Adventures in Breathing

About a week ago, my husband woke me up and said, “You may as well get dressed. We’re going to the emergency room. You’re breathing like you do when you have pneumonia.”

I don’t recall the time. Perhaps midnight or shortly thereafter. I was, indeed, having trouble catching my breath. I’ve had pneumonia maybe eight or nine times since I was twenty and seem to come down with it every year or two recently. I was tired and wanted to sleep. I sure as hell didn’t want to wait around a cold emergency room when I could be home sleeping.

“I’ll go in the morning,” I told him. Besides, trips to the emergency room cost upwards of $500. [Insert argument for universal coverage here.] I didn’t want to spend that much money if I didn’t have to—especially on something so dreary.

“No, you’ll go now.”

My dearly beloved seldom insists on anything. So, we got up. I fed the cat (who never gets fed at home). We played with the happy little guy for a while. He must have thought this was a new adventure.

In the meantime, I heard my lungs whistling. Breathing had become a competitive sport. My lips and my mouth were dry. I was moving even slower than usual.

At the hospital entrance, the security guard (bless him) asked me if I wanted a wheelchair. I declined. I apologized for forgetting a mask—which I intended to bring. He held out the box and said, “Take as many as you want.” He further asked if I felt like I would vomit. I thanked him for his concern, but no, that wasn’t an issue—happily.

When I later discussed the encounter with my husband, he told me, “You looked pretty bad.”

Inside, a nurse drew what seemed like a pint of blood but was undoubtedly a lot less.

The emergency room doctor asked questions like whether I had pain in my left arm or chest pains. No. Did I smoke? Had I ever smoked? No, and no. Of all the bad habits I have, that’s one I missed.

(I reflected on the recent loss of a relative to lung cancer days before his sixty-second birthday. He’d smoked two packs a day for years.)

She ordered a chest x-ray, a CAT scan with a vile-tasting contrast dye to drink, and an EKG. As foggy as my mind was at the moment, it could pick up on the theme. I tried not to panic. I mean, this was only my old friend pneumonia, right? This episode wasn’t anything life-altering like a heart attack, right…?

At the end of the night, the doctor told me that I had an elevated white cell count, so there was an infection somewhere, but my heart and lungs looked fine, and I wasn’t running a fever. She prescribed a couple of antibiotics, then said, “How are you feeling? I’m on the fence about you. I can send you home or keep you.”

Oh, for the love of god, send me home! “My biggest complaint right now is that I’m tired. I just want to go home and sleep.”

She could have admitted me but sent me home. I slept. My dearly beloved picked up my drugs while I slept.

The emergency room doctor called early the next morning to say that there had been an “overread” (whatever that is) of the CAT scan and that it looked like pneumonia after all. I wheezed a sigh of relief. At least I was in familiar territory.