The one where I realize how important it is to breathe

Today I had one of those fun filled days where I got to spend it in the hospital.  Let me just tell you one thing about me.  Unless I am giving birth (and I am so NOT doing that ever again), I do not want to be in a hospital. Ever. They are scary, germy and people have needles (and use them)!  For real. They actually find it acceptable to take your blood, poke a needle right into your butt and inject you with (a painful) medicine that will make you feel like a freak on speed AND then they come back and take more blood with a needle sucking it straight from your arm.  I don’t know about you, but I am pretty sure that kind of behavior would be totally and absolutely illegal on the street!  Yet, every day people in scrubs or white coats get away with this kind of activity with no guilt or consequences and we allow this to happen. We let them into our room and we are all like, “Hi there, oh bearer of the needle!  Would you like to puncture me and also drain me of my blood?  Be my guest.  And?  I will totally pay you to do it!”

I allowed it to happen today!

So, apparently I have learned that:

• Passing out is not normal and should be avoided at all costs.
• You really should not take the act of breathing for granted.  It is a rather important function even if you don’t think about it.    When you feel as if you are breathing through a Capri-Sun straw, it is rough and…well…sucks. (Pun intended.)
• You should not wait until you can barely function before seeing a doctor if these things happen.
• Finally, you should not scare your Facebook friends by saying you are in the hospital, posting a photo just saying you want to go home and want your husband without any more of an explanation than that.  It will worry them and then you will feel like an ass for worrying them just because you are a big ol’ scaredy cat baby head.  *Note:  I totally am a big baby when it comes to doctors who don’t know what is wrong with me and I am all alone in the hospital. Big. Huge. Cry. Baby.
  

I am SO not a fan of hospitals. See how pathetic I look?

I was finally sent home and told to go to bed and stay there. For a few days. (Pending blood work results.)  Stay in bed. For a few days.  hahahahahahaha  Are these people high on their own medication?  The ability of a mom of 3 to stay in bed for days is about the same as reversing the tides and having the sun rise in the west.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I will try to follow doctor’s orders as best I can.  (Meaning, when the family is away, I will sleep/rest.)   And?  I know better than to try to go up to the school.  I have been threatened asked nicely by my friends to stay the hell away take my time to recuperate.

I will know more tomorrow from all of the eleventy hundred vials of blood they took from me today.  They are thinking my lungs sound not quite wet enough for pneumonia and are leaning towards thinking I have whooping cough.  Now, really!  This is 2009.  Who the hell gets whooping cough at age 39 in the year 2009?  That is just ludicrous.  All I know is I am coughing violently enough and often enough to literally burst vessels in my face and eyes.  (Nasty, right?  I know!)  I may or may not have coughed up my spleen earlier.  The dog ate it before I could check.  (I’m kidding. Relax. I don’t let him eat spleen.)  I have a fever.  My chest and back hurt.  And can I just tell you how tired I am.  EXCEPT the sheer bliss that are the breathing treatments have me wired like a cocaine addict.

And in all that?  I feel blessed.  WTH you say, Jenn?  No, really.  I have great friends who have checked on me that are local, out of the city, out of the state and even out of the country.  That (of course) brought me to tears.  (Because everything brings me to tears when I am sick.  But really, it touched me.)  And even old friends I haven’t seen in years checked up to make sure I was okay.  That kind of shocked me.  I was just whining because I was scared and suddenly people are showing real concern.  Thank you.  I would hug you but I hear I am contagious so you probably don’t want that.

I will update you later.  For now, thank you to my friends– old, new and renewed– for your show of support.  Now, since we are in such a nice loving state of mind, can I please borrow one of your lungs.  I will give it back.  Well, I really won’t but I will be thankful to breath and will tattoo your name on my….bicep.  Just one lung?  Maybe?

Okay.  I am off to bed to lay there and flail around like a fish flopped out of water onto a dock gasping for air but shaking like a freak.  (That is called imagery boys and girls.  And some people call it medically induced writing.)