Interesting thing about Goal #51

Quick story about how Sign Language helped me!

Here's something else you don't know about me. I died. No, really! I did! When I was in college, I got Toxic Shock Syndrome. And yes, there is more than one way to get it, and no, I didn't get it the way everyone thinks. Actually, they never did figure out how it happened. "Toxic shock can result from wounds secondary to minor trauma or surgery incisions where bacteria have been able to enter the body and cause the infection. And TSS can affect anyone who has any type of staph infection, including pneumonia, abscess, skin or wound infection, a blood infection called septicemia, or a bone infection called osteomyelitis". I got it in April and I had pneumonia in Feb, so it could have been from that. Anyway...I was in college, started feeling nauseous one day. Not tossing my cookies, but not good. That continued and within two weeks, I was unable to get out of bed, had this really weird sunburned looking rash on my entire body, was so dizzy I thought I was going to pass out everytime I sat up and basically thought I had the flu. A friend brought me to the ER on a Friday, they told me I had the flu, gave me a bag and a half of IV fluid and sent me back to school. That Monday, I was back in the ER with fever of 105, a blood pressure of 70 over ?? (nothing) and just felt awful. Sitting at the triage desk was the last thing I remember until I woke up in ICU on a ventilator after having been in a coma for a week. After they admitted me, they brought me to my room, I crashed, they sent me to ICU, and started searching their medical journals trying to figure out what was wrong with me. In the meantime, my body was shutting down, so they had to go through and figure out how to support each of the systems in my body, plus get rid of whatever was making me sick.

The list:
-Ventilator to make me breathe, complete with head brace to keep me from pulling it out and from creating sores on my body. (I have the scars prove it. Maybe I'll post those at some point)
-NG tube to keep me fed.
-Central line to monitor my heart.
-IV's in both arms to administer 13 different antibiotics
-Catheter (nuff said)
-No-droopy foot boots so I wouldn't get foot drop plus pillows everywhere else to keep my skin healthy.
-Eyes taped shut so my corneas didn't dry out.

They had called my mom in CT to come up to VT because they weren't sure that I was going to make it. They told her this on the phone!! They had actually called her before I crashed, so when they gave her my location information, and she got to the hospital, she was told "I'm sorry, she's not here anymore". Nice, guys! Then they told her everything that happened in the 4 hours it had taken her to get there and sent her to ICU. I was already in a coma by now. Sometime the next day, they finally figured out what was wrong with me and continued my treatment. 8 days later, I woke up..sort of. I was semi-conscious and pretty confused about all the stuff around me, why I couldn't open my eyes, and what was down my throat!

My brother was there, thank God, because I started signing to him once they released my hands. I don't remember this, it's just what I was told. Half conscious, trying to sign. We only knew the alphabet at this point, plus my hands were swollen up from all the fluids they had been putting into me. It was a challenge to say the least. As I slowly regained consciousness, I was able to sign a little better, but it was still frustrating because my brother was my only interpreter, and he was shouting out the letters as I made them. i-n-e-e-d-t-o-b-e-s-u-c-t-i-o-n-e-d. I'd get to the end of the phrase and he'd go...wait...what was the 2nd word? AAUUGH!! Sidenote...suctioning is the grossest, freakiest thing ever, next to being intubated. I would know exactly where the congestion was in my chest...I could feel it, so I would indicate "I only need to be suctioned a little. Not all the way. Just a little". Um...yeah...there is no suctioning a little. They go all the way down every time. Blah.

I still remember when they finally took me off the vent and extubated me. I felt like they were taking my lungs out with all the tubing! My job that first day was to breathe. That's it. Sit in a chair and breathe. If I could breathe on my own for 6 hours, I wouldn't have to go back onto that AWFUL machine. Can I tell you that I almost didn't make it? I was SO tired! It's hard work to breathe when you haven't done it in over a week! But, I made it. The next day, I went to a regular floor to gain some strength, and WALK! I finally got to walk again. I went 100 ft and I was SO proud of myself and SO exhausted! My ICU doc followed me throughout my stay even though he didn't have to, and he told me that at first, he didn't think that I would make it. I'm sure glad he was there! Before I went home, I got to go and visit the ICU nurses that took care of me, and thank them for all they did, and they said the same thing... I almost didn't make it. I still have notes that I wrote while I was still in ICU, and I don't remember writing them...how weird is that? Dr. Reisch said he was going to put me in a medical journal. I wonder if that ever happened.

Anyway...Sign Language helped me communicate when I was too weak to hold a pen and didn't have the ability to speak. And thank you Dr. Reisch for saving my life.