Medical Update

Shortly after publishing my last post about my medical trials & dripulations, my condition just walked in to see what my condition was in, & I got much worse.

The visiting nurse who came by to tutor me about my new BiPapp mask did a very hasty prep job & scurried out the door. (thank you to my pal Zombie for the Sleep Apnea Barbie pic) I was sleepy & having a great deal of trouble breathing, but I tried to give the thing a chance & spilled its water all over my carpet. Then I gave up & went to sleep. It felt good to sleep, I had wacky dreams & I was able to breathe well in them. I was a nicely toasted pepper, warm & safe. My family thought it was wonderful that I was finally resting. They smiled lovingly & were eerily accomodating during my waking moments. I woke about every 2 hrs, for briefer periods of time. On Day 3 I started saying strange things while awake. I took hasty notes for a future book on fashion & treacle. I told my son he had a white creature on his shoulder that was taunting me. I declared Jay Leno to be a KGB operative & requested someone kill him.

When the ambulance got there, my loved ones had me dressed & ready to go. Just like poor Rosemary during the devil rape in Rosemary's Baby, I had moments of consciousness where I knew what was happening to me. I also had the same terror & astonishment. In the ER, they once again put that mask over my claustrophobic face & strapped me down....horror revisited. I tried to plead my case to an angelic, Toni Collette-like face, who looked sympathetic. My brain carried her face right into a coma for a few days. My carbon dioxide levels were monstrously high & it really threw a monkey wrench into my physical well being & my mental well-ness. I came out of the coma behaving like a Catskill comic. The first human voice I heard was my daughter saying in a sarcastic & resigned tone, "the mike's always on, isn't it, mother?" While they leveled my levels, I did about another week of being crazy, a residual effect of the CO2. I had a slight twitch & couldn't write a whole sentence, but that disappeared.

After a stint at that torture factory of a hospital, they sent me to a "step-down" facility for some rehab & rest. It was a much nicer place where no one straps you to the bed unless you specifically request it. They also tutored me properly. The evolution of this illness was: asthma....pneumonia....pulmonary hypertension....sleep apnea....congestive heart failure. I am now recovering nicely & feeling worlds better. I have a groovy little sleep mask with "nasal pillows" that are much less intrusive & annoying. The boyfriend has decided that he'll get a matching mask. I'm not sure this is a romantic gesture or just his own hypochondria worrying about whether or not he has sleep apnea too.

On to happier times. I can put this episode in my past after saying just one more thing. The doctors can tell me that, initially, this stemmed from a flare-up of asthma & snow-balled from several environmental factors, but I know the truth & I will continue to write about it despite their attempt to destroy me. This was not a random bit of medical bad luck, this was a calculated murder attempt.

This was......Febreze.