[Note: We arrived home safe and sound last night about 11:15 p.m. after a very long, but fun (really!) road trip of 1,600 miles from Durango, Colorado. We drove down to Albuquerque, New Mexico, Friday afternoon and spent Saturday. Sunday morning we went across I-40 (old Route 66) to Tucumcari, Amarillo, Texas (I hollered at you Frank as we passed the Bible Chair at Amarillo College, but from I-40, of course) on to Oklahoma City, where we spent Sunday night (and where I waved at Bobby & Tamie of Christian Chronicle and blog fame).
We left Oklahoma City at 8 a.m. yesterday and arrived home late last night, but glad to be home. We went from OKC to Fort Smith, Little Rock (where I waved to Keith), Pine Bluff & Dermott, Arkansas (story there for later). We came on down to Vicksburg, spent a couple of hours semi-lost in the Mississippi countryside, but finally found Hattiesburg and drove on home.
I have enough stories from our trip (as you can imagine) to last for about 6 months of blogging (Greg - if you want to take notes!! ha!) so y'all stay tuned! I've got pages of Post It notes sitting here on my desk about all of the events, rather miraculous and otherwise. But, today let me fill in some of the blanks about how my house of cards collapsed after the first one fell the wrong way.]
"Life always gives the tests first before it teaches you the lessons."
Tom said last Wednesday morning as he sat by my bed in ICU at Mercy Medical Center Hospital in Durango, Colorado that we "should have known" better than to go to the Rocky Mountains with all of my health problems to begin with because of what it led to. But I told him – it is always only in hindsight that we know what we didn’t know before hand that there was no way to find out until it happened.
Here’s what happened.
You all pretty much know my medical history of the past 3 or 4 years (boy, the mid-50s can take a toll), but let me refresh your memory. I’ve been diabetic 36 1/2 years, leading to arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and nerve damage to every organ in my body. In March 2004 I had emergency open heart surgery with 5-bypasses. I’ve had 4 strokes, have had diastolic congestive heart failure since my heart surgery and suffer from chronic disease anemia.
Up until our trip to high altitude, I’d never had pulmonary problems with my lungs, but now that seems to be a big obstacle to full recovery from my Colorado ordeal. But more on that later. Let me fill you in on the details.
When we left Albuquerque at 5000 ft. above sea level, I think (thought, anyway) I was fine. But we steadily climbed up mountains until we crossed the Continental Divide (from where rain fall and streams run either to the eastern part of the United States or to the west) near Chama, New Mexico at 7,380 feet on over to Pagosa Springs, Colorado.
About Los Alamos, approximately half way from Albuquerque up to Pagosa, where we were headed, I began to feel very light headed. Altitude sickness.
The higher the elevation, the more rarefied the air is – with less and less oxygen to breathe or fill one’s blood to make it rich with needed oxygen. In my case, because of all of the different health problems (apparently) the oxygen problem was greatly exacerbated.
Altitude sickness not only depletes your oxygen level, making you light headed and faint, it causes nausea. I had both to the extreme and could neither eat nor drink water even.
In the meantime, I was told by my doctors back home to continue with all of my medications as usual (which I did, though difficult), while drinking lots of fluids (which I could not do). Four of my pills a day were diuretics – to take out excessive fluids that build up all the time from my diastolic congestive heart failure.
I found out later (while in the ICU) that even breathing in rarified air causes you to lose lots of fluid from your body. Thus my fluids were being depleted very rapidly without much of any coming in at all. I quickly severely dehydrated, on top of suffering from oxygen loss.
My heart began to toil terribly to catch up with my failing kidneys and lungs and the entire right side of my heart enlarged and threw off enzymes mimicking a heart attack. At the same time my red blood cells greatly depleted from lack of oxygen and my already present anemia dropped precipitously causing severe anemia.
All of those things caused me to be in a terribly lethargic state where sleep was all I could do. By the time we arrived at the hospital in Durango Tom had to bring out a wheelchair to wheel me in. I could no longer walk.
When I finally arrived in the ICU, the Critical Care specialist and I went over all of my conditions and medications, as I said last time and it took him about 45 minutes to get all of the details straight, incluing that I suffer from (which I failed to mention above) esophogeal reflux that aggravated the nausea and led to a terribly irritated stomach.
The last piece of the puzzle that finally brought everything into perfect disarray and collapse of my entire house of cards body was that I had been taking a prophylactic medication once a day for months and months to prevent bladder infections that it turns out can cause pulmonary (lung) disease!!
In other words – under doctors’ orders I had been doing all of the worst things I could be doing that led me to acute kidney failure, electrolytes that were royally screwed up (my potassium level was 6 times normal!!), heart enyzmes showing a possible heart attack, severe anemia (I received two pints of blood in six hours of blood transfusions all day long Wednesday) and pulmonary dysfunction.
I was in bad shape, so you’d say and the doctors were all astounded that I’d even tried to come to the mountains. (I didn’t know. I had no clue and apparently doctors, even, at sea level rarely do either.)
As I said last time, as soon as I started getting the much needed oxygen and some fluids, I felt much better and I began to talk again (I’d not talked much at all for 3 days and that had Tom worried the most). I was very fatigued but in good spirits the rest of the time I was in the hospital, despite various setbacks.
We traveled home with 10 tanks of oxygen that I’ve used for breathing about 90 percent of the time along the way during the day and a big concentrating machine that condenses oxygen in the air for me to use at night, both with cannulas I attach to my nose while using.
I’m setting up doctors’ appointments today, along with further blood tests to check my hemoglobin and electrolyte levels and pulmonary function tests to see if my lungs are permanently damaged from that medication I told you about I’d been taking. I also have to have further tests done on my heart to see if there might be a small hole in my heart between the upper right atrium and left one causing blood to leak between them so that blood doesn’t go into my lungs. It would be a hole present since birth but heretofore undetected.
So, I’m not totally out of the woods yet, but am much improved. We really had a great time overall other than me feeling so bad for 3 days and Tom worrying about me. I’ll fill you in on all of the good stuff now that I’ve got all of the imminent death issues out of the way.
I’ll have to say this – if you’re facing death within hours, Mercy Medical Center in Durango, Colorado is the place to deal with it. I certainly needed mercy when I arrived and found it abundantly in the brand new hospital and in each
and every person working there to save my life.
Tom and I thank God He watched out over us, brought us there for help and kept us safely through all we faced. He gave us the minds to make medical decisions and the hearts to appreciate everyone’s help and good will.
We have been greatly and deeply blessed in the past 10 days as a result. I have so much more to share with you about all of these things, but time runs short today. So, continue to pray God will keep me safe a while longer here on this earth to share with you all His glorious riches and blessings.
Cheers for today, y’all! And God bless! Dee
trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life which
God has promised to those who love him.
Version
Dee Andrews
wow. I always stop taking my allergy meds a week prior to the mountains because the dry me out and you need all the water you can get.Glad your back home.
Glad to hear, that you are home,
you were in Arkansas? we live next door to Arkansas! you could have wave to us!
take care
Sorry, Janice! Here’s a belated wave to you, too! And thanks so much for the long stemmed rose this morning by email! Beautiful.And Corry & Kc – thanks for the DaySpring card. I loved it and it is much appreciated.Tommy – next time we go up to the Rocky Mountains I’ll remember to stop taking all of my "drying out" meds a week before. (Just kidding, don’t panic. They invited us to enjoy the rest of our visit but to "never come back," and we won’t. I’ll tell y’all later what Tom kept saying, but don’t want to spoil my "I told you so" post about what all he kept saying. You can figure. (And try to guess, if you want. As in, where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do.)
I’m glad you’re at least heading out of the woods, so to speak. All that you wrote is certainly a possibility and might explain things from a medical perspective. It may just be possible that you, being a southern lady, got too far away from the south and your body couldn’t tolerate the change. I mean, it is possible, right?
Why, yes, Greg, that is not only certainly possible, but most probable. You know how us delicate Southern Magnolias are in harsher climes. We require lots of pampering and maintenance to keep us happy and in the best of health, mental, physical and otherwise.I’ve read too much of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams’ work to thrive outside the Southern experience.And you know what? One thing of which I was very aware was how weathered and leathery most of the women’s skin was, including their faces. It was very difficult to tell how old most of the women were and I was often surprised that they were much younger age wise than they looked.I, on the other hand, had very pale, delicate features that everyone noticed. Several commented on how sensitive my skin seemed to be. Of course the paleness was not so much from staying out of the sun most of the time, which I do, but from lack of many red blood cells left in my body!Tom only realized how white my skin had been after I’d received the 2 pints of blood and had a pink glow about me again.I was definitely the Southern Belle in the ICU holding court though, let me tell you. I was the life of the party. Scarlett O’Hara had nothing on me!
Dee, I would assume you’re feeling much better after breathing the air in God’s country (Oklahoma)!
Glad you’re home. Bobby
I stepped back into the office and Bobby said, "Did you know about Dee almost dying???" Good grief, man. At least let me sit down before you scare me to bits!I’m so glad you’re safe and mostly sound again at home. Hope the tests continue to go well. No more of that air for you.
oh yeah, everybody in the Rockies looks rough. Its a hard climate. A freind I used to work with in Jackson would always comment at lunch regarding a woman who looked rough or even average that "she could be miss Wyoming any day".