So. Today is my birthday. I'm 34.
As a child, I remember my birthday being a magical day, a day of presents and surprises and cake and friends and, at home, my favorite meal. Now: Just another day.
Though this year, I really have a lot more to be grateful for.
A year ago I was very ill and sick on my birthday. It was only the beginning, but I felt like shit, and didn't realize how much worse it could get. I was having trouble breathing, I had no energy and I was struggling to remember everyday things. I felt as though I had a flu or bronchitis or both.
By the time Thanksgiving arrived I couldn't climb a set of stairs without coughing and coughing and coughing. I remember sitting at the bottom of my parent's stairs, because the hard steps made it easier to breathe then sitting in the cushy couch, and coughing so much that my Dad was worried that I had pneumonia.
After the new year, work at the bookstore was supposed to slow down a bit, but it just kept going. I was working about forty hours a week at the bookstore and another fifteen to twenty hours at the college. Hauling boxes and filling shelves, in itself, is exhausting, but add on another four hours of standing and lecturing and I was dead on my feet by nine pm. I was having trouble keeping up. I wasn't sleeping well, I wasn't eating well, and I was always exhausted. There were days where I wouldn't eat anything all day, except for a medium skim chai. I'd get to the college before classes, and if I were lucky, I'd have a chance to grab a cup of soup, or even a sandwich. On most days, I didn't eat at all, except for the chai, until I got home at 9:45 pm. Then I would heat up a can of soup, or make eggs or just a PB&J.
At night, I couldn't sleep because I couldn't breathe when I lay down. I would spend 45 minutes in the shower under the hot water because it soothed me and helped me to breathe. Or I would lay in the bath tub filled with hot water and doze off there- a dangerous situation, I know, but I couldn't sleep in my own bed. I experimented with sleeping sitting up on a chair with my head on a table or I sat backwards on the chair and tried to sleep with a pillow leaning against the back of the chair. Eventually, I would be so tired, that I would somehow manage to get three or four hours of sleep in bed, propped up by two or three pillows.
You may be asking, "Why the hell didn't you go to the doctor?" The thing is, I did. I saw my doctor almost every other week. She would listen to my heart and lungs, and take my temperature and couldn't hear or see anything wrong. She assumed, since I had been so sick with a cold, that it was just a cough that didn't want to go away, and treated me with antibiotics to deal with any lasting infection. She did all that she could to try to figure it all out. She'd call me frequently to check up on me. She just mistook the signs.
I remember going into Boston with the girls, Kate and Kerry, for a non-profit meeting. I was miserable. I was struggling to carry my bag- it had my tiny wallet, my Nintendo DS, tissues and cough drops in it. It probably only weighed three or four pounds at the most- but it felt like it weighed thirty or forty. I was struggling to walk through the mall, I had no appetite and I was just plain sick. Every step was torture, I just wanted to sit and rest. It was cold in Boston, the wind was whipping everywhere, and it caught me, just so. I started coughing, I couldn't get my breath, I couldn't stop coughing. I was having trouble keeping my feet below my legs, on the ground. I held onto a lamp post for dear life and coughed and coughed and coughed. I felt like I was dying. I don't remember what happened, but the girls pulled me into the train station, where it was warm and after some time in the warm I was able to breathe again. When I got home that night I cried, I almost called 911. But since my doctor had just diagnosed a possible latent lung infection and asthma, I put it off. Lets see if the antibiotics will help, I said to myself.
I didn't go into Boston again, for the next meeting. I stayed at home and tried to catch up on grading papers and getting well. Chicken soup, Tomato soup, tea.
Late February the girls, Kate, Catherine and Kerry, came over to my apartment to watch the opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics. That morning I had noticed that my ankles were puffy. I remember pointing it out to Kerry and Kerry poking them with her finger and giggling. It was kind of weird. I had always had very slim ankles. The following Monday or Tuesday I went in to see my doctor again. She was Baffled- and yes, it deserves a capital B. She again listened to my lungs and still there was no fluid sounds. My heart and blood pressure was fine. She looked at all of my symptoms, and they just did not add up to equal anything. She could not figure out what was wrong with me. She prescribed a water pill to try to get my body to release fluid.
By this point, I was having some very serious problems going pee. I always had the urge to pee and never had the ability- the urine would not come out. I remember sitting in the stall in a public ladies room and hearing the lady next to me peeing and thinking to myself, "Oh, that sounds like it would feel so good."
A day after my doctor prescribed the water pill, I laid down in bed and tried to sleep. As I lay down, I felt a baseball under my stomach. My body was so sick and tired that I remember actually reaching around under me to grab it and thinking: "Why is there a baseball in my bed?" There wasn't anything there, but it sure felt like there was.
The next day, I began to get sick. I woke up with vomiting, and diarrhea and so I took the next two days off from work due to a stomach bug. I went back to work the next week, but was still vomiting. But it was different. I was vomiting up white foam- it looked like soap suds. By the ninth of March I had been vomiting frequently, and living on apple sauce and apple juice and water and tea for about a week. I was having trouble walking down halls at the college, I couldn't walk across the bookstore without struggling and forcing every single step. I was sick. Very sick, and I still didn't know what was wrong with me.
On March 10, I went to work, but left early because I couldn't stop vomiting- it was still the white foamy stuff. I hadn't been taking the water pill because every time I tried to eat or drink anything solid I vomited.
I went to the college to teach my evening classes, because it was the second week of a new term, and my students needed me. I vomited again in the bathroom. I sat and waited in the lounge for class time to come. Other faculty members came in and asked me if I was feeling OK- I must have looked awful. I told them I was just tired. My heart had begun a weird fluttering over the last few months; it was not painful, just distracting, and peculiar, and uncomfortable.
The President of the college came in, saw me sitting there and said: "Steff, you don't look to good."
Up until this point I didn't think she even knew my name. I responded, "I don't feel too good, but I am OK."
She said, "Why are you rubbing your chest over your heart?"
I said, "Oh, its nothing, it just does this when I am tired or stressed."
She said, "Are you really OK?"
I said, "I don't know, I don't think so," and I began to cry.
She said, "That's it, I'm calling 911. You are going to the hospital."
I said, "No, I can't go I have to teach a class in ten minutes."
She said, "Don't worry about your class, your health is more important than any class, we can find people to cover a class."
I said, "OK."
The ambulance came and brought me to the hospital. I waited for 30 minutes for triage. The nurse in triage almost sent me home. He listened to my heart and lungs, took my blood pressure and said, "All of your stats are normal. You're fine." I responded, with as much acid as I could manage, "I don't feel fine." I sat in the waiting room for another two hours until they found a bed for me. Both my mom and dad were there waiting with me. When I finally got a bed, the nurse listened to my hear and lungs and took my blood pressure and said, "You seem fine, everything is normal, but we're still going to do more tests. We need to find out why you still have a cough from a cold you had back in November."
They brought me to xray and xrayed me. Twenty minutes later the nurse came back and said, "I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is: you don't have Pneumonia, the bad news is: you have a Cardio Myopathy and blood clots in your lungs."
It Is strange, but I was so relieved to hear that. My mother has been living with a Cardio Myopathy for sixteen years. I knew what it was, I knew what it meant, I knew how it would impact my life. I had an answer to the illness that I had been suffering with since my birthday the previous November.
It turns out, that if the President of the college had not called the ambulance, I could have died. I would have pretty much drowned to death on my own bodily fluids. I am forever grateful to her. She saved my life.
Here it is, a year later. I am still struggling with the Idiopathic Dilated Cardio Myopathy. I am on a slew of drugs, and my heart is still not functioning as strongly as it should. Its function fluctuates between 15 and 20% of the normal capacity of a healthy heart. My doctors are worried, because of this, that I could develop an arrhythmia and go into cardiac arrest, or suffer from Sudden death. For this reason, on November 22, nearly a year after all of my symptoms started to impact my life, I will be having a Defibrillator/Pacemaker implanted in my heart.
Lets hope that age 34 will be better to me than age 33.
As a child, I remember my birthday being a magical day, a day of presents and surprises and cake and friends and, at home, my favorite meal. Now: Just another day.
Though this year, I really have a lot more to be grateful for.
A year ago I was very ill and sick on my birthday. It was only the beginning, but I felt like shit, and didn't realize how much worse it could get. I was having trouble breathing, I had no energy and I was struggling to remember everyday things. I felt as though I had a flu or bronchitis or both.
By the time Thanksgiving arrived I couldn't climb a set of stairs without coughing and coughing and coughing. I remember sitting at the bottom of my parent's stairs, because the hard steps made it easier to breathe then sitting in the cushy couch, and coughing so much that my Dad was worried that I had pneumonia.
After the new year, work at the bookstore was supposed to slow down a bit, but it just kept going. I was working about forty hours a week at the bookstore and another fifteen to twenty hours at the college. Hauling boxes and filling shelves, in itself, is exhausting, but add on another four hours of standing and lecturing and I was dead on my feet by nine pm. I was having trouble keeping up. I wasn't sleeping well, I wasn't eating well, and I was always exhausted. There were days where I wouldn't eat anything all day, except for a medium skim chai. I'd get to the college before classes, and if I were lucky, I'd have a chance to grab a cup of soup, or even a sandwich. On most days, I didn't eat at all, except for the chai, until I got home at 9:45 pm. Then I would heat up a can of soup, or make eggs or just a PB&J.
At night, I couldn't sleep because I couldn't breathe when I lay down. I would spend 45 minutes in the shower under the hot water because it soothed me and helped me to breathe. Or I would lay in the bath tub filled with hot water and doze off there- a dangerous situation, I know, but I couldn't sleep in my own bed. I experimented with sleeping sitting up on a chair with my head on a table or I sat backwards on the chair and tried to sleep with a pillow leaning against the back of the chair. Eventually, I would be so tired, that I would somehow manage to get three or four hours of sleep in bed, propped up by two or three pillows.
You may be asking, "Why the hell didn't you go to the doctor?" The thing is, I did. I saw my doctor almost every other week. She would listen to my heart and lungs, and take my temperature and couldn't hear or see anything wrong. She assumed, since I had been so sick with a cold, that it was just a cough that didn't want to go away, and treated me with antibiotics to deal with any lasting infection. She did all that she could to try to figure it all out. She'd call me frequently to check up on me. She just mistook the signs.
I remember going into Boston with the girls, Kate and Kerry, for a non-profit meeting. I was miserable. I was struggling to carry my bag- it had my tiny wallet, my Nintendo DS, tissues and cough drops in it. It probably only weighed three or four pounds at the most- but it felt like it weighed thirty or forty. I was struggling to walk through the mall, I had no appetite and I was just plain sick. Every step was torture, I just wanted to sit and rest. It was cold in Boston, the wind was whipping everywhere, and it caught me, just so. I started coughing, I couldn't get my breath, I couldn't stop coughing. I was having trouble keeping my feet below my legs, on the ground. I held onto a lamp post for dear life and coughed and coughed and coughed. I felt like I was dying. I don't remember what happened, but the girls pulled me into the train station, where it was warm and after some time in the warm I was able to breathe again. When I got home that night I cried, I almost called 911. But since my doctor had just diagnosed a possible latent lung infection and asthma, I put it off. Lets see if the antibiotics will help, I said to myself.
I didn't go into Boston again, for the next meeting. I stayed at home and tried to catch up on grading papers and getting well. Chicken soup, Tomato soup, tea.
Late February the girls, Kate, Catherine and Kerry, came over to my apartment to watch the opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics. That morning I had noticed that my ankles were puffy. I remember pointing it out to Kerry and Kerry poking them with her finger and giggling. It was kind of weird. I had always had very slim ankles. The following Monday or Tuesday I went in to see my doctor again. She was Baffled- and yes, it deserves a capital B. She again listened to my lungs and still there was no fluid sounds. My heart and blood pressure was fine. She looked at all of my symptoms, and they just did not add up to equal anything. She could not figure out what was wrong with me. She prescribed a water pill to try to get my body to release fluid.
By this point, I was having some very serious problems going pee. I always had the urge to pee and never had the ability- the urine would not come out. I remember sitting in the stall in a public ladies room and hearing the lady next to me peeing and thinking to myself, "Oh, that sounds like it would feel so good."
A day after my doctor prescribed the water pill, I laid down in bed and tried to sleep. As I lay down, I felt a baseball under my stomach. My body was so sick and tired that I remember actually reaching around under me to grab it and thinking: "Why is there a baseball in my bed?" There wasn't anything there, but it sure felt like there was.
The next day, I began to get sick. I woke up with vomiting, and diarrhea and so I took the next two days off from work due to a stomach bug. I went back to work the next week, but was still vomiting. But it was different. I was vomiting up white foam- it looked like soap suds. By the ninth of March I had been vomiting frequently, and living on apple sauce and apple juice and water and tea for about a week. I was having trouble walking down halls at the college, I couldn't walk across the bookstore without struggling and forcing every single step. I was sick. Very sick, and I still didn't know what was wrong with me.
On March 10, I went to work, but left early because I couldn't stop vomiting- it was still the white foamy stuff. I hadn't been taking the water pill because every time I tried to eat or drink anything solid I vomited.
I went to the college to teach my evening classes, because it was the second week of a new term, and my students needed me. I vomited again in the bathroom. I sat and waited in the lounge for class time to come. Other faculty members came in and asked me if I was feeling OK- I must have looked awful. I told them I was just tired. My heart had begun a weird fluttering over the last few months; it was not painful, just distracting, and peculiar, and uncomfortable.
The President of the college came in, saw me sitting there and said: "Steff, you don't look to good."
Up until this point I didn't think she even knew my name. I responded, "I don't feel too good, but I am OK."
She said, "Why are you rubbing your chest over your heart?"
I said, "Oh, its nothing, it just does this when I am tired or stressed."
She said, "Are you really OK?"
I said, "I don't know, I don't think so," and I began to cry.
She said, "That's it, I'm calling 911. You are going to the hospital."
I said, "No, I can't go I have to teach a class in ten minutes."
She said, "Don't worry about your class, your health is more important than any class, we can find people to cover a class."
I said, "OK."
The ambulance came and brought me to the hospital. I waited for 30 minutes for triage. The nurse in triage almost sent me home. He listened to my heart and lungs, took my blood pressure and said, "All of your stats are normal. You're fine." I responded, with as much acid as I could manage, "I don't feel fine." I sat in the waiting room for another two hours until they found a bed for me. Both my mom and dad were there waiting with me. When I finally got a bed, the nurse listened to my hear and lungs and took my blood pressure and said, "You seem fine, everything is normal, but we're still going to do more tests. We need to find out why you still have a cough from a cold you had back in November."
They brought me to xray and xrayed me. Twenty minutes later the nurse came back and said, "I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is: you don't have Pneumonia, the bad news is: you have a Cardio Myopathy and blood clots in your lungs."
It Is strange, but I was so relieved to hear that. My mother has been living with a Cardio Myopathy for sixteen years. I knew what it was, I knew what it meant, I knew how it would impact my life. I had an answer to the illness that I had been suffering with since my birthday the previous November.
It turns out, that if the President of the college had not called the ambulance, I could have died. I would have pretty much drowned to death on my own bodily fluids. I am forever grateful to her. She saved my life.
Here it is, a year later. I am still struggling with the Idiopathic Dilated Cardio Myopathy. I am on a slew of drugs, and my heart is still not functioning as strongly as it should. Its function fluctuates between 15 and 20% of the normal capacity of a healthy heart. My doctors are worried, because of this, that I could develop an arrhythmia and go into cardiac arrest, or suffer from Sudden death. For this reason, on November 22, nearly a year after all of my symptoms started to impact my life, I will be having a Defibrillator/Pacemaker implanted in my heart.
Lets hope that age 34 will be better to me than age 33.
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