All good stories start with a quote from Zoolander right? Right. Let me just start by saying I'm a generally healthy person. I could probably eat less carbs and drink more water, but I have an excellent immune system. I get sick two to three times per year on average. I've never broken a bone and I had never been to the hospital...
In the beginning of March I flew back to California to help my sister move to Utah. Right before the trip I had a terrible back ache that I figured was caused by a pulled muscle from moving around storage boxes. Once I was on the plane home, my back ache took a turn for the worse. I felt incredible pressure in my back and on my lungs. I had trouble moving around, and deep breaths were nearly impossible. For nearly two hours, I teetered on the edge of tears as every breath was labored and painful. Off the plane, the pressure began to subside. My back still ached and I took some aspiring. The next morning the ache was subtle, and eventually vanished during the day.
A couple weeks went by while I helped my sister settle into our home. I went to work, went shopping, cleaned the house; everything was normal. Until I randomly woke up one morning and the pain was back. This time, it was serious. I tried all manners of pain relief and nothing was helping. St. Patrick's Day weekend we decided to head out to IKEA to do some shopping. I popped my max dose of pain medicine and hobbled around the store with my husband and sister. After we returned home, they started building our new coffee table while I laid on a heating pad on the couch. The pain was beginning to spread up through my shoulder and it was getting harder to breathe. Eventually Justin checked on me and knew something was wrong. He decided it was time to go to Urgent Care.
At Urgent Care, I was asked some routine questions and had my vitals taken. My answers combined with sketchy vitals (my heart beat was 40 beats faster than normal), the doctor explained that she was concerned I could have a pulmonary embolism and should go to the emergency room right away. Cue Amanda's first meltdown. By some miracle, when we arrived at the emergency room we were the only people in the waiting area. I was able to go straight back into a room and begin all the tests I never wanted to experience. After an ultrasound, blood work, x-ray and CT scan, the ER doctor came back in and gave us a choice. There was something on the scan. They weren't sure what it was. We could take the conservative route and go home with some generic antibiotics and hope it cleared up. Or we could stay and run more tests to get a definite idea of what was going on in my body. I wanted to go home. But I was also on a morphine drip and probably not the best person to make this decision so I looked to Justin. He said he wasn't willing to gamble with my health. We would do whatever needed to be done. The only thing I could think about was having to stay the night in the hospital and I had my second meltdown of the day.
I was admitted to the hospital and taken up to a private room in the Progressive Care Unit. I was hooked up to IV fluids, a heart monitor and forced to answer questions well into the morning. Around 7AM that same morning, things got moving. I had more blood work taken, and it was decided I would undergo a Transesophageal Echocardiogram, which is a really fancy name for shoving a camera down your throat while you lay awake. I was terrified but my nurse talked me through each step. Once I was sedated it was hazy and uncomfortable, but bearable. The good news was my heart looked good, the bad news was we still didn't know what was going on. The doctors ran me through another CT scan and waited for my blood cultures to come back. After a couple days in limbo, they informed me I had two masses growing in my right lung. One was pressing on nerves in my back and that was the source of all my pain. Surgery was needed to perform a biopsy on one of the masses to determine if it was an infection or something more serious. At that point, I was caught between being terrified and an at-this-point-who-really-gives-a-shit attitude. My mother, brother and father-in-law decided to fly out and be with me while I went under the knife. The morning of, the nursing staff came and got me early. Everyone walked with me down to the surgery wing and gave me words of encouragement. Justin was able to go with me into the preparation room while I met more staff and the anesthesiologist. He gave me a magical little shot of "calming" fluid and my memory pretty much stops there.
A delicious-looking 4 inch abscess that was removed from my lung during a Thoracotomy.
Three inch-long incisions from surgery on my upper right back.
The next thing I remember is waking up in the ICU and burning. I remember saying "stop, it hurts" and it turned out I was allergic to the new antibiotic they had administered. Once I was actually aware of my surroundings, I was miserable. I had a catheter, a chest tube and I ached everywhere. My nurses were awesome and one in particular, Brian, was like my own personal cheerleader. He told me I would recover much faster if I could get up and move around. My first attempt at walking was a joke. I leaned on a wheelchair for support and could barely make it out of my room. The next day I had the chest tube and catheter removed and dear Lord above me it was incredible! I was able to sit up on my own, use the restroom and when I tried walking again, I circled the lobby twice on that wheelchair. The following afternoon I was checked back into the PCU for my last couple days of recovery. I was feeling like a normal person again. I was able to get out of bed and sit at a table, eat whole meals and even play on my Kindle. On my last day they gave me a PICC line for the IV antibiotics I would have to administer at home. Which is basically a semi-permanent IV that runs under your skin and in my case, opened right above my heart for my veins to pump through my bloodstream. After receiving the PICC line I was discharged and sent home.
My PICC line + at-home antibiotics of Vancomyacin.
Care package + flowers from my family.
I cannot tell you how lovely it was to be back home. Reunited with my puppy. Sleeping in my own bed. Watching chick flicks with my sister. Cooking dinner with my family. My mom, being the angel she is, went grocery shopping for tons of food and cleaned my whole house. I took it easy around the house for the most part. After a few days I was able to go on short outings with Jay and Speni. And after about a week and a half I went back to work. I wish I could say the story ended there and that I was happily recovered... but about a month later I ended up back in the hospital. My second hospital stint was, if you can believe, about twenty times worse than the first, and deserves it own blog post. I will write more about it later. For now, thank you for making it through my super long-winded tale of the black lung. Virtual hugs and kisses!
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