Disbelief and Another Bleed (Hemoptysis)

 Disbelief and Another Bleed (Hemoptysis)

 

    I tried telling anyone who would listen that I was dying. I told my family. I told my physical therapist. I even told my nurse who came to change my PICC line dressings once a week, as I was on IVs for some time. No one really seemed to grasp how close to death I was, or they didn’t want to let me know that they were well aware. They all seemed to fail to sense the severity of things. I decided to reach out to an old college professor of mine for help. I had taken a few classes of hers, one of them being, death and dying. I thought she might be able to get in touch with someone who could help me. All she did was recommend a good hospice center I could go to for end-of-life care. Needless to say, that’s not what I was looking for. I felt a bit hopeless as no one seemed to be able to do anything for me.     I couldn't give up though. I tried to bargain with God, and at that time I was an atheist. As the saying goes, “there are no atheists in a foxhole.” I then decided I should reach out to the online CF community. I wanted to see if anyone there had gone through the lung transplant experience so I could gather more information. I only found two people. They explained the process to me and answered any questions I had. One prefaced her experience by telling me “Lung transplant is not a walk in the park.” I knew this was going to be an arduous journey, but I was willing to do whatever it took to live.

     During one of my CPT sessions with my therapist, I started to cough up blood. Once again, I was thrown into a panic. She would do her best to calm me down. I had heard from someone in the online, CF group that drinking water mixed with cayenne pepper would help to clot my blood. Whether that’s true or not didn’t really matter. It made me feel like I had some control. As I drank my cayenne water, my mother called an ambulance, and I was taken to the ER. This visit was a blur to me.