Part 2. Details.

Part 2.  The beginning.  (according to my memory).

I wake up.  I look around and have no idea where I am.  No idea.  My throat hurts.  Dang I'm thirsty.  Where am I?  Everything looks fuzzy.  I can't see, am I blind??  I see my mom.  "Mom, I can't see!!!  Where are my contacts?  Why did you take my contacts out?  Where am I?  What are you doing to me??"  I'm yelling but nothing will come out.  My voice is mangled and tiny from a 4 week stint on the ventilator.  Mom rushes over and grabs my hand.  "Amy, you're in the hospital, honey.  You're okay, you're okay." 

 I don't know what is going on, but I'm thirsty.  And I can't see.  "We had to take your contacts out, honey," Mom says.  "Dad is getting your glasses.  You're okay."  "Mom!!" I yell/whisper.  "I stink!  Where is my stuff?  Where is my bag?!  What did you do with my bag??"  I'm frantic at this point.  

"Mom!  Get me some deodorant STAT!"  My mom stifles a laugh.  "Okay, honey.. what else can I bring you?"  "Deodorant, body spray, tic-tacs..orange.. and a diet coke!"  No smile on my end.  I'm serious.  

_    __   _   ___  __  ___ 

According to my parents, this is the conversation that occurred when I woke up from the induced coma.   It is also one of the first things I remember from my BIG.  Little did I know at the time, the BIG had started about 4 weeks earlier.  I don't remember being admitted to the ER on that fateful night in November.  I don't remember going through 5 surgeries in 2 different hospitals.  I don't even remember most of the week before I was hospitalized.  I was so incredibly sick that my brain and memory were affected.  So I have to tell you.... most of what I'm going to tell you next is what I've been told from my parents, fiancé, family, co-workers, and physicians.  I've pieced it together in my mind as best I can and that's how I'll tell it to you.   

It began 5 weeks earlier.  I woke up one morning and felt like I'd pulled a muscle in my quad.  I was running crazy distances at the time and working to bring down my minute-per-mile speed from 7 minutes to 6 minutes for distances of 8+ miles, so I attributed the pain in my leg to a sore muscle or maybe a muscle strain.  It hurt, but wasn't unbearable.  The next night at work, I noticed that the quad was beginning to swell and redden.  I also didn't feel that great that night.  I was shivering cold, then hot.  I took my temp at work and it was normal, so I kept working.  The leg swole more and more that night and I started to feel sicker and sicker.  By around 5:30 in the morning (I work night shift), I could barely get up.  I was drastically limping by then and felt like I had the flu.  I vomited several times in the bathroom and rechecked my temp-- 101 now.  My charge nurse Laura saw how sick I was becoming and insisted that I go home.  Day shift was starting to come on, so she grabbed the first nurse she saw and had her take my patient so I could get out of there.  I crawled home.  Once home, I took some tylenol and then rechecked my temp-- 103.  I went to bed and slept for about 18 hours on/off.  I don't remember the next few days, but J (my fiancé) tells me I didn't do much except go from the bathtub, to the couch, to the bed, to the bathtub.  He tried to get me to go to the doctor, but without health insurance (due to a new job and miscommunication about what open enrollment means) I didn't want to pay out of pocket for a doctor's visit.  My sister told me later that when she went to my apartment to check on the dog (a week later, when I was in the hospital), the apartment was littered with heating pads, tubes of Icy Hot, tylenol, advil, and ice packs.  J finally convinced me to  go to the doctor on Wednesday, as I could barely walk by then.  I remember trying to walk through the parking lot into the office and crying in pain.  The physician's assistant thought it was cellulitis maybe from an ingrown hair or bug bite....nothing resembling a point of entry was really visible on the leg, so she wasn't sure.  She prescribed me some painkillers and antibiotics and sent me home.  I don't remember anything after that. For the next four days, according to J, I continued my rotation....bathtub, couch, bed, bathtub, couch bed.  I was sick, and I knew it.... but I had no idea that my kidneys were starting to shut down... the infection was spreading...I was septic...and I was dying.  On Saturday, apparently J begged me to take me to the ER.  I refused, telling him I'd promise I'd go on Sunday when my parents drove in from Virginia.  Saturday night was the first miracle God performed on me.  

I had called in sick to work on both Friday and Saturday nights.  (again, I don't remember doing this).  On Saturday night, my close friend from work Vanessa started to really worry about me and decided to call and see how I was doing.  Something told her that she needed to call.  That something turned out to be a whisper from God.  Because we soon found out that if Vanessa hadn't made that call, forcing me to finally cave and let J take me to the hospital, I would've died that night.  The physician told me later that I was severely septic and in multi-system organ failure by that point....and I wouldn't have lived had I waited any longer.  Vanessa told me that when I answered the phone, something didn't sound right.  She told me my voice sounded weak, almost a whisper.  I stubbornly told her I wasn't going in to the ER that night and God bless her, she didn't listen to me and called J on his phone.  "Take her in NOW," she told him.  That was somehow enough for me, so I let J carry me to the car and take me to the hospital.  

The girls from my unit met me in the ER when I arrived.  Vanessa tells me it was horrifying.  I was gray.  I could barely muster a sentence.  My leg was triple the normal size.  I was dying.  Vanessa told me later with tears in her eyes, "Amy... you looked dead." 

 I was quickly admitted and put on a strong cocktail of antibiotics and pain meds.  Again, let me stress, I remember none of this.  Because when you're septic, and your kidneys are failing, your brain is affected.  After labs were drawn, the doctors were even more terrified.  My platelet count was 24. 20 freaking 4.  Liver enzymes were insanely high.  Kidney function was disgusting.  Temp was around 104.  My poor fiancé was there by himself...in a little room holding the hand of his dying wife-to-be when the doctors came in and told him that my life was in danger.  They feared I wouldn't make it through the night.  And if I did survive....I'd be surviving without a leg.  Amputation would be necessary to cut the infection out of my system.  How my fiancé lived through those moments and didn't absolutely lose his mind is beyond me.  He called my parents and told them the news.  "It's not good.  There's three things it could be and none of them are good.  She's going into surgery now.  They're planning on making a 14 inch incision in her quad to figure out whether it's cellulitis, muscle compartmentalization, or the worst... necrotizing fasciitis.  Absolutely freaked and terrified, my parents jumped in the car and raced towards Illinois.  I asked my mom what they were doing and talking about during that car ride.  First, they called my brother and sisters, grandma and grandpa, aunts and uncles and started a prayer chain.  A chain that would eventually include hundreds of thousands of people praying for me.  The rest of the car ride, they prayed.  Over and over again they cried out to their Father and begged for his help.  I am so insanely blessed to have parents like mine.  Their faith in God is FIRST in their lives.  He is FIRST.  And so, when they pray, He is faithful.  He listens.  And He did.  A few short minutes into their drive, God performed his next miracle.  Apparently there was an accident on one of the main highways and the back-up was hours and hours upon hours.  God put a police officer there for my parents.  My dad explained the situation and that police officer was able to give them a backwoods way to get around the traffic.  It was basically a turn onto the dirt road- past- the- third- barn- on- the- left type of situation.  They were able to get around the traffic.  And miracle #3....God was able to get my parents to me in 8-9 hours---a drive that normally takes at least 12.  

In the meantime, J was wheeling me off to surgery.  I was crying and told him "I'm scared."  He said leaving me at that OR was the worst moment of his life.  He went back down the hall and sat alone for hours, not knowing whether he'd ever see me alive again.  

Shortly after, my brother, sisters, and sister's boyfriend Mike arrived.  J pieced the story together for them, and immediately, he had an ally.  My brother is brave.  He's strong.  And his faith is HUGE.  The two of them together met with doctors and nurses and anesthesiologists.  While my sisters and Mike made phone calls and prayed, my fiancé and my brother asked questions, signed documents, and kept my parents informed.  I can't tell you how many prayers were said that night. 

I came out of my first surgery okay.  My leg had been cut open and muscles dissected, and necrotized tissue removed.  The surgeon was in over her head.  She was a ortho and had never dealt with necrotizing fasciitis before.  She kept telling my family, I don't know if we can save her.  I'm not sure what we're dealing with.  I think we need to amputate.  Matt and J became more and more concerned that she didn't know what she was doing.  What was terrifying was just become even scarier.  

Shortly after the first surgery, a doctor palpated my abdomen and noted that I was feeling pain there too.  Fearing that the infection was spreading to the abdomen, they took me back into surgery.  Sure enough, the infection was now in my abdomen and pelvis.  More muscle and fascia and tissue was removed.  When I came out of that surgery, my body was in trouble.  The trauma of it all and the pain and my weakening systems caused me to breathe rapidly....for HOURS.  For 8 hours, I panted...respirations in the 60s.  My heartbeat was around 160 and J said he could see my jugular vein palpating disgustingly fast.  It was as if I was running a marathon in a dead sprint...a marathon that went on for hours upon hours.  At one point, J yelled to the nurse, "Why aren't you doing anything?!!  She should be vented!  She can't breathe like this, she's going to die!! DO something!"  The doctors were worried that I was too weak to handle the sedation, so I continued my marathon to stay alive.  

The next morning, I was taken in for my third surgery.  This time, the anesthesiologist told my family... "She's going in with the vent and when she comes out, the vent stays in."  I remember the minutes before this surgery...one of the only things I remember at all for the first four weeks.  I remember being SO THIRSTY.  I begged for something to drink, or just ONE FREAKING ICE CHIP.  I was sobbing and begging everyone there.  I remember the nurse crying...it physically pained her that she couldn't help me.  My mom lost it then.  Seeing me that way, so scared, in so much pain and begging for mercy...she walked away sobbing.  My family held each other and sobbed during that surgery.  

God kept me alive, and what do you know, I came out of that surgery.  The physician who wanted to amputate and somehow decided that she was in over her head and didn't want to cut anymore.  She was ready to send me off to someone who knew what to do.  And that night, God performed another miracle.  To be continued...