Scary little incident...
Okay, so now that I’ve slept a nice long night of delicious sleep, I can talk about what happened yesterday morning. Be warned for medical scariness.
I was only staying over at Bryan’s for two or three hours while my Mom went and got a shower, checked on some bills, got some laundry started, checked on our very old dog, etc etc. He had already had breakfast and was going to wait to have his own shower when she got back, and was just walking around a bit and watching TV.
We had been sitting watching the History Channel (You will never meet someone who loves that channel more than my brother) when he started coughing. Now, a dry hacking cough is a side effect of one of his medications, and the day before his nurse said she was going to try and get that changed but we haven’t gotten that fixed yet. It has progressed so that every time he so much as uses his voice to whisper he starts to cough, and his voice is all raspy.
So he coughs, then coughs a little more, then a little more forcefully, enough for me to look over at him. He picks up his heart pillow to hold to his chest, and he coughs even more. I think that it must hurt a lot.
Then sudddenly his face turns bright red, and it sounds like no air is coming in or out of his throat. His eyes go very wide but all the recognition goes out of them. They look glazed over and unseeing. His arms go limp so he drops the pillow, he starts to shake, and his body starts thrashing back and forth violently.
I jumped up from the couch and ran over to him. I had no idea what was happening, but my first thought was he was having a seizure or was choking, but he was making these really soft wheeze sounds. I also thought if he throws himself like this he’s going to snap the wires in his chest and his breastbone is going to open. So I grabbed him by the shoulders to try and at least hold him still and was shouting at him to wake up.
This all happened in about 20 seconds. I was grabbing for the cell phone when he didn’t respond, still holding his shoulder, when it all ended. He completely snapped out of it, his breathing returned to normal, his body relaxed, and he was looking up at me like he was surprised to see me there. It was the weirdest scariest thing.
And he didn’t know how I had gotten there. He had no recollection of the past 20-25 seconds, just that I had gone from the couch to hovering by his side with my hand on his shoulder, and saying no don’t call anybody, I’m fine.
He’s so easy to upset (they took him off his anxiety meds which is not going well) that I said “Okay okay, we won’t call anybody” and then I immediately sat next to him and texted Mom to get the hell back over there cause Bryan just scared the shit out of me. I did this under the guise of her bringing Bryan something from the house.
My cover was blown as soon as she came over and asked him what happened (after talking to me in the kitchen) but I really don’t care if he thinks I betrayed him (he’ll get over that once he’s thinking clearly). I had to leave soon after, and Mom went ahead and called to report the incident to the surgeon and home health nurse.
What pisses me off is that they concluded it was “probably a side effect from a medicine or something interacting, possibly his heart getting temporarily out of rhythm or just him getting overwhelmed coughing, and that it was nothing to worry about.” Nothing to worry about?!?! Are you kidding me? That was something very much worth worrying about! They said to let them know if it happens again, and they hooked him up to a monitor that records data about his heart for analysis.
Just, ugh. That was not normal, that was terrifying. And I am horrible at thinking in situations like that, my brain just seems to freeze. And all I could think was Bryan is going to die right here in front of me.
So that’s my scary ilttle incident yesterday morning. I’ll tell you the IV debacle later today.