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Scary Episode

Scary Episode

Wednesday, August 24, 2022

9:35 PM

 

I had a very scary episode in the wee hours.

 

I needed to pee so I got up slowly, but then the urgency to pee meant moving more quickly than I should have. After I was done, I turned to leave the bathroom and realized I was very low in oxygen. I was just this side of panicking. I had been on a flow rate of 3 L/m while I was sleeping, but that was nowhere enough for moving around. I had to call out to Mary to come and turn up the flow to 5 L/m. Thankfully she was right there out of a dead sleep. It took at least 15 minutes for me to get my oxygen level back up to 88%.

 

It’s another sign of how my lungs continue to deteriorate and seemingly quite quickly.

 

Today, I have been unable to do anything without Mary’s help. Yesterday, I could make a meal for myself. Not today. I’m using the walker just to move around the cottage. I need the additional support. Any exertion or activity makes it hard to keep my oxygen level in the 90s. I managed to shave myself and later, with Mary’s help, take a shower. For the shower, we switched over to a tank of oxygen which did a couple of things: allowed me to go to a flow level of 6 and feed me slightly purer oxygen. But even then, by the time the shower was over, I was way down in the 70s.

 

My bleak thought at this moment is that I will not be healthy enough to get a lung transplant.

 

We have spent most of the summer at the Lakeside cottage, but tonight we have decided I need to be  in town, closer to the hospital and other supports. Plus it’s a lot of work for Mary to move me/us back and forth. The large oxygen concentrator has to be carried out and strapped into the back seat. It’s heavy to move around. Now we have to have the walker in the car as well. As a safety precaution, we also carry a medium-sized oxygen tank in case the portable concentrator fails. Then as well as a purse and a backpack,  there is the laundry, recycling, food, and always something else we need to take. One other factor: it’s mosquito hell right now. I have to walk so slowly so as not to lose my breath, that the mosquitos are all over me. Usually, by this time in August the mosquitoes are mostly done. Not this year. They are worse that ever. It’s a logical decision to move back into town, but where we are at Lakeside is so incredibly beautiful, it’s emotionally hard to leave.

 

Looking back over the summer, I had one important objective: get to the beach. Every summer before this, going back to 1990, I loved going down to the beach for a walk at sunset. It’s my favourite time of day. I only made it down perhaps a half a dozen times this summer, but I made it. Attached is my last sunset photo from July 12th.

 

When my main focus right now is on breathing and not coughing, I don’t have a lot of energy for writing. Everything I do has to be done so slowly and deliberately, which means everything takes a lot longer. I am growing weary of this.

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