My first life threatening experience: Double Pneumonia.

Hi everyone, 

This is the first of four life-threatening health emergencies I survived. 

Back in November 1996, my 9th grade biology class went on a field trip to a nearby beach in Yarmouth port, MA, known as Gray’s beach or Bass Hole. Gray’s beach is not so much of a beach as it is an Estuary of Bass River. You can swim there in one spot because there’s beach sand. Otherwise, it was ankle deep, nasty slimy mud you had to trudge through to get to the water. Gray’s beach also has an 800ft long boardwalk out over the marshland and it’s something definitely worth seeing. 

So anyway, it was bitterly cold that day. The temperature was around 40 degrees in town, but when you’re near the coast, it felt more like 25 degrees. I remember I was wearing a thin Adidas windbreaker because I was a dumbass teenager. My aide Greg was like “Are you cold?” And I say “no the cold doesn’t bother me!”. Bullshit, I was freezing my ass off and was miserable. We were there for about 3 hours. I don’t know how none of us suffered hypothermia. A few days later, I had a sore, raw throat. It turned into what I thought was just a cold, which I had so many of before with no problems. For about two weeks, I could not shake this thing. I had a doctor’s appointment in Boston one day and I felt like absolute shit that entire day.. I remember going to Burger King on the way home and I got a cheeseburger which was so hard to eat because I felt so gross. We go home and I go to bed that night. 

In the morning I wake up and I feel like I’m 100% again. I’m thinking it’s finally beginning to pass, so I head off to school. About 3/4 of the way through my Bio class, I coughed something up and it stayed in my trachea. No matter what I did, it wouldn’t go anywhere. Either back into my lungs or out of my mouth (gross, I know!). I could breathe just fine, but it was a very annoying sensation. I went to see the school nurse. I thought if I vomited I could clear my trachea (don’t look at me like that.... I didn’t have human anatomy yet, so I didn’t know the esophagus and trachea were two different things). The nurse was like; I am not sticking my finger down your throat. She was concerned and sent me home. My mom came and picked me up in our shitty 92 Plymouth Grand Voyager. We stopped at McDonald’s drive-thru and I remember getting an 8pc chicken nugget with sweet and sour sauce and a coke. I got home, and I ate the whole thing without issue. We had an appointment with my pediatrician at around 3pm. So I figured I’d take a nap since it was 12pm. It was a big mistake. 

 

 I wake up and I’m totally wiped and feeling shittier than ever. My mom gets me back in the chair and we head to the Pediatrician earlier than the appointment because something was clearly wrong with me. When we get there, we’re in the waiting room for about 45 minutes and my health is rapidly deteriorating in the meantime. Finally, we see the doctor and he took one look at me and turned pale. He used a stethoscope to listen to my chest and had the “holy shit” look on his face. He says this is pneumonia and Mike needs to be admitted yesterday. Pneumonia is one of the major killers for those of us with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Our diaphragm, which is the muscle responsible for breathing, begins weakening at a certain age and we lose our ability to clear our lungs. So the doctor wanted to get me into the ER to get it under control before I succumbed to it. The doctor figured it was too late, though, and I was probably going to die. We drove to Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis and went to the ER. The first thing done in the ER was a chest x-ray to see the extent of the infection. When a chest x-ray is done, the chest cavity is supposed to appear black because that means it’s hollow and full of air. But the color white anywhere in the lungs usually means there’s fluid inside. The results of the x-ray weren’t too bad. The chest cavity was mostly black, with a couple of spots of white at the bottom of the right lung. So I was like okay great maybe I’m going to be okay. They admitted me into the hospital and brought me to a room. I got into the bed which I probably shouldn’t have done. Fast forward two hours and I feel even more disgusting than I did at home which I didn’t think was possible. Another x-ray of my chest was ordered and they rolled in a portable x-ray machine. The results this time were something the respiratory therapist, who was experienced, had never seen before in a person who was still alive. The x-rays showed both my lungs were totally white with a tiny spot of black near the top of my left lung. That tiny spot was the only area processing oxygen. My O2 levels dropped to 91... which is bad!. They changed the diagnosis from Pneumonia in one lung to Double Pneumonia in both. I was going to die. The doctors at Cape Cod Hospital decided they couldn’t help me there and prepared to send me to Boston Childrens Hospital. The first thing they did was try to get blood out of me which is like finding a needle in a haystack. They tried both arms and nothing. Then they wanted to try my feet which I was horrified of. I had feet surgery a year before and I suffered nerve damage so my feet were incredibly sensitive. I would jump out of my skin if you so much as touched them so I could imagine what sticking a butterfly needle into my foot would feel like. Off topic real quick. I fixed the issue with my feet with help from my best friend and sister(now). We used to do a fun activity where we’d put our feet into different things. She’d do it too because she thought it was fun. I’ll do a blog about that another time. Anyway let’s get back to the story. The looked at my feet to find a vein and they couldn’t find anything in either one. So then they were like how about his groin?... Well I definitely forgot I was sick for a second when I heard that. I was like you want to stick that big ass needle into my groin right next to my... um.... well my junk... I was like you better numb that place! Spoiler: They fucking did NOT and I felt every second of that needle in my downstairs... I’m having flashbacks about it now....Soooo anyway, where was I? Oh yes so they stabbed me in the crotch and then they gave me anesthesia(they couldn’t do that first?!) so I could be intubated and connected to a ventilator for the ambulance ride. The Ambulance left before my mom and arrived before her... wait no that’s what you think would happen. But since this is me, I ended up in an Ambulance that had drivers apparently new to New England. So you would think getting to Boston is pretty straightforward from the Cape, right? Nope! These guys started heading to Rhode Island and got as far as Westport on the Massachusetts border before they realized they were going the wrong way. Thankfully I was unconscious during the ride. 

 

I woke up in the Pulmonary ICU at Boston Childrens Hospital with a tube down my trachea. It took about 3 days before the tube was removed and I was breathing on my own. I was still disoriented because Pneumonia does that to you. At one point I forgot I was handicapped and couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get out of bed so I cried. Eventually the disorientation subsided and I just wanted out of the hospital. I spent 3 more days in the hospital and after a clear x-ray I was deemed healthy enough to go home and I was discharged. I was prescribed a C-Pap machine to use for another week to normalize my breathing. After I was back 100% I had lost nearly 30 pounds and was having a difficult time eating. Pneumonia takes away your appetite for a few months. I was able to return to school a week after I got home. After this experience I had to avoid getting colds because they would hit me like a truck so I had to be careful. I had Pneumonia several times in the 25 years since but none were as severe and I survived every time. I’m a very strong willed person and I continue to fight.