COVID and Psychic Dream

 COVID and a Psychic Dream

 

    In January of 2024, I suddenly felt very ill with a terrible headache and a high fever. I took a test and found I had COVID. I was put on an antiviral, this time, not Paxlovid as last time I had rebound symptoms. This time, my symptoms were bad for three days and then after that, I felt a lot better. Like last time, a week after recovering, I got sick again. This time my lungs started to feel very tight. I was nervous. My lung function numbers at home remained at baseline despite feeling a little out of breath. My coordinator had me start Tobi. I tried it for two treatments before I gave up on it. It was making my lungs even tighter than they already were. I already had an appointment to see my doctor in a week. One night I had a dream that I was filling my pill case, and as I went through it, I noticed my mycophenolic was missing. This is one of my main antirejection medicines. I realized, in the dream, I had been missing this pill for some time. Not only that, but my prednisone was missing too. When I woke up, I thought,” Thank God that was just a dream”.  That night, I was going to be out with friends and I took my night pills out and put them in a bag. Just to make sure, I decided to check my pills to see that they were all there. I couldn’t believe it!  The mycophenolic was missing!  I went to my pill box where I kept all my medicine bottles to check to see what happened. The mycophenolic was not in the box!  How could this be?  I sat in my chair a moment. As I did, I looked down. One of my daily pill cases was on the ground behind my desk, sticking out just a little bit. I had been missing this case for several weeks. As I bent down to pick it up, I found my bottle of mycophenolic on the ground behind the desk. I couldn’t believe it. Could I have not been taking it for that long?  The pill bottle and case must have fell out of the box somehow and fell behind my desk. I felt sick to my stomach. I thought I should look to see that my prednisone was in my pill box as well.  I was relieved to find it was still there.  However, after a closer inspection, I realized the bottle said 2.5mg!  This was an old bottle I never threw away, but kept in my larger pill bottle holder of spare and extra medicine.  I used to take 7.5mg of prednisone using a 5mg tablet and a 2.5mg tablet.  I had somehow grabbed this old bottle instead of a 5mg bottle. What if this was causing the shortness of breath and tightness in my chest? Maybe I as in rejections? This was a Friday night. I called the emergency lung transplant line. When I told the covering coordinator what happened, she told me not to worry too much as I also told her my spirometry numbers at home were at baseline. She also said there are times when people come off Mycophenolic for a while for different reasons such as low blood counts. She instructed me to just resume taking the medicine and let my doctor know when I saw her next week. I did just that. When I saw my doctor she also assured me I would be okay but not to let it happen again. Surprisingly, my lungs felt magically better than ever before. Not a wheeze, or crackle could be heard. When I received my lungs, they had to be trimmed to fit my body as I mentioned, and the lower right lobe often sounds like a squeaky balloon as my nurse likes to say. Often, I will do a course of TOBI nebs for a month to clear up the secretions in that area. It never stays quiet for too long. My lung function was even the highest it’s ever been in the 17 years that I had a transplant. I attribute this to the fact that I had recently started going to yoga classes in September of the previous year. It seems like it was almost one day later that my lungs were a bit noisy again. I debated on getting a bronchoscopy. I instead decided to start a round of TOBI nebs and midway through, my lungs were finally feeling normal again. I of course finished the course of TOBI.