A Little Story, or, Why I Haven't Been Around Much Lately

I came home in disposable panties.
What a strange and unexpected trip I took this weekend!

I go to bed Saturday night with a little tickle in my throat and wake up Sunday morning to a nasty throat ache. I think maybe I am coming down with strep throat. But boy, is it coming on fast! By noon I am all feverish and can barely swallow water or talk. Since there is a nasty snow storm coming I decide I will not just tough it out until my clinic opens Monday morning but instead head into the emergency room and see if I can get something to make me feel less crappy. So at about 2 pm Tom and I drive to the hospital. I think they will be annoyed with me for bothering them in the ER with a simple strep throat. But. Good thing I went in!

First they do a quick throat swab, rule out strep throat but find bacteria. I have a temp of 101.9F and suddenly the Attending ER Physician orders all kinds of testing – boom. boom. boom.


1. X-ray. A really cute blonde tech guy takes me for an x-ray of my throat, then back to the exam room to wait while the doctors looked at the x-ray.

2. CT scan. After about 5 minutes he comes back and rolls me into another room for a CT scan. This seems like a lot of fuss for a sore throat. I have never had CT scan before so it is interesting. Then we just wait in the CT room while more docs look at the scan.

3. IVP. They decide to give me an IVP which means they will inject a radioactive dye into my arm and take another kind of image where the dye fluoresces to highlight whatever it is they are trying to get a better look at. Blondie starts an IV and tells me when he injects the dye I will feel like I’m sucking on a new copper penny and I just wet my pants but I won’t have. I concentrate on not wetting my pants while they make the image. I don’t wet my pants but I sure get a hot, panty-wetting flash down there! Very strange feeling.

4. Back to the exam room. Nurse comes in and I get two big shots in my rear – one antibiotics and one of steroids. I tell her I am having trouble breathing and one of the shots (I am still in street clothes at this point) bleeds into my pants.

5. The Attending comes back in with another doc and they tell me that I don’t have strep but they think my epiglottis is infected with Haemophilus influenza type b, and have Adult Epiglottitis – which is evidently a big deal. My Attending says he has never actually seen a case of Adult Epiglottitis nor has the other doc so they have put in a call for an ENT (Ear Nose & Throat) consult. In the meantime, I will be admitted to the hospital. So they take away my clothes and give me one of those lovely hospital gowns designed by Victorian morons.

6. About 15 minutes later the head honcho ENT guy, Dr. BigNameSpecialist rolls in, taking off his ski jacket. He is given a restrained rock star welcome by the other docs. “Dr. BigName! You came yourself!” (It seems I caused him to cancel an ice-fishing trip; Minnesotans are nuts about fishing, even in a snow storm.) Anyway – Dr. BigName says “I will always come in for a case of Adult Epiglottitis.

7. Dr. BigName gives me the 60 second story if Epiglottitis. It is a life-threatening swelling of the epiglottis, which is a little flap of cartilage that covers your windpipe, opening when you breathe and closing when you swallow. If it swells too much it can totally block off airflow to your lungs. Like, suddenly & totally you can't breathe. Dr BigName is going to stick a camera up (down?) my nose and confirm how bad it is by a visual inspection.

8. Oh goody – another new experience! I forget what its technical name is, but nose-cam looks like a 12-inch segmented insect leg with a bright light & teeny tiny camera on one end and an eye-piece on the other end. Evidently the epiglottis is so far down your throat that you can’t see it without sticking a cam down there. Dr BigName inserts the insect leg into my right nostril. It doesn’t hurt at all but feels really creepy for the last one and a half inches or so. Really creepy!

9. Dr. BigName says – “Yup. Your epiglottis is hugely swollen! It’s a good thing you came in when you did!” He lets the other 2 docs look at my epiglottis through the scope. They have now joined the Club of Physicians Who Have Seen an Adult Epiglottitis patient. (Several other docs wander by and just look at me as they walk past. I realize I have become a “rare bird” to add to their life-long collection of uncommon diseases they have seen. Docs can be as bad as bird watchers, with their life lists of bird species seen.)

10. Dr. BigName says they will admit me to Intensive Care and start giving me massive doses of steroids to stop the swelling and antibiotics to kill the bacteria. Dr. says if I had waited another hour or so before coming in I would have been at a very real risk of having my airway totally blocked and needing them to create a surgical airway. As it is he thinks they can stop the swelling before it reaches that point. Then he feels my lower throat and windpipe “Just in case things don’t work out, and we have to go in surgically.” Then he drops his bombshell. “Just so you know, in the interests of full disclosure, when Adult Epiglottitis patients reach the point of needing a surgical airway the mortality rate is 37%” !!!!!

11. What? Mortality rate!?! I thought I had strep throat. I want strep throat, dammit!!!

12. Blondie wheels me up to Intensive Care. I am given one of two highest tech, high priority beds right by the Nursing Station. (There are maybe 20 rooms in the ICU - but only 2 of them get every single new bell and whistle installed every single time a nice new bell or whistle comes out.) Two or three nurses get me hooked up to the latest thing in smart beds. They hang 2 IVs and begin to give me “massive doses” of steroids and antibiotics

13. SmartBed. My SmartBed is very cool with all kinds of monitoring screens and attachments. I am wired with 12 electrodes for EKG, a blood pressure cuff, a blood-oxygen monitor, some other stuff I don’t know what it is. The bed weighs me, in kilos of course, and I get to feel almost like Eva Longoria until I convert kilos to pounds, lol. The bed also is constantly in very subtle motion so even though I am laying flat on my back it is continuously either slightly raising or lowering my shoulders, my back, my butt, etc.. It sounds strange but it is very nice. Lots of lights and beeping stuff happens. People come and go. I do not fear technology at all so I find all the equipment reassuring rather than scary. Oh yeah – they give me a mask with super-humidified oxygen to breathe. Oxygen because my airway is constricted, and humidity to keep my throat tissues really happy and undried-out. Also? They wheel in an Emergency Surgical Airways Station and park it beside me where it will spend the night, just in case.

14. One of my 2 Primary Care doctors from my home clinic arrives. He says he once saw a patient with Epiglottitis, although he wasn’t on their Care Team. Dr. Primary is there to be the expert on me. He knows my medical history, my family’s medical history and what I look like when I’m healthy. He gets an allergy alert tag put on my wrist band for some minor preservative allergy I had forgotten to mention on admission. He will be the doc who helps decide which antibiotics and stuff are the least risky for me based on his knowledge of my history. This is the valuable role of a General Physician in a highly specialized emergency situation. S/He’s the expert on You!

15. The Night Nurse. I like my night nurse when she arrives about 6 hours into my ICU stay because she has a nice, quirky sense of humor. I am feeling a bit better and I can’t sleep because of the general hubbub and constant welfare checks, so she keeps me entertained. SmartBed does not have a built-in potty, so when I have to pee people have to hold my tubes and wires while I stand up, make a one quarter, counter-clockwise turn then sit and use a regular, dumb commode. So Night Nurse has to measure and sample my pee the old fashioned way. I don’t like peeing in a room with people in it – but when you gotta go, you gotta go.

16. Eventually, they start to leave me alone for a half-hour or so at a time so I have some private thought time. I admire the oxygen monitor on the end of my left index finger. It is much nicer than those clothespin style ones they slip on and off. It is soft latex, taped on, and makes the whole end of my finger glow bright red just like ET’s Heartlight. Remember ET the Extraterrestrial? Spielberg’s late 70’s blockbuster movie? Anyway, I wave my HeartLight finger and try to talk to it. “ET phone home,” I mutter. Wow – my voice has returned and I sound exactly like ET. Exactly!!! I wave my HeartLight again and tap it softly on the bedrail. “ET phone home!” I say louder, with more pathos. Evidently Smartbed does not approve of Heartlight waving and extraterrestrial speaking because it alarms and Night Nurse rushes back in to eyeball me and all my electronic displays. Night Nurse asks “Are you okay?” Then she helpfully offers me a Tylenol enema before admitting that there is no such thing as a Tylenol enema. It is just more Night Nurse humor. And the night goes on; my Heart Light stays bright.

17. Where did my infection come from? In the morning I meet Dr. Hospitalist. My medical clinic owns this hospital so we have our own Attending docs who never see patients in clinic. But they like hospitals so they spend 100% of their practice supervising hospitalized patients. Dr. Hospitalist has never seen an Adult Epiglottitis patient either, but he has been boning up since my case appeared on his patient list. The Haemophilus bacterium I have is that same Hib which all children have been immunized for since the 70s, I think, drastically reducing the rate of Pediatric Epiglottitis which is what docs used to see. He says docs younger that 40 have probably never seen Pediatric Epiglottitis either The bacterium is spread through breathing infected droplets coughed or sneezed into the air. It very rarely infects adults (who, like me, have never been immunized) and even then it usually affects men, not women. Infected adults usually work in crowded conditions. Often they are immuno-depressed by other illnesses or medications. So for me to get it was just really, really really Bad Luck.

18. Dr BigNameENT comes in right after Dr Hospitalist. He is ecstatic. “Oh – you look so much better! What a turn-around! Better than textbook!” Now that I see him smiling and happy I realize how grimly he was looking at me the night before, lol. He sticks the insect leg nose-cam down my nostril again and announces that the swelling is reduced by at least a third. He is positively giddy! He has diagnosed a Rare Bird disease, treated it with aggressive precision and turned it right around—all in about 12 hours. This is a very nice thing for him personally and career-wise. Also very nice for me!

19. They pull most of the electrodes and turn SmartBed into a regular dumb bed. I have no cardiac or blood pressure issues so they don’t need high-tech monitoring – but since I am still getting kick-ass quantities of intravenous steroids & antibiotics and the swelling is not totally reduced they keep me in Intensive Care, just in case. I have to be on a clear liquid diet for the next 3 days because I still have discomfort when I swallow and they don’t want my epiglottis to get irritated by nasty, crunchy food. Clear juice, salt-free Bouillon, orange sherbet – repeat.

20. Finally I get to go home on day three. I am still on steroids, but cutting the dose in half every other day. I should be totally off them in a week. I guess if you just quit cold-turkey you crash. Massive steroids make you feel really good – in case you were ever wondering, lol. I have a long list of ‘possible’ side-effects that will probably never happen but they have to warn you about: headache, eye pain, nausea, acne, thin & shiny skin, all kinds of weird little things. The one big thing I have to watch for is return of The Sore Throat. In that case I am to go straight back to the ER!

Now I have to finish my Christmas cards.
How was your weekend, lol?

Oh yeah - the reason I came home in disposable panties is that when Tom brought in clean clothes for me he forgot about underwear, and the underwear I had worn in 3 days before was all bloody from the first 2 shots they put in my left ass. All told, I had multiple needles stuck in both arms and one hand, two shots in my rear end and two shots in my stomach. I forget what the stomach shots were for.