I became ill the first week of June 2016, dismissing it as a minor bug — “con crud” as conventioneers say — and something I could get over with fluids, over-the-counter meds, and rest.
Except I didn’t. I was running a fever on and off, at one point hitting 102.5 F, so after battling for a week, I reluctantly went to the doctor that Thursday. After getting a cocktail of antibiotics injected into me, I assumed all would be well…until it wasn’t. I would find out later that I was far more sick and exhausted than I knew, and when the shot took effect, it did its job so well my forty-something body was no longer up to the task.
At some point later in the evening, my short-term memory failed and I’ve been told I started babbling. I don’t remember that night or the panic that set in when my family found me the next morning before calling an ambulance. The shot had started killing off viruses so quickly that I couldn’t flush them out fast enough. Systems started shutting down, and at 340 pounds, my family couldn’t move me to the car. The ambulance drivers didn’t give me much of a chance, but they didn’t waste any time, either.
I remember having some kind of dream about being in a the bottom of a boat, moving inside, as if I was being taken somewhere. There’s a high probability it was how I imagined the ambulance ride or maybe ICU; which one I couldn’t say. Fortunately, for being big and tall, I’m pretty resilient and managed to survive the following two days until I was functioning on my own again. The doctors were afraid something might have been permanently damaged, from my kidneys all the way to my brain.
Continue reading “A Near-Life Experience”