Crappy Halloween!

I know it’s a little late for horror stories, but would you like to hear one anyway? Yeah, course you do.

At about 4:30am on Halloween, I woke up and couldn’t breathe. It felt like my lungs had shrunk to the size of grapes, and inhaling hurt to the point where it was near impossible. I woke Stat up in panic, and he called an ambulance. Within ten minutes, my front room was full of three paramedics (one of whom made a total fuss of Purrdy and Charley when they ventured out of hiding to see what the kerfuffle was). They packed me into the ambulance and had me breathe some magic dry-ice-tasting stuff through a nebuliser while they took me to A&E at Hope Hospital. (Salford Royal my butt. It’s Hope Hospital, aiiight?)

So Stat and I spent seven hours in A&E, where I had my own private room, in which I was poked and prodded, had lots of blood taken out of various bits of my arm (the wrist one hurt like a beeyatch), got my chest X-rayed, and got dosed up on codeine to relieve my chest pains. Stat tells me I started singing songs about Azeroth, and asked when the Tardis was getting here. Even when I’m ill, I’m a full-on geek.

One of the doctors who came back with some preliminary blood test results scared the ever-loving crap out of us when he said I might have had a pulmonary embolism. Having a blood clot on one’s lung is serious, life-threatening stuff. Stat and I both remembered that episode of Deadliest Catch where Captain Phil (rest in peace) spent 72 hours dealing with one of those. Not cool.

But then a really cute female doctor came in to see us. I could tell Stat liked her because he suddenly got very, very chatty. She said she didn’t think it was a PE, but she wanted to admit me to have a chest scan anyways. Trouble was, what with it being a Sunday and me not being a total emergency, I would have to wait until the next day. Bang went our Halloween plans.

So I got taken up to the ward, and Stat went home to get me a change of clothes and some entertainment materials while I lay awake, stoned on codeine and contemplating the possibility of my demise. (Total Howard Moon moment, too. “Don’t kill me! I’ve got so much to give!”) The sweet student nurse lady, who was in her final year at Salford Uni (like I was three years ago), looked after me really well, and I even had myself a roast beef dinner. Sure, it was hospital food, but it was the best thing I’d eaten in days.

So Stat came back, with our friend Jim in tow, and eventually another cool doctor came to see me. He said he didn’t think I needed a chest scan, and that I didn’t have a PE. (Yay! I no die today!) He explained what had happened like this: the chest infection I’ve been getting over these past couple of weeks had done a number on my bronchial passages. In short, even though I’m not asthmatic, I’d had an asthma attack. Yowsers.

So I had a quick ECG just to make sure my ticker was okay, and I got sent home after tea with some painkillers, and doctor’s orders for Stat not to smoke anywhere near me for at least two weeks. (FYI: I’ve not smoked even a tiny bit since September.) And I was even able to make a quick appearance at our friends’ Halloween party, where I got to announce “I’m not dead!”

So, yeah. Scary Halloween, and I didn’t even get into costume. But the lovely wife of the guy next to me on the ward gave me some Halloween candy to cheer me up, so it wasn’t a total failure.