Close One in Life As I Know It - 2022

Those of you on my Facebook already know this. I thought I was going to lose Pat this past weekend. He got up Wednesday and took his last licensing test and went to work. Midway through the afternoon he felt flushed and chilled at the same time. He has been burning the candle at both ends for the past few months and he just figured it was catching up to him. He planned on going home and going to bed right after dinner.

He didn’t have much of an appetite and pushed it aside. He went to get up out of his chair to go to bed and I saw him have a really bad shiver go through him. He asked if it was cold in the house and i said it was actually comfortable for me, meaning it was probably around 75F.

He laid down in bed and wrapped up in blankets to see if he could get warm. We still didn’t feel like it was anything serious.

Literally 5 minutes after laying down I heard him yell for me. I could tell by the sound of his voice something was wrong.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed shivering uncontrollably. He couldn’t breathe and he said his chest felt tight. Immediately I dialed 911. Before the ambulance got there he started puking his guts up. By then I was shaking out of pure fear.

I followed him to the hospital and they ran some tests. Nothing definitive. But he had a fever of 102 and his white blood cell count was 18. Normal is 7-9.

They ended up admitting him so they could give him high doses of IV antibiotics and fluids because he was seriously dehydrated as well.

Thursday I went to see him and he was delerious from the fever. He doesn’t even remember that we were there. His temp was up to 105 and his white cell count was up to 20.

By then I was in tears. I was so afraid he was going to die.

Friday I had to go to work but he texted me and said he felt almost 100% better. What a miraculous turnaround!!! I’ll tell you about that another time.

They needed him to stay in the hospital 1 more day to make sure his fever didn’t come back and so they could get the blood cultures back.

His final diagnosis was sepsis from E-Coli from a bladder infection he had. He didn’t even know he had a UTI! No pain, no burning. Nothing.

So yeah. Super scary!!! But they caught it in time and hes back to normal now. He didn’t tell me until he got out that the dr had said on Thursday that if his fever didn’t break they were going to put him in ICU. He didn’t want to scare me any more than I already was.