Oh my goodness, how long HAS it been since I wrote? I know its been entirely too long.
I could sit here and come up with some incredibly exciting things that I have been doing for the last year; but it truly wasn’t that exciting. I was sick. A LOT. Like, began 2021 on a high note. Losing weight, exercising, trying to get healthy. I’d been REALLY sick in late September of 2020 with what was diagnosed as Rhinovirus. And it hit me HARD. For healthy people, rhinovirus is just a simple cold. But for severely compromised people like me, rhinovirus attacks like a bad a case of covid. And as a matter of fact, only recently are my doctors suspecting that I was actually sick with covid at the same time as the rhinovirus. Either way, I wound up on the covid unit, needing a bipap to breathe and started losing mobility. I left the hospital on a walker and needing physical and occupational therapy.
2021 started off okay, but by March or April, my lungs started going bad. I was on long tapers of prednisone, trying to keep my lungs open until around June, when I once again got rhinovirus and was back in the ICU on the covid unit. A few weeks after my release from the hospital, I was back in…you guessed it…rhinovirus again! Then we got to July…guess where I was? ICU….rhinovirus. By this point, my body was just EXHAUSTED. I could no longer lift my legs, could not get into a bathtub, I couldn’t hold dishes or cups, because my arms and hands were too weak. The rhinovirus had thrown my fibromyalgia into overdrive, so every nerve ending in my body felt like it was exposed damn near 24 hrs a day. Couldn’t walk, couldn’t stand for long. Was falling all the time. I was just JACKED up. I was gonna say another word, but I’m trying to be a new me, lol. I had physical and occupational therapy 5 days a week, trying to get back. I lived like that until October.
In October..on the 22nd to be precise. I was once again hospitalized for rhinovirus. This time, complicated by entirovirus ( an infection in the stomach) My lungs were really bad this go round. The attacks had been getting worse each month. A few days in, I lost the ability to speak and was getting weaker. Then someone came in and said *Oh shoot…she is stroking out!!* and an entire team rushed in. Testing showed that I might be actively stroking and they administered meds through my iv and brought me to the Neuro ICU, where I was monitored 24/7 for the next day. The following morning, they took me to do an MRI and I began to code out. More testing revealed that I was not stroking, but I’d had a lack of oxygen to my brain. By this point, Id lost my speech and use of both legs and one arm. It took me about a month to recover. November, I passed out at home and was taken to the ER. I’d had a mild heart attack and was sick with a new virus…forget the name. One week later…back in the ICU. No rhinovirus this time. This time, it was discovered that I was now in active heart failure. And the reason why my lungs were getting worse was due to fluid from my heart failure. Also the attacks were more severe because now when I was having asthma attacks, my heart was attacking at the same time. That was a very depressing hospital stay.
Ive been on a bunch of meds since and have been doing great. other than a few episodes where I get too much fluid in my body and I have to go get drained, lol. But I now know what I need to do to stay healthy and out of trouble, and I do it!!
Sooo…thats how MY 2021 went!!! How was your year in review?
Just Call me Lis 