So it’s 3am and I’m working on the computer after a great day. I learned that the best time to talk to the Head nurse is at night, when things are quiet, and I got to lay out a lot of my concerns about my medications, treatment plans, and even make some suggestions that were on mind. They tell me I should sleep more. They do their jobs with grace.
I realized earlier in the day that my need for human contact is growing more with each day. I have so many thoughts that I want to share, when anyone comes by the room, whether to draw blood, check blood sugar, check an IV, clean the floor, etc, I want to engage them and have them stay. I get excited. They are polite, but not quite ready to discuss the God within man, or how most people work with weakness, or whatever. They are there to draw blood because they have a list of 20 other rooms that they need to draw blood from. So I’m getting a quiet “OK Mr Brown, do you need anything?”
“Yes, I need you to stay for a while.”
I don’t say, but that’s what I’m thinking. Anyway, this has gotten to the point that my blood pressure actually increases when thy come to measure it. In the past 2 or 3 days it has gotten high. Like Diastolic in the 90’s, I broke 100. This is not after me doing jumping jacks, I’m just sitting at the computer. Tonight it went too far.
There are buzz phrases that make nurses ears twitch. “Shortness of breath” is one. One of the guys came by and we picked up on a previous convo about organic juice. He tok my Blood pressure. It was a bit high. Then I mentioned my shortness of breath as a side thing when I get visitors.
My attendant got really serious. 10 minutes later my nurse was in the room asking about it. Light headedness, shortness of breath, blood pressure high. She took my BP again and it was in the 90’s. She asked me to relax and I did some breathing, tried to go into a quiet place. She measured it again. In the 90s. “I’m calling the Dr.”
She comes back and says the doctor will be coming, and I’m getting hooked up to oxygen immediately. I ask her exactly what’s going on and all she can say is “We are working on it. Try to relax”, and starts rubbing my shoulder.
I have a paranoia of people knowing something or trying o do something to me without being upfront. I’m also taking a steroid that has the side effect of paranoia. So needless to say, I get suddenly scared that something very bad is about to happen. Especially when there is an O2 tube stuck in my nose. I start crying, and I ask W (My nurse) “OK, you’re telling me to relax, but I need you to tell me right now exactly what the combination of tightness in my chest, you checking my oxygen flow, high blood pressure onset, and you needing the Dr. can possibly mean.” And all she says is “Well, you do have TB. Please relax”
So I sent out a text immediately to people that I didn’t know WTF was going on, but something might be going on in a few seconds and I didn’t want you to hear about it 5 hours later. And I blame the steroids because I was sending it though tears and I was scared.
But I did get a lot of phlegm, which hopefully they can stop bugging me about sputum.
3 minutes later the head nurse comes up and says to my nurse “Discontinue O2”. So W unhooks me. I ask what’s going on. She says “Things are fine.”
And that was it.
I go back to working on the computer, and at 4:30AM, W comes back with a pill for me to take. She says I really need to sleep. But I can’t. It’s not that I have insomnia, I’m just on a roll with what I’m writing. I ask what the pill is. Something like “Ambidextrin” so I swallow it. Then I look it up. Xanax. Damn, I didn’t want to sleep. I opened the door and said to her “Why didn’t you just tell me I was taking a Xanax, this is going to mess up my day, I’m supposed to be up in an hour” I was annoyed.
Went back to the computer to try and finish a thought and fell asleep in the chair. Got up after about 15 minutes, rushed myself into pjs, so that I could be comfortable, thinking I was going to sleep until noon.
I was up at 6:45am. I had a weird dream about the founder of some drug treatment and I was upset with him. Mommy called and asked if she could come over. I just said “Of course you can”. Pulled on my clothes and stepped outside. The nurses stared at me.
“How are you up? You should be out like a light”
“What are you talking about. I slept from 4:30am until 6:45. That’s over 2 hours. I’m already late into my day”
And that was my night.