busybee fluffy rambles

I’ve been coughing so much, and I’m sleep-deprived, and in a lot of pain, and my throat is raw and the only reason I’m not coughing right now is that the muscles responsible for it are worn out and fatigued.

This morning I took a hot shower because the steam helps with the coughing, and a few minutes in I felt very faint, like my body was crumbling under its own weight and I was going to pass out. I shut the shower off and got into a rescue position in my tub so I wouldn’t fall down and hurt myself, and after a few minutes I felt confident enough to get out of the tub…

…and then I only remember a bunch of thudding, and when I came to I was somehow on my bedroom floor, uncomfortably sprawled atop my disorganized pile of shoes.

I laid there for a little while, and eventually was able to bring myself to put on my pulse oximeter and lie down in bed. My oximeter consistently read 89%, with dips down to 83%.

So I called 911, and the EMTs came and put me on oxygen, and took me to the hospital.

And at the hospital I was shuffled around between waiting rooms while in a feeling of limbo, a confusing sequence of events where I was flitting in and out of consciousness while people acted like I was a burden who didn’t need to be there, and the same sets of questions came over and over, and none of the questions were relevant. It felt like they were looking for excuses to not treat me, to avoid doing any diagnostic work whatsoever, and I was so incredibly exhausted but they kept on putting me in seats with no head rests and have me wait in them for what felt like hours at a time.

And when the triage nurse finally did see me, the first thing she said was, “You don’t use oxygen at home, right? You don’t need to be on oxygen,” and took me off of it.

I posted about my situation to Facebook which only led to a flurry of texts and calls from well-meaning and concerned friends and family, who all wanted to help in whatever way they could.

It was hours before they even ran a COVID test, which came back negative, and as soon as that happened, I was put on a fast track to discharge from the hospital. Who cares that I was having severe respiratory problems and was in physical distress, and that I was emotionally falling apart, and that I was in pain and that the only reason I wasn’t coughing was that I couldn’t cough anymore. It wasn’t COVID, so, must just be bronchitis! Time to send me on my merry little way.

I’m not looking forward to the enormous bills I’m going to get from this. And I’m still fucking sick. And I’m tired and I’m frustrated, and the only concern the hospital had for me was how soon I could return to work, never mind that I’ve been unemployed for over a year now, they still made sure I had a doctor’s note indicating when I could return to work.

They gave me a prescription for cough syrup and a distinct feeling that I do not matter in the slightest.

I’m so fucking tired, I’m in so much fucking pain, I’m glad I don’t have COVID but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to worry about.

I went in because I’d had dangerously low SpO2 and was fainting, and in my discharge papers they didn’t even mention any of that, and instead focused on nausea. I kept trying to explain that I’ve been coughing non-stop since Friday and the only reason I stopped was that I just can’t cough anymore.

They did a bunch of EKGs and let me know that there isn’t anything wrong with my heart! Great, that’s not a concern I had in the first place. I think they just had to feel like they were doing something Useful™.

My asthma is normally very well-controlled, but give me a slight respiratory illness and everything goes haywire, fast. And doctors seem to have collectively decided that the asthma explains the problem, congratulations 100% A+ job diagnosing it! Is there anything to be done? Oh, don’t you worry about that.

Chronic conditions seem to trigger this in general though. Someone gets diagnosed with a chronic condition of some sort, then a new thing happens that can be explained by that chronic condition, and therefore There Is Nothing That Can Be Done, because somewhere along the line they’ve forgotten that there are still symptoms to be treated even if they have an underlying condition.

This keeps happening with both my asthma and my fibromyalgia, and it’s so frustrating. It’s like doctors have forgotten that the purpose behind diagnosing issues is so that they can be treated. I don’t just need to know what’s going on… I need to have a livable quality of life! And it’s so infuriating that the only language doctors seem to speak is whether a thing prevents someone from working, but not even understanding why there’s a prevention of working in the first place.

I don’t have COVID, but I still need fucking treatment for this bronchitis, where the only reason I’m not coughing is because it hurts too much.