My time

Today I was discharged out of the hospital with only my pants, underwear, and socks that I went in with, my shirt and bra were cut off of me. 

Friday was a day I took off work, at the temp job, to get my temperature housing unit replaced in my car. Only a $1200 fix I’ve been avoiding for months, not wanting to spend the money. I finally did it and while that was getting fixed I had a “Syncope episode” that can’t be explained. 

I was fine all day until I got anxious when another hot flash was coming on, except this was no ordinary hot flash. One minute I’m fine and the next minute I can’t speak, can’t move, can’t stay conscious, while chest pressure is making it harder to breathe. 

I can feel people around me talking, worried, repeating my name over and over. I can feel myself lying flat now, easier to breathe but still unable to move, not even able to open my eyes. I try to speak, I try to move, but all I can really do is breath and at times that’s hard to do. 

I feel my body being moved back and forth, lifted, in what seems like a body bag, and carried in a hurry. I have more trouble breathing, in and out of consciousness. The times I am conscious but no one knows, no one can tell. They rub their knuckles on my chest, I can feel it but only slightly. I feel other pressures on my fingernails, toenails, and the bottom of my feet. 

I heard people around me talking about me, “she definitely is not faking it, what do you think she took, this is not nothing”. Then I saw a man after he lifted my eyelid and flashed his light, still nothing. I can’t move, I can’t speak, I want to scream to them to give me oxygen but nothing. Still having a hard time breathing and thinking this is the end of my story, my life. 

I’m back to “my consciousness” with nurses pressing on my collar bone, bending my fingers back, rubbing more knuckles on my sternum with no reaction. I can hear them talking about me, I can feel everything they are doing to me, now with more pain, but I still cannot move, talk, or open my eyes. I can feel them cutting my shirts and bra off me, hooking me up to machines, yelling my name to wake up. 

Finally, another sternum rub and I can open my eyes, say a few words, but still not all there. I feel a wave of nausea while my body is still not in motion, not moving like I want and need it to. All I can say is “down, lay down” and I hear a woman respond “sorry, it can’t go any further”. I know its a lie and I need to lay down, I need to puke but the way they have me I can’t. 

Finally a voice I recognize, Matt is there, he listens to my need to lay down and finally I‘m able to roll over a bit and puke, all over the side of my face, hair, arm, and cot I was laying on. More and more I come to and am able to form more words, and words into sentences. 

I spent three nights in the hospital with a variety of issues, potassium is 2.7, blood pressure is 80s/40s, every other test has an abnormality, and yet nothing is making sense. Head and chest CT, Ultrasound of my heart and neck, MRI of neck and brain, EEG, EKG, blood work three times a day. 

Each day my lab work gets better, but still no reason for what happened. I was unconscious for a few hours and no one can truly explain why it happened the way it did. 

One thing overall said indirectly “could be stress” and instead of taking that seriously, I laughed with a response of “just a bit”.