What to do when you open a box and don't like what follows?
Hmm.. Its been a while since I last wrote. For that sorry. Well... I had good reasons you see which deterred me from writing...which I will eventually delve further upon.
But for now, I would like to comment on the simple fact that I am Html deficient. I spent the better part of my morning trying to tweak the template of this very web page but resulted in not achieving much at all. When I first started this web page I was quite savvy in changing the margins, the padding, etc. but I seem to have grown cobwebs in those sectors of my brain now. I guess I should take a class or something. Thats my solution to everything. ^_^
Okay so onto more depressing thoughts. So reason numero uno for being so distant from all of you was...you kind of smell. No really... you do. Okay, okay... the real reason was because ....I was sick. Yes I know a silent debate has been going on for ages now whether or not I am truly mental or just a closeted serial killer. Well let me assure you... that its the second option first of all and that I was sick in the terms of physical not mental illnesses.
So while I was cleaning the walls of my apartment one fine Sunday...actually the Sunday that UTSAV was hosting its Dance off competition in the Curry Student Center Ballroom if I remember correctly... Okay back on track...so I was cleaning the walls of my apartment... and no that isn't weird that is what people on medication do...I felt a pain when ever I tried to breathe in.
Yes oddly amusing...I know...Oscar nominating I must say. Well anyhow...I continued to clean the wall, which now is absolutely stellar, and then went to the show on campus. By evening I had grown accustomed to the fact that when I tried to breathe it was painful.. so I adjusted to shallow breaths. I'm so creative ain't I. Well by next morning...when it got worse I figured I was a loser and was the only inhabitant on earth who had pulled a muscle while scrubbing her walls down. Turns out I was a little bit off on my medical diagnosis.
So I pulled out the car from the garage and drove to Brigham and Women's hospital in Longwood to figure out exactly what I had done to myself. So I valeted the car, which I found intriguing that they only had this service for patients. I guess if they get lucky and you get admitted long term they get a hefty valet payment from you. Eventually after giving more personal data then what I posted on Facebook to the registration nurse, I took a seat to wait. Apparently the man who tore his finger off at the construction site, the women with internal bleeding, the man with the odd coughing behind his blue mask were more dire than me.. so my wait got a bit extended...since I was still not bleeding all over the floor and able to breath on my own.
My name was called... it was a dream.. nope...it was real. A gaunt looking man who looked like he should be admitted himself called what sounded like my garbled given name out loud and I got up regrettably and walked behind him into the bustling ER. After I was told to strip down and put on the paper thin gown...which had three strings instead of a backside I laid down on the gurney. I answered the usual questions of ... do you smoke? are you pregnant? what happened? And then I was left alone in the room which was created by 4 ceiling to floor curtains...
To my surprise a boy not even 22 opened my curtained door next and asked if I wanted to participate in a HIV study while I waited on my blood test results. I figured it was better than counting the number of band aids they had in the table next to me...so I said why not. Turns out I had to answer a 5 page survey and I got a HIV test for free...nice deal. He then left with my bubbled in answer sheet, and a cotton swab from my mouth to test. I sadly never saw him again...to find out the results...creepy.
A doctor then popped his head in and asked me the same questions again that the nurse had asked me not even 15 minutes before. I figured they wanted to check if my story had changed. He then checked my heart rate which was a bit fast, then listened to my breathing.. which I believe increased when he slide his ice cold stethoscope over my chest. Then he said he wanted to do a chest x-ray and an EKG. I said sounds like fun...lets do it. My EKG showed that the right side of my heart was a bit strained...and he figured it might be due to the labored breathing epidemic I was exhibiting since the night before. Before he left he asked if I was really cleaning my wall the night before and then smiled and left.
More time passed and now my only source of entertainment was playing peek a boo with my feet under the blanket. So it turned out my blood test and chest x-ray were a bit suspicious but not definite so they said I had to go for a CT of the chest. Which is basically a machine which takes cross-sectional x-rays of the organs and tissues in the chest and then combines all the images taken (roughly about 1000) for a detailed image of the interior of the chest. And if they suspect a blockage of sorts they also use a contrast dye, which they injected into your arm (yes I know..what fun to have every blood vessel in your chest all of a sudden light up). It was a odd sensation, when they injected the iodine dye into my arm...you heat up immediately and then the heat gravitates to your pelvis...making you believe you wet yourself. Truly odd. But you also get kind of light headed and you end up with a metallic taste in your mouth which is kind of gross. Oh well.
After hopping back onto my gurney again. I then waited some more for a diagnosis. I kind of assumed it wasn't a pulled muscle anymore. But I was hopeful. The doctor peeked back in and said you are a healthy young girl... to which I smiled because I figured that meant I was okay. But then he didn't stop there...which then froze the smile on my face. He went on further to say I had bilateral Pulmonary Emboli. Now since I wasn't in med school yet I was a bit confused by what this meant...so he went onto explain that this meant...I had a blood clot that had formed somewhere in my body...probably my legs which then broke off and traveled to one of my pulmonary arteries in my lungs and had lodged itself in there which was cutting off blood supply and oxygen to a portion of my lung which was resulting in a pulmonary infarction. (death of lung tissue due to lack of oxygen) By bilateral he meant I had somehow managed to get more than one blood clot or emboli lodged in both of my lungs. Hmm... apparently I was in serious trouble and I was admitted into the hospital.
You know you are in bad shape when the hospital asks where they can reach your family, and asks if you would like for them to call a priest. Whenever a sentence ends in "call a priest" it is never good. But I pulled through...after nights of pain and crying...comatose like appearances, dehydration, my mother trying to kill me by turning up the oxygen level on my mask a notch too high, severe nausea, heart attack level heart beat rates, friends coming to see me, and of course family. I finally ran away after a week in the hospital...promising to continue with 6 months of a blood thinner regime...and 2x weekly blood test.
Turns out I have a 1 in 20 chance of getting it again...
I have accepted that since I initially had a 100 in 100,000 chance of getting a PE in the first place...
So that in a nutshell is why I couldn't write for a while...sorry.
But for now, I would like to comment on the simple fact that I am Html deficient. I spent the better part of my morning trying to tweak the template of this very web page but resulted in not achieving much at all. When I first started this web page I was quite savvy in changing the margins, the padding, etc. but I seem to have grown cobwebs in those sectors of my brain now. I guess I should take a class or something. Thats my solution to everything. ^_^
Okay so onto more depressing thoughts. So reason numero uno for being so distant from all of you was...you kind of smell. No really... you do. Okay, okay... the real reason was because ....I was sick. Yes I know a silent debate has been going on for ages now whether or not I am truly mental or just a closeted serial killer. Well let me assure you... that its the second option first of all and that I was sick in the terms of physical not mental illnesses.
So while I was cleaning the walls of my apartment one fine Sunday...actually the Sunday that UTSAV was hosting its Dance off competition in the Curry Student Center Ballroom if I remember correctly... Okay back on track...so I was cleaning the walls of my apartment... and no that isn't weird that is what people on medication do...I felt a pain when ever I tried to breathe in.
Yes oddly amusing...I know...Oscar nominating I must say. Well anyhow...I continued to clean the wall, which now is absolutely stellar, and then went to the show on campus. By evening I had grown accustomed to the fact that when I tried to breathe it was painful.. so I adjusted to shallow breaths. I'm so creative ain't I. Well by next morning...when it got worse I figured I was a loser and was the only inhabitant on earth who had pulled a muscle while scrubbing her walls down. Turns out I was a little bit off on my medical diagnosis.
So I pulled out the car from the garage and drove to Brigham and Women's hospital in Longwood to figure out exactly what I had done to myself. So I valeted the car, which I found intriguing that they only had this service for patients. I guess if they get lucky and you get admitted long term they get a hefty valet payment from you. Eventually after giving more personal data then what I posted on Facebook to the registration nurse, I took a seat to wait. Apparently the man who tore his finger off at the construction site, the women with internal bleeding, the man with the odd coughing behind his blue mask were more dire than me.. so my wait got a bit extended...since I was still not bleeding all over the floor and able to breath on my own.
My name was called... it was a dream.. nope...it was real. A gaunt looking man who looked like he should be admitted himself called what sounded like my garbled given name out loud and I got up regrettably and walked behind him into the bustling ER. After I was told to strip down and put on the paper thin gown...which had three strings instead of a backside I laid down on the gurney. I answered the usual questions of ... do you smoke? are you pregnant? what happened? And then I was left alone in the room which was created by 4 ceiling to floor curtains...
To my surprise a boy not even 22 opened my curtained door next and asked if I wanted to participate in a HIV study while I waited on my blood test results. I figured it was better than counting the number of band aids they had in the table next to me...so I said why not. Turns out I had to answer a 5 page survey and I got a HIV test for free...nice deal. He then left with my bubbled in answer sheet, and a cotton swab from my mouth to test. I sadly never saw him again...to find out the results...creepy.
A doctor then popped his head in and asked me the same questions again that the nurse had asked me not even 15 minutes before. I figured they wanted to check if my story had changed. He then checked my heart rate which was a bit fast, then listened to my breathing.. which I believe increased when he slide his ice cold stethoscope over my chest. Then he said he wanted to do a chest x-ray and an EKG. I said sounds like fun...lets do it. My EKG showed that the right side of my heart was a bit strained...and he figured it might be due to the labored breathing epidemic I was exhibiting since the night before. Before he left he asked if I was really cleaning my wall the night before and then smiled and left.
More time passed and now my only source of entertainment was playing peek a boo with my feet under the blanket. So it turned out my blood test and chest x-ray were a bit suspicious but not definite so they said I had to go for a CT of the chest. Which is basically a machine which takes cross-sectional x-rays of the organs and tissues in the chest and then combines all the images taken (roughly about 1000) for a detailed image of the interior of the chest. And if they suspect a blockage of sorts they also use a contrast dye, which they injected into your arm (yes I know..what fun to have every blood vessel in your chest all of a sudden light up). It was a odd sensation, when they injected the iodine dye into my arm...you heat up immediately and then the heat gravitates to your pelvis...making you believe you wet yourself. Truly odd. But you also get kind of light headed and you end up with a metallic taste in your mouth which is kind of gross. Oh well.
After hopping back onto my gurney again. I then waited some more for a diagnosis. I kind of assumed it wasn't a pulled muscle anymore. But I was hopeful. The doctor peeked back in and said you are a healthy young girl... to which I smiled because I figured that meant I was okay. But then he didn't stop there...which then froze the smile on my face. He went on further to say I had bilateral Pulmonary Emboli. Now since I wasn't in med school yet I was a bit confused by what this meant...so he went onto explain that this meant...I had a blood clot that had formed somewhere in my body...probably my legs which then broke off and traveled to one of my pulmonary arteries in my lungs and had lodged itself in there which was cutting off blood supply and oxygen to a portion of my lung which was resulting in a pulmonary infarction. (death of lung tissue due to lack of oxygen) By bilateral he meant I had somehow managed to get more than one blood clot or emboli lodged in both of my lungs. Hmm... apparently I was in serious trouble and I was admitted into the hospital.
You know you are in bad shape when the hospital asks where they can reach your family, and asks if you would like for them to call a priest. Whenever a sentence ends in "call a priest" it is never good. But I pulled through...after nights of pain and crying...comatose like appearances, dehydration, my mother trying to kill me by turning up the oxygen level on my mask a notch too high, severe nausea, heart attack level heart beat rates, friends coming to see me, and of course family. I finally ran away after a week in the hospital...promising to continue with 6 months of a blood thinner regime...and 2x weekly blood test.
Turns out I have a 1 in 20 chance of getting it again...
I have accepted that since I initially had a 100 in 100,000 chance of getting a PE in the first place...
So that in a nutshell is why I couldn't write for a while...sorry.
posted by Khush51 at 10:13 AM
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