When we were getting ready for our trip last month to see the fall foliage in Canada and New England, we thought it would probably be a good idea to get vaccinated for Covid and flu. Most years, we get the Covid shot as soon as the new formulation is ready but wait until mid-October to get the flu shot because its season here starts fairly late….and it was just the flu, right? Diane didn’t particularly want both shots on the same day, either. And Safeway didn’t have the Moderna mRNA flu shot yet, and certainly we’d have time to get both shots before we left anyway.
So we got the Moderna Covid vaccine on September 14 (the only side effect was 30 minutes out of our lives) and drove off the next morning for our quick trip to Ashland to see the rest of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival season.
But things got busy when we got home and then it took us longer to pack and do final prep for the big trip than we expected, so we “decided” to wait for the flu shot until when we got home….and it was just the flu, right?
It was a spectacular trip but towards the end of the cruise, I noticed a lot of people walking around the ship in masks. Our last excursion to Kennebunkport was on a nearly-full bus, with people coughing behind us. By the time we got off the ship on Tuesday morning, I was dragging and I also noticed that I was starting to cough more than a little bit, but our new friends Jane and Byron also wanted to visit LL Bean and we went there together and had dinner together, too. The next day was better, though my breathing was very wheezy and I could hear myself rattling if I listened (perfectly appropriate for October) and when we left Thursday after lunch to take the bus to Boston, I was feeling mostly OK. But I was one of the people coughing on that bus.
The flight home on Friday was uneventful – we landed half-an-hour early but had to wait 50 minutes for a gate, but we were still home by 3:30pm. I thought about trying to race to the Post Office to get our mail (including our ballots) before they closed at 4 and then thought better of it, but we did go to Lunardi’s and picked up the makings of dinner and supplies for breakfast for the next few days. I made one of our favorite extremely simple dinners…and neither of us ate more than a third of it. We were beat!
Neither of us slept well that night; both of us were coughing. But it was delightul to be in our own bed and to have our normal breakfasts.
I’d brought home a few Covid/Flu combo tests from our European trips this summer (3-4 Euro each; I always stock up there if I happen to have a reason to visit a pharmacy, like needing sunscreen). Both of us tested negative for Covid and positive for Influenza A, which was information I wanted before calling the AARP Nursing Helpline for advice. The nurses’s advice was simple: go to Urgent Care and have a doctor listen to your breathing…and do it within the next 8 hours.
My primary medical care comes from the Stanford network; their closest weekend urgent care is in Dublin, more than an hour away, and that didn’t seem like a good idea. But their big competitor, the Palo Alto Medical Foundation/Sutter Health has an urgent care ten minutes away from our house. Easy choice!
There were a dozen patients in the queue, and they estimated a 90-minute wait time for us (Diane thought it wouldn’t hurt to be seen, too). They said that they’d take vital signs quickly and take a preliminary listen to our breathing, give us a return time, and let us go on our way until then. It was a hot day and we didn’t want to go home to a warm house (our HVAC failed a few days into the trip and won’t be fixed until Monday), so I wasn’t sure we’d take them up on the offer….but it was academic.
When they listened to my breathing, they moved me up the queue, and I saw the doctor and had two chest x-rays taken right away. A few minutes later, the doctor explained that I definitely had progressed to pneumonia, that it was too late for me to take Tamiflu successfully anyway (the Vitals app on my phone had been complaining about my respiration being too fast for five days at this point), but that he was going to put me on two new antibiotics and a very special cough syrup, and that he’d already entered the prescription at the 24-hour Walgreens.
Diane also was already finished and had a Tamiflu prescription (she was probably within the window) and one for Flonase, and those would also be available at the same store.
But there were insurance issues and we’d have to go to the store to resolve them, so we decided to pick up some pizza, go home, and NOT tackle Walgreens on an empty stomach. This, for once in this story, was the right decision.
The issues were easily handled and we were home with our collection of meds by 10:30 and in bed by 11. But I couldn’t breathe. It was much worse than when I discovered that I needed my aortic valve replaced because I couldn’t run a full lap at the gym. This time, I couldn’t get a full breath in at all. I called 911. This, for twice in this story, was the right decision.
A few minutes later, I’d thrown on a t-shirt and pants and put my phone in the pocket (a third right decision!), just in time to let the EMTs into the house.
Things happened quickly after that. I was in the back of the ambulance, breathing oxygen through a mask while they decided I was in A-Fib. They gave me drugs twice during the 10-minute drive to Good Samaritan Hospital (an MCA joint – I wonder if I’ll need yet another “MyHealth” app), and I’ve been here since then. Diane joined me for a couple of hours but then went home to try to sleep – she could see I was in good hands!
The ER set me up on a CPAP pretty quickly, and stepped me down to a nasal canula a few hours later. I’m not sure when they transferred me to the ICU (probably around 5am, based on the short time before the 7am shift change). I wasn’t bored in the meantime, though – in addition to my phone and trying to figure out what was going on, that cough syrup (promethazine DM) kept me entertained with lovely and vivid hallucinations (for example, instead of a plain glass door at the front of the room, I had a decorated, flowery entryway, and every so often, the wall next to me would turn into a pitcher of molten rock). I knew they weren’t real and they didn’t bother me, but I plan to skip the next dose (my coughing is way down today anyway).
They are continuing to give me oxygen with Diltiazem added to bring down my heart rate, and I’ve had a couple of steroid injections, too, plus potassium supplements, blood draws, and even a Covid/flu swabbing (still negative on Covid and Influenza B, still positive on Influenza A).
Diane visited this morning and took the wonderful photo at the top of the blog. She’s also been restocking the kitchen.
The staff cardiologist stopped by to explain the plan – they want to keep me until I’m out of A-Fib while breathing plain air. I’m still in A-Fib on the oxygen/Diltazem mixture and nasal canula, so I’ll be spending the night here!
The staff has been uniformly wonderful, and they radiate competence and confidence. I’ll still be happy to go home, though.
And to think I could have probably missed this entire experience by just squeezing in a flu shot…and we’ve been advised to get this year’s anyway, but we have to wait until a month after we’ve recovered from this bout of flu/pneumonia.
Kids, get your damn flu shots! Just leave a couple of doses for us in a month!
