Recovering from Respiratory Failure

Just about 2 weeks ago I was struck with pain in my upper right quadrant. I knew I had gall stones, because my surgeon saw them on a CT scan a few years ago. He said as long as they didn’t bother me there was nothing to do.

Suddenly I got pain, and I was pretty sure it was my gall bladder. My family took me to the ER and everything was a blur after that. I was held NPO for 12 hours and then taken to surgery. I was put under general anesthesia, and after the surgery was done, the recovery team was not able to wake me up.

I do have some faint memories while they were working on me, I remember hearing the doc telling the nurse to give me Narcan. Narcan is a narcotic reversal drug. It should wake you up immediately. It didn’t wake me up. I also remember hearing “That gall bladder is rotten!” Because I heard these things, I am truly aware that when people are unconscious they can still hear, because I was able to hear snippets.

The surgery went fine, but I couldn’t wake up from the anesthesia. I was told after the fact that I went into respiratory failure. I didn’t go into respiratory arrest, but was going into failure.

I know the head honcho of the respiratory department of the hospital. I used to work ER some when he was a young man. I recognized him right away. He told me that the pulmonologist contemplated putting a tube down me and putting me on the ventilator, but instead they tried the non-invasive route and hooked me up to a bipap machine, which is a non-invasive respirator. The bipap machine keeps track of two pressures in my lungs, my oxygen and my carbon dioxide. It keeps me breathing at night when I am sleeping by allowing me to blow off the excess carbon dioxide.

I spent 6 days in the ICU and on the bipap machine at night. When I was discharged I was sent home with a bipap machine. My respirations get below 6 per minute when I am asleep so the bipap keeps me breathing normally.

A few days after being discharged I had an appointment with my pulmonologist. I had to go through a battery of pulmonary function tests. Apparently, I didn’t do very well, because the doc told me I had a lot of things going on in my lungs. One of the things was interstitial scarring of my lungs. This scarring changes the surface area of the lungs where they can’t make proper gas exchange. I get short of breath because the scar tissue prevents me from being able to have normal respiration on the cellular level.

I’ve also got the COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) and emphysema. I’m not sure what else is wrong with my lungs, but the doc said several things are wrong. These things that are wrong with my lungs are due to a lifestyle of smoking in my younger life and on up into my early 50s.

Lung disease from smoking is an insidious disease. You don’t know you have it until you become symptomatic. You may have smoked for half of your life without becoming majorly sick, and then suddenly something happens to turn your world upside down.

I have had some close calls before. My life was only in jeopardy when I got a cold. When I got a cold, I went into asthma and then into asthmatic bronchitis and sometimes into pneumonia.

Just a few weeks ago I was doing very well. I was walking about a mile around my block about once a week. I only walked once a week because it took the rest of the week for me to recover to be able to do it again. Sometimes I had to use my oxygen to walk and other times I didn’t.

Now my life is changed. Since I went into respiratory failure I am fighting my way back. Each day I am getting a little stronger. I am able to bathe myself now without any help and I can also dry myself off. Before this was something my daughter had to do for me when I first got home from the hospital.

I have no idea if I will ever be what I consider normal again. I hope so. I will end this article here and pick up with another one that focuses more on how I hope to make a difference in people’s lives due to my experience.