The Sick

Last night I had one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. I've lived ever since I can remember with exercise-induced asthma and never had an actual asthma attack. I've simply taken my inhaler before any exercising and been just fine and dandy. Yesterday was no different: I took my inhaler before exercising and did an insanity workout. Unfortunately my legs were so weak from the little food I've been eating here that I couldn't even finish the workout. The only thing that is different here from any other place I've exercised is the insane amount of dust gathered between the floorboards. Well, turns out house dust is a trigger for an asthma attack. At about 11pm I noticed that when I laid down it felt like a giant brick was laying on my chest and a huge hand was gripping my airway. This has happened before so I just took  my inhaler and thought it would subside. Subside, it did not. I tried to sleep sitting up because that seemed to make it slightly easier to breathe, but by 3am I had to come to terms with the fact that I would not be sleeping because I had to concentrate so entirely on breathing that I was afraid if I fell asleep I would stop breathing and die. No exaggeration, those were my thoughts. I was so tired and frustrated and scared. At 5am I remembered I had filled an emergency prescription before coming to China for a respiratory-tract infection, so I researched it on the internet to make sure it would be okay to take and it was so I took that. While I was on the internet I looked up the signs of an asthma attack because honestly I wasn't sure. They include: accelerated heart rate, coughing, wheezing, a tightness in the chest, headache, and an inability to sleep. Bingo, I was having an asthma attack and that terrified me. I also read that if you are having a severe asthma attack your lips will turn blue or gray because you are not getting enough oxygen in your blood and will soon pass out and most likely die. I checked to make sure my lips were still pink and thankfully they were. Taking the medicine helped a little, but not before I called Candy my wonderful Chinese friend and assistant here in Wuhan and she and our boss came to get me to go to the hospital. By the time they got here the medicine had kicked in and I decided to try and sleep it off. Well I had taken my inhaler about 8 times by now and the steroids wouldn't let me sleep. By noon I gave up, walked to work, and begged them to tote me off to the hospital. Candy and I spent all day there. They monitored my heart rate, which was incredibly fast; took blood and discovered that my white blood cell count was about double the normal amount, but when they took a chest x-ray they determined that it was "no big problem". They stuck me with an IV and plopped me in a room with 2 other sickly Chinese people. The biggest difference I noticed between American hospitals and Chinese hospitals (at least this one) is this: you know how American hospitals are strangely yet comfortingly quiet and calm and a person gets their own room so they can sleep? Not so here. It was like the Grand Hotel with people coming and going and shouting and babies crying, not to mention that sanitary was not the first word that came to mind. I made sure every time they stuck a needle in me that it came from it own individual sealed, sanitary-seeming little bag. I got zero rest, which intensified my already-prominent headache, and was told after all the IV fluids had dripped through me that I would be staying the night. I was not pleased by this. All I could think of were the two times in high school when I had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night and how comforting it was to have my mom sitting by my bed reading a book. I'll admit it folks: I wanted my mommy. This was not going to happen here and it scared me to death. Not to mention Candy told me to give her all my valuables and sleep with my purse by my head because it was not very safe at night. Wonderful! While Candy was out getting me some food, my doctor came back and brought 2 other prestigious-looking men with her, one of whom listened to my chest and (according to the guy in the bed next to me) said it was not a big problem and I would recover quickly. Thank goodness for China and their ambition to have many of their citizens learn English. I was relieved, but still sad that I was going to have to stay the night. Then Candy came back and soon Snow, our boss, joined us. She somehow managed to talk the doctors out of making me stay the night for observation and just have me come back in the morning so they could check on me. By this time my chest was no longer tight and I was just terribly fatigued and grossed out by the cough medicine I was having to take. I am now sitting at home in bed writing this, and while my pulse is still a bit fast I am not worried. I can breathe and with the help of the cough medicine I hopefully won't cough my way through the night. It is time, as the Chinese say it, to "have a good rest". I'll be returning in the morning and hopefully my heart will have slowed by then. I have to say that Candy was incredible through all this. She stayed by my side all day and literally held my hand through the whole process. She was the closest thing I could have gotten to my mom being there and I am so grateful for her and the overall kindness of the Chinese people. I got a couple souvenirs from this whole experience:

My very own chest x-ray, to have and to hold

A gnarly needle-stick bruise