Anxiety and the Hospital Again

 Anxiety and the Hospital Again

 

    Things were not improving; they were getting worse. I had a very young niece and nephew that my father would watch during the day at our house. Before I became really sick, I would love to spend my free time with them. Now, my door was always closed and I rarely saw them. They would stick their little fingers under my door and call my name but I was too exhausted to answer. I had a large oxygen concentration machine that connected to a very long hose so I could get around the house. I started at 3 liters but soon found that to be insufficient. Over a short period of time, I would need to increase the flow steadily until it reached 10 liters, the maximum flow of my oxygen concentrator.

    My anxiety at this time was through the roof. I could feel waves of panic and tingling flow through my body. Though I was no stranger to anxiety, I had never felt panic like this before. This frightened me so much that on one occasion, I had my parents call me an ambulance to take me to the local ER. Because I never experienced these symptoms before, I wasn’t sure if there was something new going on. The doctor at the ER informed me that what I was feeling was indeed caused by anxiety and I was discharged soon after. At this point, I was chewing Xanax’s every several hours, while in my bed, to get through my unrelenting anxiety. I thought they might work faster this way. I had been seeing my pulmonologist weekly. She told us that she was trying to get in touch with a transplant hospital to get me an appointment for an evaluation. Every time we inquired about her progress, she just said she was working on it. She said that there were some things I could do in the meantime to prepare. One thing she told me to do was to lower my steroids to 20mg as a higher dose could increase my risk of bleeding during the surgery. I would be hospitalized yet again, this time on a woman’s floor. I once again had a roommate. This time, my roommate would constantly pull back the thin curtain separating us and constantly talk to me and ask to use my belongings. It was not something I wanted to deal with while I was feeling so ill.  I don’t recall too much about this stay other than my doctor had me do a few tests that she said were needed before I could get my transplant. These tests included a pulmonary ventilation/profusion test to see how well air and blood flowed through my lungs, and a barium swallow test. At some point, possibly two weeks later, I would be released again.