Preparing for your own death

[Suddenly Worn Out]

Well, I was not doing that bad until very recently. I was actually doing pretty good overall. It was after this surgery that I was caught by surprise, things have been rough since immediately after the surgery. I was expecting things to be rough and expecting to be drugged up for a few weeks and not feel well, have a real sore throat and so on. I was not expecting all these weird shall we say, complications?

Hopefully things will return to normalcy after my throat heals in two or more weeks and Im totally off all these painkillers a few days. If not, guess it will be a trip to the sleep doctor and have to re-evaulate. I have not had to do a REAL sleep re-evaluation since 2007, except for the ear, nose and throat pain I have been experiencing in the last year or so, things were otherwise going pretty good.

thanks again,

Eric

Wow Eric,
You are courageous and perseverant! The wonderful thing is someday soon you will look back at this and be amazed at how far you've come.

We are behind you. You are not alone. Prayers are still coming,

Dreaming

[Suddenly Worn Out]

Hi Quiet,

I posted that first post a week ago. I am not currently having the death premonitions. I was quite drugged up that night...still drugged up actually. And was rather delirious that night from post surgery stuff. I have followups with two different doctors this coming week, one the ENT who did the surgery. I have a blood pressure checkup with my primary care doctor the week after next.

If Im still having the elevated and abnormal central apnea index after Ive been off all these stupid drugs about two days, I will definitely be making a call to the sleep medicine specialist as well. I just dont want to "jump the hoop" and look like a hypochondriac to these doctors.

thanks,


Eric

Eric, I have not read all the other replies, as your original post is so very emergent - I'm just going to post this now in hopes that you will pay attention and go to the ER.

I have had death premonitions in the past - and each and every time, I didn't take it as a premonition (as in something that is GOING TO HAPPEN) BUT AS A WARNING.

Your brain is an amazing device - it sends out signals and if everything isn't as it should be, it sounds ALARMS - and communicates through your right brain, which sends you PICTURES. . .

Every time I listened to those warnings, I was either minutes or hours from death. I went to the ER and they saved my life.

Listen to them. They are WARNINGS. If you went to the doc and they shrugged and said they don't think it's anything - go back. The first time this happened to me, I went to three different docs to three different emergency room visits - the THIRD doc found the problem, immediately admitted me and saved my life.

[quietmorning]

Hi Quiet,

I posted that first post a week ago. I am not currently having the death premonitions. I was quite drugged up that night...still drugged up actually. And was rather delirious that night from post surgery stuff. I have followups with two different doctors this coming week, one the ENT who did the surgery. I have a blood pressure checkup with my primary care doctor the week after next.

If Im still having the elevated and abnormal central apnea index after Ive been off all these stupid drugs about two days, I will definitely be making a call to the sleep medicine specialist as well. I just dont want to "jump the hoop" and look like a hypochondriac to these doctors.

thanks,


Eric

Eric, I have not read all the other replies, as your original post is so very emergent - I'm just going to post this now in hopes that you will pay attention and go to the ER.

I have had death premonitions in the past - and each and every time, I didn't take it as a premonition (as in something that is GOING TO HAPPEN) BUT AS A WARNING.

Your brain is an amazing device - it sends out signals and if everything isn't as it should be, it sounds ALARMS - and communicates through your right brain, which sends you PICTURES. . .

Every time I listened to those warnings, I was either minutes or hours from death. I went to the ER and they saved my life.

Listen to them. They are WARNINGS. If you went to the doc and they shrugged and said they don't think it's anything - go back. The first time this happened to me, I went to three different docs to three different emergency room visits - the THIRD doc found the problem, immediately admitted me and saved my life.

PHEW!!!!! THANK GOODNESS!!

Prayers, lots of them going your way. I hope you heal completely and fast. Your AHI will probably go back down once all the swelling is resolved. **hoping** Though that's really scary. Do you sleep with an oximeter with an alarm? This might be a good time to do so - and definitely with someone - if you have a significant other or even a good friend that wouldn't be weirded out. (These days the smallest idiotic things seem to weird people out for some reason. ) I hope you feel MUCH BETTER very very soon.

[Suddenly Worn Out]

Hi Quiet,

Thank you for your prayers for me. I normally dont say things like this, but I feel as if I could use all the prayers right now that I could get. Again, thank you. Yes, I hope the AHI, the elevated central apnea index and the elevated 95th percentile all return to pre-surgery levels after several more weeks or so. If not, its going to be back to the CPAP drawing board for the first real time for me since 2007. Hopefully, that will not be required (fingers crossed). I was told by the doctors doing the surgery offline who are supposed to know about these things that a tonsillectomy should NOT cause the Autopap problems that a UPPP procedure is famous for causing in AutoPap users.

I dont have an oximeter with an alarm. I probably could use one right now and for the coming weeks. I had one in the post surgical area the day of the surgery and the thing was going off constantly. Of course I was more drugged up then than now, but Im still awfull drugged up today and will remain so for the next week or so.

Im giving it two more weeks to see if swelling goes down and things "normalize" before I go see the sleep medicine to say, "hey, things need to be reevaluated and tweeked immediately, I aint feeling very good post tonsillectomy with regards to my sleep disordered breathing." I hate to overreact. its only been 9 days since the surgery, afterall.

Thanks again for your warm and caring thoughts.

Eric

.

PHEW!!!!! THANK GOODNESS!!

Prayers, lots of them going your way. I hope you heal completely and fast. Your AHI will probably go back down once all the swelling is resolved. **hoping** Though that's really scary. Do you sleep with an oximeter with an alarm? This might be a good time to do so - and definitely with someone - if you have a significant other or even a good friend that wouldn't be weirded out. (These days the smallest idiotic things seem to weird people out for some reason. ) I hope you feel MUCH BETTER very very soon.[/quote]

[Slpmn]

Since when did age 44 start being considered "old"? Seriously? You're only 44! Midlife means you have to do it all over again.

[PreemieNrsTiffy]

Suddenly Worn Out:

I didn't see this until today, sorry you've been having such a tough time. My co-worker and I were just discussing how difficult tonsillectomies are on adults and the older the worse it can be. I had mine out at 25 and I was out of work for 2 weeks, mostly because no working on narcotics for nurses (well, unless you subscribe to the Nurse Jackie model). I had multiple rounds of tonsillitis before that where my tonsils would be so enlarged and inflamed they would join in the middle and were covered in pustules, fun times. . .

My suggestion was to try (after running it by your surgeon and getting a prescription) 4% viscous lidocaine. I believe it is a prescription item but regardless it would be wise to check on it's use since I don't know if it would be safe in a patient with OSA on CPAP. It's just a local anesthetic you can either gargle or carefully apply to the painful areas. It will completely numb anything it touches (temporarily) which can be good and bad. It was how I managed to eat and stay hydrated when I would have those awful bouts of tonsillitis. My pain post-tonsillectomy wasn't nearly as bad and was controlled with Tylenol #3.

It's commonly used by chemotherapy patients who get bad mouth sores so they can eat and drink without pain. It is not long-lasting enough to be used as pain medicine and frankly I found it quite annoying especially when it would numb my tongue (so I couldn't taste the food I finally got to eat) but it was effective to allow me to eat without bracing myself for every swallow.

Ensure is a pretty good way to get nutrition at this time and they also make a high protein version that would support tissue healing.

Hope you feel better really soon.

[pandatx]

Good morning Suddenly! I woke up thinking about you this morning. I just wanted to check in and see how you're doing. Selfishly I've been consumed with my own stuff recently and although I've meant to check in before now I'm sorry that didn't.

I really hope that things are starting to look up. You have been in my thoughts.

xoxo
Amy

[chunkyfrog]

Bump. Yes, how are you doing?

[Suddenly Worn Out]

Ensure is a pretty good way to get nutrition at this time and they also make a high protein version that would support tissue healing.

Hope you feel better really soon.

Yeah, Ive been drinking like, 2000 calories a day of Ensure, alternating that with going out to eat about every other day to eat some moderate amounts of solid food. Ensure is a good product, I never ate it before this though.

As far as me today, I had my first and hopefully only bleeding episode. It happened when I first got up, evidently the scab or part of the scab on the right side only broke and I was bleeding thru the mouth badly. I could have filled maybe, I dont know, a small Motrin bottle with solid blood. After that, it stopped and I ate a bunch of pop sickles and numbed it and so far it has not come back.

Its weird, to be honest. Today was day ten after the surgery. I read in adults it takes 14 to 20 days to recover. Im assuming for me, 20 days is gonna be it. For full recovery, more time.

I see the ENT surgeon late this week for the first time since the surgery, then after the ENT I will be seeing with my shrink who monitors my mood and anxiety. And the following week I will be seeing my primary care doctor for blood pressure stuff and he will look me over and if anything is not caught by the ENT, Im sure he will make sure it gets taken care of somehow.

Im experiencing less throat pain, but still have plenty of throat swelling and it still feels like my throat was "knifed up" from the inside, weird as that sounds. But the excruciating, burning throat pain seems to mostly be gone.

I am bottoming out my AutoPap, though and Im very concerned about that. Hopefully that will resolve on its own. Otherwise I dont know what direction I will go. I woke up today and my machine was blowing on 20.0!!!!! Thats the first time I can ever remember being awake and seeing it ON 20.0!!!! Just eleven days ago before the surgery, my 95th percentile was in the 14s. Now its sky high.

Im on lots of painkillers though, so maybe thats factoring in the very high pressures? I hope so because I dont need a new problem created by this surgery.

Eric