When pages turn, often a new chapter is found within the confines of a published work of literature. Here, there is nothing new to the recipe, mere details cast upon a keyboard to be shared as fodder for the mind, nourishment for those still on the path to attain management of circumstance.

Recently, I made a Sunday morning 911 ride via ambulance to a local vaunted and NEW establishment of care for the physically ill, the needful, those who find fear among theirr emotions as they wonder what may lie next. I had awakened to a morning filled with resolve to write, and write I did, penning a note or two here and there on the threads.

Then, the unexpected occurred. Not two days after my outpatient surgery receipt of five steroid injections to the C6-C7 nerve roots, flooding all of the spaces which could be found with steroids intended to calm the inflamed nerve roots in hope of avoiding fusion surgery. Immediately, when I should have been getting ready for church, I began to stress about breathing. Drawing oxygen, that life giviing breath of air for the lungs became labored. My wheeze could be heard all of the way to our bedroom, where my wife became alarmed and came fully dressed saying she was taking me to the hospital.

I didn't wanna go, ER is always a disaster of confusion, people lost as logs in a logjam of needs. I did not want to do this. My wife became flustered with me. My labored breathing became worse. I began to fear needing a nice bottle of oxygen. I gasped 911, need oxygen, and she cut loose on the phone.

Soon nice firefighters who had better things to do on a Sunday morning were wheeling me out to an ambulance [I am afraid to ultimately see the bill] where an oxygen mask was indeed fitted to my proboscis and mouth. We were away. Not to my hospital of choice, but to the newbie nearer our home at my wife's direction. OK. She was in charge.

I was wheeled in, placed in a room, and tested for heart problems, lung problems, scanned, screened, bled [they actually had new leeches] and finally told..... well, I had a fever of over 102 and fluid in my lungs, but that was common in people of my age, and they believed it was steroids which had caused my breathing problems. Shuttled home I was before the morning lapsed.

Home. Where my fever rose, the family was concerned, the breathing was yet labored, NO I DID NOT want to return to the hospital whence I had emerged. So we packed me in ice and fought the fight of the feever until midnight. Family alarmed, Mark gasping for every breath, and we learned later, I had been sent home with post surgical pneumonia, AND Doc was surprised to see me for my doctor appt since I should have died Sunday night.

Died Sunday night. Those words can put a certain chill to the bone... or send shivers up the spine. So, I looked online to find the case of a local furniture magnate who had died a few years back after having similar injections and thereafter went into cardiac arrest. This stuff is meant to be taken seriously. Death from one of these episodes may onset from usually cardiac arrest, Leslie's grave filling problem, or pneumonia, the struggle my Doc knows in his heart of hearts the hospital dismissed me possessing. He wanted me overnight in the hospital under a Zpac. Nope, antibiotics, those are for seriously ill people!!!!

So, why write this now????? Because you may be a newbie reading the entirety of my journey from http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread117854.html to here and back again..... Because everytime you set foot or gurney into an OR you really ARE taking your life into a risk with mortality [I am prepared to meet my maker, are you?]...... Because people in ER situations after someone has been in an OR will make poor judgment calls based upon your presentation and send you home when they should keep you.

My Doc's words..... fluid in the lungs plus fever [mine was over 102] are suffering from pneumonia and they will near death in the next few hours. He was boiling angry when he learned of our weekend story. Then he told me I should have died, but for a robust immunie system. I reckon my work here is not finished.

Take your ills seriously. Force yourself on caregivers if you have fever and fluid on the lungs...... you never know, the life you save may be YOUR OWN.

Yup,
Mark56 and Blessed