I was diagnosed with pneumonia the week of Thanksgiving. My doctor prescribed me a round of oral antibiotics and sent me on my merry way, back to normal life and the excitement over the upcoming holiday. My diagnosis meant that I wasn’t able to spend Thanksgiving with my family like we planned this year, but we face timed and got to talk to each other like I was actually in my aunt and uncle’s home with the rest of my loved ones. The antibiotics kicked my fevers, night sweats, chills and shakes, but a cough that just won’t quit still lingered.
On Sunday night before I went to bed, I coughed up a pretty substantial amount of blood. The same thing happened on Monday morning when I woke up. Justin urged me to call my doctor and see if they could fit me in any earlier than next week for my follow-ups as planned. I was unable to get an appointment, but they had me talk to a triage nurse on the phone who urged me not to wait—get to the ER as soon as you possibly can, preferably within the hour. Justin called his mom out of work to take me, and I hastily dragged a brush through my hair and pulled my boots on, trying to tame the anxiety that was already starting to run rampant in my brain.
Hospitals these days always remind me of my dad, and when I was coughing up blood and phlegm and riding in the car for half an hour with Justin’s mom, all I could think was, “Please, God, don’t let me end up like my dad.” We were on our way to the hospital in Stevens Point where I would soon be ushered into an ER care room and taken for a CT scan with contrast. The doctors poked and prodded at me, and eventually came back with my results.
“You have a mass in your right lung and fluid surrounding it. We want to do a bronchoscopy, but we don’t have the technology to do it here so we have transfer you to Wausau.”
The entire 40-minute ambulance ride up to Wausau, I prayed that I didn’t have cancer. I had lost my grandma on my mom’s side and my dad to different types of lung cancer less than a year apart from each other. My seven year smoking habit didn’t really help matters either. That little voice in the back of my head reminded me that once my dad entered the hospital, he never came out. Worry gnawed at my heart as I anxiously awaited both the doctors to examine me and for my people to come sit with me. Being alone in a hospital is never something I’ve dealt with very well.
When I was born, I was only 27 weeks and weighed 2 lbs. My dad could literally hold me in the palm of his hand. I spent the first 2 months and 10 days of my life with the hospital where I was born being the only home I knew. I had heart surgery at 10 days old to close the PDA valve in my heart with a metal clip that I still carry the scar from to this day. I was the tiny baby in the incubator, hooked up to all sorts of wires and machines. Once they took me off the ventilators and replaced them with cannulas and tubes up my nose, I figured out how to scoot down in my incubator and set off all my bells and whistles that would send my team of nurses rushing in to hook me back up to the machines. I just wanted to breathe on my own, and I suppose loneliness may have been a factor there as well. I just wanted human contact, but it also serves as concrete proof that from day one, I knew what it took to be a fighter and stake your claim in this world.
Over the last few days, I’ve had all the good veins in my left arm exhausted from drawing blood. They’ve stuck tubes and cameras down my throat and into my chest, trying to figure out what the mass in my right lung is exactly. They’ve taken biopsies of my lymph nodes and stuck two giant needles in between my ribs to get samples of the blockages inside and the fluid that was pooling around my lung. I’ve gone over and over my family’s history of cancer, heart attacks and my own recent non-intentional weight loss since my dad died and the pneumonia made it worse.
The only answers that I have so far are, “Well, we don’t think it’s cancer, just an extraordinarily bad case of pneumonia” based on inflammatory tissue samples and signs of infection in the fluid they removed from around my lung.
Justin’s mom drove him an hour one-way to come stay at the hospital with me. My mom and aunt drove four hours to come and make sure I’m okay. Being surrounded by family, both biological and the one that I’ve chosen to be with forever, feels like a gift. My dad was the one who showed up for me when I had my gallbladder taken out in 2014. He drove for five hours round-trip just to spend half an hour with me, picking me up from the hospital and running me around town to get my meds before taking me home. It means the world to me that I still have people I can count on now that he is gone.
I’m supposed to go home on Thursday while we wait for the results of all my biopsies and tests that they’ve been running. To be honest, I can’t wait to go home and snuggle with the cats and sleep in my own bed again. In the meantime, I’m trying to soak up all the goodness that this experience has brought me instead of worrying how I’m going to pay for all of it once everything is said and done. The nurses and staff that I’ve met here have been amazing. Truly slowing down and taking the necessary time to rest has been good for my soul. And nothing beats getting to spend time with the ones I love the most.
