it and have it by Wednesday. I asked them to see if they could transfer the prescription to another store in the chain and that I’d like to start taking the medicine before Wed.

They found a store about 40 minutes away that had what I needed. They transferred the script to that store and my plan was to go pick it up after I finished dinner with the girls.

But I was moving in such slow motion during dinner that it was Libby Doodle Doo’s bedtime by the time I had cleaned up the dinner dishes. I couldn’t face an 80 minute round trip with the girls at that time of night. So I decided not to pick up the medicine on Tuesday.

I finally started taking the medicine after work on Tuesday.

All Monday night and Tuesday the cough continued to be painful and unproductive. When I awoke on Wednesday, my throat was incredibly tight and sore and I had lost my voice. I also couldn’t swallow very well and the horse-pill antibiotics kept on getting caught in my throat and gagging me.

But – of course – I still went to work. I was meeting with a colleague at 4 that afternoon who stopped our business conversation and said, “You look awful. You should go back to the doctor right now. Clearly the medicine isn’t helping you.”

She was right. As the day wore on the tightness in my throat was getting worse and worse. The cough was horribly painful. I even had some problems catching my breath as I was climbing stairs.

I called my doctor at 4:45 (my voice a low, raspy whisper – so very hard to understand) and they told me that they could see me as soon as I got there.

On the 30 minute drive to the Dr. I started to call and text people trying to find someone to help me with the girls when I got home that night – I knew that I was too sick to be their primary caregiver. I left message, but had no luck finding anyone who was free.

When the Dr. saw me she knew instantly that I was struggling. After listening to my lungs she told her assistant to get a nebulizer breathing treatment and oxygen. As they left to get these items, I still – foolishly – thought I could still pick up the girls before day care closed. I called Day Care to let them know that I would be picking up the girls very close to closing time of 6:30 (still very had to make myself understood with my raspy whisper voice).

The office staff hooked me up to a blood oxygen monitor and started the nebulizer (I think it had Albuterol in it). Although the nebulizer seemed to be working, a bunch of mucous got caught in my throat and I started to gag and throw up.

That’s when I crashed.

My breathing passages shut down. I could get air into the back of my throat, but then it stopped. My blood oxygen level (which had been registering 99%) took a nosedive and dropped to 93%.

The assistant yelled for the doctor who told her to call 911. I was SOOO Scared. As I gasped for air I didn’t think about work or my possible job loss or financial stability or anything else.

I thought about the girls. AND ONLY THE GIRLS. Who would pick them up tonight? Who would feed them dinner and get them ready for bed? Who would care for them tomorrow and love them the day after that and the day after that?

So here I am sitting in my doctor’s office gasping for breath with huge crocodile tears streaming down my face scared for my girls – Not Me – my girls.

The doctor rubbed my back and tried to get me to calm down and get breathing again. I can’t really remember what she did, but the situation improved and although I was breathing really shallowly with a lot of wheezing, I was breathing again.

As I waited for the ambulance I wrote notes to the Dr. Staff to get them to call my sister and call daycare. As the Dr. Office called those people, I text my former babysitter (yes, my beloved babysitter left me in late May. I thought it was only fair to let her go since my job situation was so precarious and I wanted to protect her AND save some money for our potential family emergency) and she sent a text message back saying that she’d go pick up the girls right away -- what a relief.

Then the EMT’s arrived, put me on a gurney, discussed the situation with my doctor and put me in an ambulance to a local hospital. I crashed a second time on the way to the hospital.

I spent the next 6 hours in an emergency room. During the time they kept me on oxygen, gave me 4 more nebulizer treatments, gave me a chest x-ray to confirm it was pneumonia and gave me some steroids to reduce the inflammation in my airways.

I was on heart monitors, had IV’s – the whole bit.

At 11:30, a Dr. came back to tell me that I had stabilized and they didn’t think that I needed to be admitted. They gave me a couple prescriptions and released me a little before midnight.

I was there alone. I knew (from text messages I wasn’t supposed to be reading – no cell phones allowed in the emergency room) – that my sister had connected with Kristen and had taken the girls home with her. I didn’t call anyone to be with me. When they released me, I wandered the halls of the hospital until I found a security guard who agreed to call me a cab (my car was still in the Dr. Office’s parking lot).

I waited outside for the cab for 20 minutes and got home a little after 12:30. I left – barely audible – messages for my sister and for Kristen and for my secretary at work.

I didn’t go to work on Thursday or Friday. On Thursday, My secretary and one of the members of my team took off time to come to my house; get what they needed and go get my extra Rxs and retrieve my car.

I’ve been resting for the last 2 days. I got Libby Doodle Doo back from my sister on Thursday night and Little Zo Peep on Friday night – maybe sooner than I should have -- but I missed them so.

I still get very winded when climbing stairs and a little light headed when I get up. I am driving again but trying to be careful to not push myself too far too fast.

This health scare put the job loss scenario into proper perspective. I logged into my work computer late yesterday to find a message the my boss wants to meeting with me for 20 minutes early Monday morning to discuss my job status.

So I’ll know for sure on Monday – I still think that it doesn’t look good – but I’ll finally know. And I realize that nothing that he can say or do will be one fraction as scary as the experience I had on Wednesday night. Regardless if I have a job or not at noontime on Monday – I’ll still have Little Zo Peep and Libby Doodle Doo – and that’s ALL that matters.

So in a perverse way – this 911/Ambulance/Emergency Room experience has better prepared me for the experience I’ll go through on Monday morning.

I’m going to keep busy with the girls this weekend without over-doing it.

. . . Just taking one day at a time.