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I was out of town yesterday and did not check my Facebook till late. My friend Julia, an SLE Lupus sufferer and Assistant General Manager And Programming Director of The Force 925, had gone to hell in a basket in less than a day. My wife has the same chronic disease so I am well aware of how fast one’s health can go south and the importance having good healthcare is for survival.
Julia is in Canada and knows that no matter what, she will have good health care because their system values humanity over the dollar. Inasmuch as my family has always had healthcare insurance (though my wife SLE Lupus means much higher cost of a High Risk Pool), until the new Healthcare Reform bill has gone through all the legal maneuvers of the Supreme Court I can never feel safe. I can never feel that the savings I have accumulated is not at risk of my wife’s next flare, an illness of my daughter, or an illness of my own.
Julia’s latest healthcare scare follows below and ends at her own blog. It makes good reading. Julia is the author of the book From The Mundane To The Insane: A Wonderful Journey Without A Destination.
In Which I Survive My First ER Trip of 2011
March 30th, 2011 by Jules
I wish I could say today began like any other day. But it didn’t. I woke up this morning with what felt like a sinus infection. Within an hour of waking up, my breathing was very laboured and I was unable to catch my breath. Then, within the next hour or so, I found I had blood in my urine. In less than a 4 hour period, I went from being more normal level of sick to not having enough air to talk and wanting to die because the pain of breathing was so unbearable.
Initiate emergency plan to get my behind to the hospital. Thank goodness I have an amazing landlady to take care of the kids and take me to the hospital in such instances. Unfortunately, today our timing was off and I had to wait a couple hours longer than normal. But what is a couple more hours, right? Well when you have lupus to the severity that I do, a couple hours means that much more time for the infection to spread through my body like wildfire.
I’m going to try and make the rest of this long story short. I arrived at the ER. My blood pressure was much higher than normal. My oxygen levels were starting to take a nose dive. My heart rate was elevated. Taking a deep breath was impossible. Even so they marked me as urgent, I was still coherent so they had to treat the more urgent patients first.
Finally, it was my turn to see the doctor. And that is when the first event took place which makes me hate ERs. ER doctors are great trauma doctors and overall doctors. They kinda suck when it comes to treating patients with diseases like mine.
After she listened to my chest, lungs, felt my glands and tapped my sinuses, she asked, “Why did you wait so long to see a doctor?” I looked at her with a look which probably was not too nice and said, “I only got sick today. I had to wait for transportation and someone to watch my kids. I’m a single mum with no vehicle.” She looked at me as if I slapped her (or maybe she just felt bad) and replied, “Fair enough.” I wanted to call her something not entirely nice. But then I realised she probably doesn’t fully understand that I can be fine (for me) one day and wake up on deaths door with respiratory distress the next day.
In Which I Survive My First ER Trip of 2011 » Julia Sherred | From The Mundane To The Insane
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