After The Recovery

After the recovery, I got a sore throat, turned out to be tonsilitis. I was very upset over it, afraid Lemierre's had struck once again. I'm not sure if that can happen or not, given account on how rare it is. But if I have allergies, or anything head cold or sinus related, it affects my throat greatly. It's 8 months after I've left the hospital. I have Strept Throat right now. The doctors told me that it would be a smart move to make if I would get my tonsils removed in the near future. They have caused me horrible sore throats since the Lemierre's, however, not as horrible as the Lemierre's was. Also, I have panic attacks. I'll wake up in the middle of the night, gasping for air. I do it in my sleep, too. I think I'm suffocating. So the doctor says I need a therapist for that as well. As for the Lemierre's all together, it's a very traumatic experience to have. I don't regret it. I survived, and I met someone who is now more dear to me than ever, God. I just hope whoever reads this, can learn more to help them understand the Lemierre's Syndrome more, and possibly even save their life. Tell everyone you can about it, let them know it exists. It may only be rare because people never know what they are suffering from. I was one of the lucky few to live. I have so many questions about Lemierre's that can't be answered, so if we all tell our stories, the more we can learn, and the more questions will be answered.

Second Hospital, Fourth Week

After the hour drive to Dayton Children's Hospital, I was situated into a small room in the emergency section of the hospital. Three nurses checked me over, and they were astounded at my current condition. They had found that I had bed sores on my back, and that I had an extreme yeast infection that covered from my lower back, down to the back of my knees. It also covered from below my lower stomach down to my inner thieghs. Not only did this shock them, but also, the fact that they put in a port into my chest. The nurses and doctors at Dayton Children immediatly removed the port from my chest, since it was very dangerous to have for a girl of the age 18. They would later do a new surgery to put a port into my arm, also going through a vein into my heart. For now though, they were working on getting me a room, and contacting their Infectious Disease doctor. As I waited they gave me some apple juice to keep me hydrated, and hooked me up to IV's. Another shocker to the nurses, was that I was so mal-nurished, that I should have already been dead. The other hospital didn't force me to eat, or attempt a feeding tube. Within a half hour, I was moved to a room. Everyone in the new hospital was amazing so far, they asked me how I felt constantly, and always took my temperature, and were on top of the situation. Finally, after the first fifteen minutes of the nursing staff and emergency room doctors looking over my files from Upper Valley Medical Center with the infectious disease doctor, they had finally found out what was wrong with me. I was diagnosed with Lemierre's Syndrome, a very rare disease. The incidence rate is currently 0.8 cases per million in the general population, leading it to be termed the "forgotten disease". Only three drugs combined together are known to kill the disease off, and stop it from killing... Penicillin bening one. I just so happen to be allergic to that drug, lucky me. However, they used a similar drug to Penicillin, hoping that I wouldn't have an allergic reaction. I got a small rash, but they said I would have to suffer through the rash because it was my last option to save my life. I agree'd. During the time in the new hospital, they did another surgery within the next couple of days. They put a new port into my arm, like I had mentioned above, and they also put another draining tube into my second lung. Also, put me on a feeding tube to bring up my nutrition. They gave me protien through IV during my stay there, as well as many vitamins. At one point, the feeding tube decided to come out on it's own, I had choked on it, and they had to pull it out. After that, they let me try to eat normal. I was drinking Ensure protein shakes 8 daily. And I also had to eat three meals a day. It was very hard, especially after being so used to not eating at all. But I did it! After I was starting to recover and able to respond more, they began to reduce my pain medications. They let me do breathing treatments on my own, one of the things I haven't mentioned yet that I had to do daily while in both hospitals. By the fourth day, they had me doing excercises to build muscle so I could learn to walk again. The Lemierre's Syndrome had me so weak I had to realearn to walk and pretty much move any muscle. I started off with baby steps. I became easily frustrated, and often ready to just give up. I remember wanted to go back to heaven and leave all of this behind, because maybe it was better than suffering. But I fought my way through it, regardless. Then, by the 6th day in the new hospital, I walked all the way to the nurses station and back to my room. Of course this was with a walker, I was still too weak to do it alone. I was so excited. My doctors released me on the 8th day there, finally! But I'd be recovering at home with a home nurse. Also, I was put on blood thinners for six months to desolve the blood clot in my neck. It's part of Lemierre's, if you don't know much about it, look it up on Google Search, there aren't too many sites about it, but there are enough to fill you in on the details of the disease. As for learning to walk normally again, it took about three more months after I got out of the hospital.

First Hospital, Third Week

I was arranged and put into a room where I was taken care of, most of this I don't remember, except for a few things. This is when my illness really began. There was an old African American nurse who came in and washed me up, since I had been sweating so much from the fever. I immeadiatly took a liking to her, she was one of the sweetest nurses I had there, and there were hardly any sweet nurses in that hospital. After my first night there, my grandmother arrived at the hospital, she stayed there over night with me for a few nights, as they would run tests and other things to find out what was wrong with me. By the second day in the hospital, I had pnuemonia very badly. I got up to walk to the bathroom, and then, suddenly, I felt the most excrutiating pain of my life, or so at the time it was, my lung made a kind of pop feeling, but during the pop, there was the excrutiating pain I had just mentioned. The nurse that was there with me, the third shift nurse, wasn't sure how to react, she was another sweet nurse. She called for someone to help her. After they got me situated on a bed, they moved me to a different floor of the hospital, my lung had collapsed. The only way I was able to sleep was if I was drugged on Dilaudid or Morphine. It was like this for a while, they still could not find out the main source of what was happening to me, so they called for their infectious disease doctor to help with my case. He said that I had Bacterial Pnuemonia, caused by the runny nose and such that I had before. He said it had an infection and drained into my lungs and sat there too long and caused me Pneumonia. And the reason my lungs collapsed was from that. He said there was a strange blood cell in my blood, but it wasn't possible for that to be the reason why I was sick. The fourth day... my second lung collapsed... Now I was in an even more excrutiating pain than before, not only can I barely sit up, but now, I feel pain even from being lifted to a new bed just to change sheets or anything such as that. They moved me to ICU, and I ended up having to get a cathater put in, before I was just using the restroom by a bed pan. The cathater was more comfortable in honesty, it was the least of my worries. They doctors decided they were going to give me surgery and put a tube into my lung, to drain out the fluids, so that I could breath. I forgot to mention, they had me on a breathing machine to keep my oxegyn levels more high so that I wouldn't suffocate to death. Waiting for that surgery, was the worst night of my life. The doctor wasn't going to do the surgery until the next morning, and this was truly the most traumatic part of the whole experience with Lemierre's Syndrome. I was having a very very hard time breathing, it was so shallow, that I wasn't allowed to go to sleep. It was the third shift, and the nurse for me that night was one of the bad ones, I had my share of bad nurses while I was there, but this one... was the most awful nurse yet. Her name I won't mention, I'm sure you understand. I laid in the hospital bed, gasping for air, craving each breath, in the most agonizing pain yet to come. I would ask for pain medication, and the nurse would refuse to let me have any. The doctor had just told me and my grandmother, anytime I needed pain medication, that I could have it. And this time, I needed it more than ever. As she kept saying no to my requests, my breathing became more shallow. She would tell me to do breathing exercises which I could not do because I couldn't even barely make a gasp for air. I was clinging to my life at this point, and she started to talk to me as I began to drift to sleep, she told me I didn't need my family with me, that she was all I needed. I didn't feel safe with her, she scared me and made me feel very uncomfortable. My grandma had told me when she started her shift that she had told her that she should just leave. She told my grandma that family shouldn't even be visiting me or sitting with me. I didn't understand how a nurse could say that, until she told me that I didn't need my family. With what little breath I had, I managed to say in what I thought was an angry voice, though it was weak, "I do need my family, they are what's keeping me alive. You have no right to say that to me." The nurse also was refusing to listen to my grandmother, she would ask the nurse questions, and the nurse would ignore her. And I had to tell the nurse that I wanted my grandma to talk for me because I was too weak to form sentences let alone a single word. So my grandmother requested that we call the doctor for emergency surgery, the nurse denied our request, saying that it wasn't nessecary. This is when I had the strangest dream. A dream I will remember for the rest of my life. I fell asleep, and the minute I did, I had no pain. I felt completely happy, and suddenly a hand reached down to me. I held the hand, and a brightness shined all over me. I was pulled up into the light as I held the hand, and I knew the minute I saw the hand, it was the hand of Jesus Christ. Not a single moment was I given to gather my thoughts, I knew what was going to be said before it was said. There were angels all around me. They were bright lights with wings on them, there were so many of them... and I knew them. All of them. Somehow I did, whether it was relative or friend, I knew them. It was crowded, but so comforting and roomy at the same time. Though I was completely surrounded, it was so spacious. There were colors I'd never seen before, none that anyone could imagine. Then I looked up at a light so bright, that I know if normally to look at such a light, I would be blinded. And this light... it was everywhere. I heard a voice, and it said, "Are you ready?" now when it spoke to me, it sounded beautiful, it was like wind chimes mixed with that humming noise you hear from the streat lights on a quiet night. Kind of like jingle bells with electricity. Yet, it was so beautiful. When it spoke, it didn't really speak, it thought it's words to me. And I thought words back to it, I thought back, "Can my family come too?" and the voice thought back to me once more, "Only one" and then... I looked down. I saw my grandpa, sleeping. He was fighting cancer at the time.  I stared at him for a few minutes, and then I said, "I can't" and immediatly and very suddenly, I woke up. I was in pain again. And I started to cry and cry and cry. And my grandma started to cry too. I looked at her and told her my dream. And she told me that my monitors had crashed, and that it was not a dream. I had just met God. I couldn't stop thinking about him. The thinking about him non-stop still happens to this day, 8 months later. But, however, my story doesn't end here. The next day, surgery. My grandma kept me awake all night long, to assure ourselves I would be okay. The mean nurse would come in every so often to check on me, though mostly she shot glares at my grandma and I. Morning finally came though, and I made it to 11pm, we had told the doctor everything that had happened. He apologized greatly to us, and the nurse had done things like this before, and that she was going to be fired. The surgery... they put a tube into my left lung, that would be your right though, if you were to look at me. The surgery had many many complications, they ended up giving me a drug to give me amnesia. This was because they were not able to put me to sleep, my vital signs were too low. And my breathing was too shallow. The surgery was originally supposed to be an hour, it lasted 3 or 4. I later on am told you could hear me screaming throughout the whole section of the ICU I was in, and my family was taken to a waiting room downstairs because it was such an upsetting thing to hear. My mom was breaking down from hearing it. Though they gave me amnesia, I still remember some of that surgery, and the memories are not pleasant. Some of the worst memories I will ever have in my life. After they successfully go the tube in, I started to get better little by little. The next day they put in a port, it's a tube that went in through my chest down to my heart, through my vein. It was for drawing blood and IV purposes. I didn't learn until later, that with my sitaution, that was a very dangerous move for them to make. Once my fever started to get controlled better, my family felt safe enough to let me stay alone there. My mom and sisters were there to visit me on the 7th day, and I seemed fine, but I was out of it. They assumed me to be tired and left so I could get some rest. I remember starting to feel really horrible soon after they had left, and I knew my fever was rising. I started to get scared, so I hit my nurse call button. A light turns on above my door when I hit nurse call, so that if they don't hear it at the station, they can come over if they are close by. Nobody came for about 10 minutes, so I hit it again. My nurse call light turned off. I got really scared, thinking it might be broken. So I hit it again, the light came on, soon after it turned off again. This repeated for the next 15 minutes. I started feeling so bad, that I couldn't think normally, I was about to vomit, and had nothing near me to vomit in. I had eaten for the first time in a week today, though it wasn't much at all. Just a couple of skittles. That's not what was wrong though... far from it. Finally my aunt came into my room, just as I vomited all over myself. I told her to get a nurse. She ran and got one, it happened to be a nurse who just got on shift, she rushed to my room, and took my temperature. It was 105.9, she shook her head in disbelief, attempted to take my temperature again, under my arm this time. Still 105.9, she ran to get more nurses and they started putting ice packs and cold cloths all over me to get my temperature down. The head of the nurse station came in, and my aunt called my grandmother not knowing what to do, because I was getting worse. My family decided to tranfer me to Dayton Children's. I was in no condition to make a transfer, but either way I could die. And they were going to take a risk. They argued with my current hospital for two hours trying to get them to let me transfer. Finally, they agreed to call my doctor and request it. He didn't like the idea, he wanted to keep me, he offered us a new doctor there, but they kept pushing to transfer. He finally agreed. I was transferred to Dayton Children's. I felt so relieved, even just by the ambulence paramedics who came to get me. I felt like I was going to get better finally. They were so nice and comforting to me.

It Started After The Snow

It was the end of Febuary, and I had went out to a concert with some friends. I remember that night perfectly, the best night I had in a long time, but when I got home the party crashed quick. I felt a little out of it, so I turned off the lights and layed down to sleep. I kept a glass of water by my bed always, because I slept in the basement and it made my throat get dry. I woke up several times that night, with a very dry throat, I went through three glasses of water. I had a bit of a sore throat for the passed 3 days, but I had a runny nose, so I figured it was just a small virus. The day after the concert, I did my normal daily routine, but I was a lot slower. From there the sore throat got worse within the next 24 hours, to the point that I couldn't even swollow my own spit without excrutiating pain. I decided I should see a doctor. I went to a local clinic, where I was told I may have Strept. They took the test and it came back negative, so they sent me home on antibiotic for Strept Throat anyways. I took the pills as directed for a week, and nothing changed. It continued to get worse and worse. During this week, I gained a fever. 102.5 - 103.2, it kept getting higher and higher. Eventually, I started vomiting, not able to keep down food, drinks, or anything that I put in my mouth. One point, my fever rose up to 104.9, my family insisted the thermometer was broken, and told me to soak in the bathtub for a while. I did as they said, and while I was in there, I broke down and cried. I began to pray for my life, I remember sitting there, lacing my fingers together, and shivering as tears started rolling down my cheeks like rapids. I told God, "Please help me, I'm not ready to die, I know something is wrong, God. Please give me the strength to fight this, please give me a cure." and I think I repeated that sentence while I cried for about 2 hours. The next day my mom drove me to the Emergency Room, and they had me on IV giving me fluids for about an hour. They said I was just dehydrated, and I had a small virus and I'd be fine in the next few days. They sent me home after the IV treatments, I felt fine for about half an hour, my throat still felt horrible, but my energy levels were a lot better. I slept for the longest time that night, I remember being scared and not able to wake up at one point. Throughout the passed two weeks since the concert, I even lost track of the time, day, and couldn't remember a lot of things. I got up the next morning around 7am for about an hour, then went back downstairs and slept some more. My aunt came downstairs around 6pm, to find me unconcious and shaking in my bed. She grabbed the thermometer, and took my temperature, 105.9... she told me to stay there and not move, and she ran upstairs, and called 911. The paramedics came to get me, when they arrived, they had some troubles getting the IV's in, I couldn't walk, my vision was blurred and fuzzy, and I couldn't understand what they were saying because my hearing sounded really fuzzy and echoed. They kept trying to keep me awake, everytime I'd start to fall asleep, they'd tap me repeatedly and say my name. Soon, they got me into the ambulence, and I arrived at Upper Valley Medical Center in Troy, Ohio.