No joke, no metaphor.

Well, kind of a joke, but just in the play on “I went (PLACE) and all I got was this (CHEAP OR UNWANTED THING)”. Not about going to the beach, even, but also definitely not the sepsis part. And to be clear, going to the beach had nothing *to do* with said sepsis, but since it did start when I was there, I figured I was still within the bounds of accurate wordplay.  Also, while cliffhangers can be fun, I’m not a sadist or a narcissist, so spoiler alert: I’m basically fine now. 

But yes. I’m generally not a fan of the whole “Oh-Em-Gee, Sorry guys! Can’t believe it’s been X days since I blogged last! I’ve been soooo busy doing….(things)” type post, usually because they’re after either 3 days (nobody would have noticed!) or months and months (and filled with little other than self-flagelating promises to who-knows-who that they’ll be a better blogger this time, as if their blog could actually dump them or lock them out).  But it felt a little disingenuous to just jump right back in with a smattering of news crumbles blowing my mind lately, or how Pinterest forced me to make peace with my creative originality fixation, or a new recipe after a month of static without explaining a little about why I went AWOL.

Gratuitous beach-restaurant-art-sale-wall picture.  Because when I disappeared from the internets, I was at the beach! (And then the hospital.) But for now, yayBEACH!

…And because the only things I ever photograph are food, the places that serve food, my dog, and stuff I want to buy but know I shouldn’t so I just hoard the pictures of the stuff instead of the stuff itself. On big girl days. Where was I?

As I’ve mentioned before, I have Cystic Fibrosis. The last year or so has been fairly consumed with a repeating cycle of get quite sick (for me), quite quickly (for me), for no apparent reason (even by my relatively spontaneous exacerbation standards) –> go in the hospital, insisting on answers this time! as to why I keep getting sick –> do roughly the same thing as always, changing this drug here, or that dose there, but with no real change in cultures, drug sensitivities, test results, imaging, or other common explanatory sources for sudden and marked decline –> get almost entirely better anyway (most thankfully, I might add) –> go home and finish treatment, shrugging shoulders as to why but still cautiously grateful for the improvement –> do everything I normally do to take care of myself –> get quite sick, quite quickly, for no apparent reason roughly six to eight weeks later. When I was last in the hospital over Christmas, it was the fourth time that year (the sixth doing a 2-3 week round of IV antibiotics).  When I left, I cynically joked that I’d see everybody around Valentine’s Day, since I had last been in right before Thanksgiving. I overshot and was closer to St. Paddy’s.

I had been feeling kind of “meh” for about a week by mid/late February, but in my more normal, gradual process-of-getting-sick-again way rather than the sudden drops of 2012. Actually encouraged by this, thinking the cycle may have at long last been broken, I did what I always do during such normal, gradual processes; I added more treatments to try to beat back the exacerbation a bit more aggressively, I started taking a pretty potent oral antibiotic – and continued planning and packing for my upcoming beach trip with Madge and Faja (a.k.a. continuing life as usual, if a little slower). Salt water/salt air is GREAT for CF lungs, so I figured a week of R&R on the coast, extra treatments in tow, could only help matters.

See? Grainy Iphone Selfie taken in condo before dinner once I was there. TOTALLY don’t look septic. A little steroid-smooshy, perhaps, but definitely not septic, and I’ve got giant eyeballs anyway, so whatevs.

We went, we ate (fabulously), we shopped (a lot), and I slept. A LOT. I knew I was getting sicker than I thought I would, and that the pace was picking up a bit, but I thought I could stick things out another week until my already-scheduled doctor’s appointment. The morning we left, I was getting dressed and fancified, and started coughing. Like I do. Every day. At exactly this same point in my fancification routine. No biggie. But this time I couldn’t stop, and couldn’t stop like I had never experienced “couldn’t stop”. Rather immediately, I felt quite confident that if I didn’t make my way to the bed or the floor likerightnowthisminute, that my legs were going to just give out beneath me; and though I never have been one to do so, that this just might be what it feels like right before one passes out. I simply could. not. stop. to. inhale. When it finally DID stop, I found I couldn’t really breathe back in, either. My heart was beating so hard that I felt like my pulse was choking off my airway. No big gasps; no sudden, deep, panting relief, just this very weird sensation as if my lungs were already full of air (although they weren’t) and yet still starved of oxygen (because they were).

From that point forward, it took me another 2 hours to finish packing what would normally take me 30 minutes. Fold a few shirts; put in suitcase. Forget that bending over makes my heart race and cuts off my airway again; lay down for ten minutes. Get back up, pack toiletries; go lay down another 20 minutes as legs feel like jello. I was concerned, but still not panicked; I assumed it was just a pretty severe flare of the asthmatic component of my ailment collage, and once a few medicines kicked in, would calm down.

It got a little better, but not much. Because I have these sorts of freak things happen just enough to know how to ride them out (nothing like showing up at the doctor, totally fine, and shrugging, “I really was pretty sick 2 days ago”), and because I’ve been playing nurse/chief investigator on myself since I was in roughly the third grade, and because anyone with a chronic condition will tell you that you don’t go to the ER unless you are in so much pain that you would invite a bear mauling for the sensory distraction OR are fairly convinced you’re in the actual process of dying quickly and uncomfortably (and probably won’t make it until weekday business hours), I decided to do all the things I know to do for these sorts of things and wait it out a day or so. Things would wax and wane just enough to make me thing, “Maybe?” with each trough, but would ramp back up with a little more “Nahh, this shiz is getting real” at each successive return. I called my doctor, started some laundry, and started preparing for a nice long stay in Le Hospitale.

To Be Continued…