Monday, July 27, 2009

All Talk, No Action

Saturday night, I put my bike in the back seat of my car. I packed up my wetsuit and my race gear and stashed it into my backpack. I set my coffee machine to brew a nice cup o' joe at 4:50am. I mixed all my nutrition into bottles and stored it in the fridge. I even went to bed early.....

...but at 11pm, I panicked. I had trouble catching a breathe. Breathing deeply was extremely painful, if not impossible. My primary care physician seemed concerned, but decided it was likely acid reflux and that I should take a Zantac and see how I felt a few hours later....so off to the store we went to buy Zantac.

By 1am, I had a fever of over 101. And I still couldn't breathe, which totally freaked me out. Walking around made me feel dizzy and nauseous. I spent the entire night on the couch watching Cops!

Obviously this put to bed any hopes of racing that I had, since I could barely stand up...... At 7am, I woke up DH and asked him to take me to urgent care. We sped off and urgent care did an EKG and chest x-rays...... They couldn't do blood tests or anything else, but they were definitely concerned enough to call me in to the local emergency room for further testing. I was showing all the signs of a pulmonary embolism, and that freaked me out beyond belief.

So off we went to the local hospital. They got me into a room pretty quickly, then proceeded to stick me all over the place to get blood and push fluids. I was FREEZING! Poor DH stole a Time magazine from the waiting room and attempted to spread out reading it for 6 hours. He was *so* bored. They took me in for a CT scan with contrast, and that was the weirdest thing ever. It shoots hot dye into your veins and you feel like every part of your body is on fire for a minute. Wowee! I had a horrific fever of about 103, but they never gave me anything for it, so I shivered for hours under 4 blankets. It was horrific.

So at the end of the day, the general consensus was that I had viral bronchitis.

Huh?!

No coughing. No snotty nose. Nothing you would associate with bronchitis. But I am blood clot and pneumonia free.

They sent me home with an inhaler and told me to keep taking Advil and Tylenol to make the fever more comfortable.

Upon further reading online, I've found that a huge number of people taking Macrobid for bladder infections (I had been on it for 6 days prior to this event....took my pill at 7pm Saturday night) that have had my exact same symptoms! Even this many days into use, they complain of the difficulty breathing and the flu-like symptoms. So while the ER doc says it's Bronchitis, I'm still sticking to my guns that this was a very bad reaction to Macrobid, and you can bet I'm putting that drug allergy all over my charts in the future.

I'm slightly better today. Fever is down 2 degrees. I'm not nauseous anymore. I can actually take a deep breath and not feel like I'm going to die. My coloring is better. DH says I'm like a changed woman. Still not going to work today, but at least I am mobile.

So, what a change in events, huh? Within a 2 hour period, my life changed so dramatically..... People who saw me on Saturday even doubted my story, because I was totally normal! I mean, how bizarre? All this heeing and hawing over the Half Ironman, and I didn't even make it to the starting line. I am beyond upset about that, but I'm very thankful that I'm not facing down a blood clot in my lungs or something more devastating.

Life's bizarre, eh? I think I'm done with the surprises for this month, though..... Off to the couch.

3 comments:

Amanda said...

OMG! I'm glad you are okay though. Wow, how scary. Maybe it was life's way of telling you not to do that race? :)

Get to feeling better!!!

Leah said...

Wow, that is freaky! Glad it wasn't something worse... and that it didn't happen mid-race!

SixTwoThree said...

Wow, glad you're okay and it wasn't something much worse. It does sort of put things in perspective. When I look at more experienced triathletes who have done so many races in their lifetime and do my own gut check, I realize 'ah, no big deal. I'll have my chance to do more races later.' This is our time to get everything else right in between...