Well I am back in the hospital. No real surprise there. I came in Friday the 30th. It seems like I end up in here every 4-6 weeks. This was a little early but I was struggling to sleep through the night and breathing was getting harder and harder. I also didn't want to wait and come in as bad as I was when I came in last time. That was extremely uncomfortable. This hospitalization has been much more pleasant than the last one. I had a few rough moments and nights. That is expected… I am in the hospital....The hospital stay itself has been better. My nurse listened to me this time when he accessed my port. I straight out told him he messed it up last time and he needed to listen to me. He promised he would and he did. lol That made the admission better. So far throughout my stay all of my nurses have been great, the food service isn't messing up too bad, respiratory hasn't been too annoying (I think I am learning to just ignore them more and more), nothing bad happened, and my stay is going to be a lot shorter. I am leaving Friday so that makes this stay only one week. I am going home on IV meds. I am feeling good enough to be able to do it on my own this time around. Also I am in here too much. Looking forward to going home, decorating my Christmas tree, making Christmas cookies with mom, wrapping presents, and whatever else I can find energy to do.
So like I said this stay hasn't been bad. I came in a little early so I wasn't too miserable. I have had a few nasty coughing fits and a couple bad nights, but relatively speaking, it has been worse. Last night was one of the bad nights. I woke up out of a sleep laid there for one second and then all of a sudden starting coughing. I could not catch my breath and I was coughing constantly. My stomach muscles were starting to ache as if I was doing hundreds of sit ups and not stopping. I hit the call light to call my nurse and tell her to call respiratory. She did and then she came down to my room. She started to lightly rub my back and just stood there with me. Respiratory came down and gave me some saline to nebulize (I have found that this really helps me) and he left because my nurse said she was going to stay with me. She stayed there in silence for a few minutes and finally told her to talk to me. She just had a baby so I said, "Tell me about your baby". So she was telling me stories while I was doing the saline and Albuterol.
This scenario made me realize something. People are always asking me, "What can I do for you?" while I am coughing really bad and struggling to catch my breath. There really isn't much people can do for me when this is happening. I just have to wait it out. No one can make it stop, but they can do a few things to make me feel a little better. I like having my back lightly rubbed. It helps relax the muscles and just someone touching me distracts from the muscle pain. The other thing, talk to me. When I am sitting there struggling to breathe I want people to talk to me and tell me about things. Obviously when I am having a coughing fit and it is loud stop talking, but otherwise. This distracts me from the labored breathing and pain. I know it seems weird to talk to me like nothing is going on. While I am sitting there struggling to catch my breath, but really this is what I want. The other option is just sitting there in silence everyone paying attention to me trying to catch my breath. It is not fun for anyone and it can get awkward. I love the distraction of company because then I am not paying attention to how uncomfortable I am. I "forget" that I can't breathe at that moment. Eventually my lungs settle down, I am OK again and that time I was struggling didn't seem so long.
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