kayray.org

Guess who’s in the ER. Again. With a mystery problem that no one can figure out.

Felt great yesterday and sewed for hours! In the afternoon I lay down for a rest as usual. All of a sudden I felt my blood oxygen levels plummet and heart palpitations start up. My o2 was low, scary-low. A normal healthy person will be at 98-100% oxygen saturation. I am typically at 92-95 when my o2 concentrator is giving me three liters per minute. When this started up yesterday I was at 77-82%, which is frightening and can be deadly. I cranked my machine up to 5 lpm and managed to stay in the low 80s. Eek.

Henry et al came over and he moved my livingroom machine closer to the bedroom and cranked it up to 5, and I put both cannulas in my nose for TEN lpm. And managed to hover around 86-90, as long as I stayed still. When I got up and moved around it dropped into the 70s again. Eeeeek.

Took my diltiazem in case it was the beginning of atrial fibrillation. No effect.

Hoping sleep would cure me, we all went to bed. Lulu slept near me on Dave’s side of the bed (he’s still in the Bay Area loading his truck)

This morning I was no better. Argh. So Henry called 911 and a team of majestic EMTs checked me over and loaded me into the ambulance.

Now I’m hanging out in the ER. I’m actually feeling a lot better. No palpitations for a few hours, and my o2 sats are better. Close to normal, even. In the hours I’ve been here they’ve run ALL the tests. They thought it might be an odd heart attack but then ruled that out. They have no idea what’s wrong with me, lol. I am a Scientific Oddity as usual.

They’re talking about sending me to the university hospital (OHSU) where there are specialists who understand PAH, but they didn’t have room earlier when I asked the EMTs to take me there.

Oh! Turns out that hospitals here in Oregon have a garage for ambulances so they don’t need to unload patients in the rain and snow! In California they just pull up to the curb because it almost never rains. It never occurred to me that places with weather might do it differently!

Anyway, I’m alive and feeling much better. Fingers crossed they either send me to OHSU or let me go home, if I remain stable…

Doc just came in and said she’d conferred with multiple specialists and they think it might be acute right heart failure. Argh. So they’re sending me to the ICU at OHSU. I’ll keep you posted when I can.

Yuck.