Had to happen sometime

I am well aware that I have been amazingly blessed to have had severe asthma/chemical sensitivities for so long and to have avoided the ER.  I've had much anxiety over that.  Today it happened.

I just lost the whole story of how it happened but the short version is that they were mowing the median, I made some retrospectively dumb decisions about which hospital was closer than not thinking of having my mom get me to the hospital, and I learned a very valuable lesson.  My cat lost my medical alert tag.  I got a new one which is not filled out yet.  So that meant I needed to be able to talk.  Which I couldn't because it was hard to breathe.  By the time they saw me I had been in the A/C for a while and away from the allergen and that calmed things down.  nothing really made a lot of sense; the triage nurse sent me back for immediate nebulisers and nobody actually did that for about 2 hours.  They forced a strep test on me.  I have no idea why.  I have asthma, I couldn't breathe, I was wheezing, treat the asthma and don't gag me.  The scary part is that I couldn't be forceful about the MAOI.  I choked a refusal to steroids and why and did not have them.  But I was given a nebuliser that I'm pretty sure I can't have.  I had checked my BP in the car since I was using a new inhaler and all inhalers pretty much are interactive with my MAOI but in a have to do this way.  But some are better than others.  I was so grateful to finally get the thing that I didn't think to ask.  THAT is how scary and exhausting this was.  I ALWAYS ask and refuse to take things until clarified.  The dr. then came in and asked how my peak flow (measure of how you breathe) was; I said it wasn't checked.  She said I needed one more nebulizer.  That was not given. During the neb. I asked for my BP to be checked because of concern for MAOI/increased BP.  They did not do this.  Instead all of a sudden they were rushing to send me home since they needed my room.  A paramedic literally came into the room and gave me my purse and pushed for me to leave.  I still had a heplock that had worked it's way partly out in my arm and was wearing scrub pants, a gown and nothing else.  I suggested altering these things and the nurse looked the heplock and told me it was going to hurt coming out (having no clue how much scar tissue I have from blood draws; nothing hurts), but also not applying pressure.  I got dressed with her in the room (awkward but I felt pressured to get out) noted my dressing was soaked with blood and rather than treat that she just put a new dressing on, so I'll have a huge bruise tomorrow I'm sure.

It's not until now I realize how rotten this all was.  I was grateful to not have to have steroids and not have to fight that.  But nobody listened or paid attention to this scary med I'm on or the monitoring I need.  And I was unable to communicate.  So I asked Dr. Brain to write a letter to help clarify things and I'm writing one as well so that next time I can hand it to them and have bullet points with I am on an MAOI, BP must be monitored during all breathing tx, steroids can be given with permission of Dr. Brain but I then want to go to the hospital where I'll be admitted if needed.

I also learned that while my new Dr. Everything about Breathing (Dr. EAB) has had lots of information and training in managing Jen from Dr. Body, his nurse practioner has not and so I will have to talk to the doctor about making sure his staff understand that if I am concerned about my blood pressure elevating, even if they think it is no big deal it IS, and that my treatment will look different than other people's.  She wound up taking me off another med, one I may put myself right back on as it is helpful and the doctor didn't take me off it last week even it "he hates that med" and we discussed my use of it.  Again, it's a situation of he may not like it but it is safe for me so it's a compromise.  She got pretty mad at me because I can't do nebulizers 4x/day.  I think she thinks it's stupid I haven't been on them (again, there was a reason), and I honestly told her I can only do them twice daily because I'm away from home so long and I can't do one when I get home and hten before bed as that is the same time.  There are battery powered nebs and I'll ask about one of those, but first we'll see what my blood pressure thinks.

I left the hospital and saw 3 easy patients.  I did not need to have my schedule for today collapse into nothingness with only 2 days to go, but at least the people who most needed seen were, and while I'm still trying to calm down about the entire episode at least I survived the first time that happened.  I did have to cancel Dr. Mind and that terrifies me as I do not tend to manage 2 weeks without him well and it will be more like 18 days between visits.  But I'll also be on vacation and hopefully managing well and after the last months being so intense getting to take a break isn't the end of the world.

What is scary is that my breathing is still not great.  I want it to feel like it did 2 days ago instead of tight and sore.  But again, no steroids.  I could be breathing great on the psych unit.......

Now to fill out that medic alert......stupid cat.