Paula’s Adventure
West Michigan has seen the cough and cold to end all coughs and colds. If you read “No Memos,” you know that it impacted everyone in the house. At that time, I was beginning my third week and Paula was finishing her second. By far, she had it the worst: chronic cough 24 hours a day and trouble breathing because her throat was so inflamed from coughing. She was taking OTC cough medication, ibuprofen, and throat lozenges and was on antibiotics because the nurse practitioner felt that, with such thick congestion in her chest, it had to be a sinus infection that caused post-nasal drip. Five days later, it was worse than ever.
She woke up during the night and typed out her symptoms. In addition to the cough and cold symptoms, she also had blurry vision, some dizziness, and headaches. She was walking like a drunk, and she hadn’t taken that much cough syrup! She had a couple bouts of vomiting and the chills. She then added to the list lack of focus, not remembering conversations, hearing the washing machine in the middle of the night when it wasn’t on, hearing me talking to her when I was asleep, and seeing things like a sweater on the nightstand that wasn’t there.
She called the doctor’s office and read the list to the phone nurse. When she got to the hallucination symptoms, the nurse said to go to the ER now. One thing that you don’t know about Paula is that she doesn’t leave the house unless she has at least light make-up, hair combed, and wearing appropriate clothes. Not this time; she put on a comfy dress, her coat, and was ready; something had to be really wrong and she wasn’t messing around. She had already printed out the complete list of symptoms and medications, so off we went.
The adventure continues in the ER and I’ll tell you about that on Thursday.
What are you prepared to do today?
