Owen wrote: Thu Jan 23, 2025 1:11 pm
I needed a place to document this, so here seems good.
A few days before Christmas I nearly died...from massive food poisoning. Not to get in the gross details, but one min I thought I was having indigestion, and the next I am sitting on toilet and every ounce of liquid in my body needed to get out of my body NOW to dispel this toxin I ate. A lot of it was sweat? Like, right before I passed out and my wife called the paramedics, I looked like I had just played basketball for 4 straight quarters and 2 min before, no sweat at all, felt very strange. So I got to take a ride in an ambulance (never did that before), I was going in and out consciousness so I dont remember much of it.
I get to the hospital and I am mostly aware of whats going on, and the nurse needs to take my vitals. They can't get a temp off of me. They thought it was a faulty thermometer. They went through what seemed like 5 or 6 of them and still no readable temp. I remember another nurse asking, "did they find this body outside, or in water?" No temp meaning like 92-93 range. So they start treating me like I have hypothermia and wrap in what I can only describe as an inside out air mattress where I am on the inside and all the warm air is surrounding my body. I start to respond to that and I am now mostly conscious. I tell them I think it was food poisoning. They dont believe that as my blood test is saying some of the readings are too extreme to be just food poisoning, they think my gall bladder might be failing.
By this time they got me on an IV as I was incredibly super dehydrated, and I start to respond to that, and I start to get to more survivable numbers, not great but I am trending towards the right way. They decide to keep at the hospital, I get the works, PET, CT, EKG (when you lose that much liquid so quick your ticker takes a blast I guess), and blood drawn every 4 hours or so. I end up staying in the hospital for 3 days slowly getting better. They finally said that yes, it was food poisoning.
After 3 days of being a human pin cushion and only "eating" from an IV bag they discharge me on Dec 23rd. When I got home, you can imagine I am basically as weak as a kitten, but all I wanted was a shower to wash the hospital off me. I get in the shower and...no hot water? My wife runs downstairs and our hot water heater has failed and is blasting water on an unfinished wall and there is about quarter inch of water on the ground. My saintly wife does not know how to shut off the water, so I have to slowly make my way downstairs and get the valves shut off. Then we (we, meaning my wife), had to deal with getting that all taken care of, but somehow we were able to get a new water heater put in on Christmas Eve.
A couple weeks later my health insurance sent me a letter saying they are denying my claim, saying I shouldn't have been hospitalized because of "tummy trouble", so now I get to deal with that, and it WILL be ok and worked out, but its just more hoops to jump through.
Anyways tomorrow I turn 45 and I am glad to be alive. Don't eat old cheese.