He was in a hospital. Of course he smells wrong. Haven’t you ever smelled one of those places?

Sorry it took so long. (They let me out at 5pm, but it took a little time to get things flowing in the proper channels here at home.)

Thanks for all of the well wishes, folks!   Means a LOT. Truth.

I’ve been handed a lot to think about over the past two-three days.  That stuff I’ll build into a blog post in the next 48 hours or so.

I had bronchitis/nasty cold on last Wed. and when I was driving some of the kids somewhere I started coughing. At exactly the WRONG time.   I had just taken a large quaff of coffee, my window was up, and my cup had a lid on it.  I started ca coughing jag and had NOWHERE to ‘put’ the coffee without just spitting it out onto my shirt. (Where it eventually just ended up anyhow.)  I yanked the car off the road into a gravel lot and jumped from the seat almost before the parking brake engaged!  (I had to go onto all fours just to get the liquid onto the ‘front’ of my chest so I could get just a little bit of air IN.  I was seeing spot!)  

That’s right.  I had just aspirated about 1/2 a cup of steaming hot, VERY sweet coffee. NOT. Good.  By 5 that evening, I had a crippling sore throat. (Which at first I was afraid was caused by some bad ingredients in my new electric cig.)   Thursday morn around 2 am I woke up coughing and didn’t stop until my chest muscles just gave up on Sat around noon.  By the time I made it to the E.R., I was only displacing around 18 c.i. with BOTH lungs.  They hooked me up to 15mb O2 and set up a room for an extended stay. (Since I was on Morphine, have a physical condition where if I reach an optimum O level I just STOP breathing and forget to re-start, and their need to intubate me if ANYthing else went wrong, my meds for pain got slashed on the spot. (Plus, hospitals HATE,Hate,hate ‘PRN’ or “Take as desired/needed) If it doesn’t already HAVE an hour designated for the dose, it just doesn’t exist!!

Anyhow, steroids X5, Insulin, more insulin, Lasix (water remover), more O2, enforced NON-movement for 8 hour or longer blocks of time. (They were afraid that if I laid down, moved too much, the rubber thick mucus would coat the last little bit of my lungs that was still working and they would have to go in and clean it out by hand. Their suctiuon machine used for those kind of diseases took one shot at the phlegm and died.)   And then we just waited.

All of this set of a series of Other tests, however, that led to some….... interesting speculations and conferences amongst the heads of the diabetics/ECG-heart/and blood services sections of this teaching hospital. (Everybody wanted time alone with my chest, go figure.)   (Don’t even ASK about the nurses loving my “little nubby”.)     (Hey!  I said ‘Don’t ask!)

The rest will have to wait for the blog entry.  I’m tired.  I a going to TRY and take most or all of my 12 new scrips and rest for a while.

*Hugs all around and scritches where needed*

No need to say sorry. You just take care of yourself and get some rest.

Actually I can understand their worries because you are and have been on prn morphine Dave for a VERY long time.  Morphine slows breathing down (respiratory depression) and one of the problems with it is that it CAN cause you to just stop breathing completely.  Smokers have shallow breathing to begin with so adding morphine to the mix means you’re using even less of your lung capacity and allowing buildup of anything you do breathe.

Smokers also have a problem with nerve endings at the back of the throat being deadened by the chemistry of tobacco which cause them to choke more easily especially on fluids which get inhaled into the bronchial tubes.  I’ve had this be serious enough that several times people with me have had their fingers on 911 because I could not speak and was turning blue.  I had to learn to NOT breath through my mouth when this happens because my throat had closed up nearly completely so no air could be pulled through.  Unfortunately the natural instinct is to suck air through the mouth when this happens.  I have had to learn to stop doing that, close my mouth and breathe deeply through my nose so I bypassed my throat completely.  THEN you can cough out the fluid that has gotten into the bronchial tubes.  Since I’ve been on e-cigs this problem is lessening and in fact over this past year I have not had a problem. 

There are a variety of changes to the body over an extended period of time of using morphine too including problems producing enough and then over producing insulin.  I know you are and have been aware of these things though and I hope the hospital has been able to sort a lot of this out!

I’m glad you’re home and feeling better. *hugs*