There’s the general rough feeling of suffering through Influenza A, then there’s Influenza A deciding that it wants to put your asthma in a wrestling sleeper hold.
Guess which one I copped last week with both barrels?
Things did not go according to plan. At all.
So backtracking a little over a week ago and I was supposed to jump in the car after finishing up my breakfast shift, drive three and a half hours from Albury to Melbourne for an ENT check up (my recovering nasal situation if you want to go deeper there) and then drive back straight after that to get ready for a Saturday morning shift.
Only for whatever reason, I didn’t sleep a single wink the night before.
I have no idea at the time what caused it at the time (influenza A now the obvious culprit) but that Friday morning I just knew that running on empty I was absolutely no state to drive 3.5 hours down and then 3.5 hours back up in the same day. So I rang up the clinic, cancelled and then went home…and headbutted the couch, laying there for a few hours going absolutely nowhere. I felt sore, I felt rough and of course that was just the start of things to come.
3 words, gasp. 3 more words, gasp again.
I didn’t sleep again that night. And when the alarm went off at 7am I sincerely wondered if anyone would notice if I failed to show for work. But I dragged myself into the shower, into the car, gasped my way upstairs to the office and that’s when I noticed that breathing (and talking) was becoming quite the challenge. (I also felt like I’d just had a head on collision with a blender..)
Which doesn’t really work well in any occasion when your role is to talk for a living. And so sounding like a defective oxygen tank with a hole in the side, I worked just long enough for the nearest chemist to open before I dragged myself to it for some more Ventolin. What should have been a leisurely 5 minute stroll felt like I was attempting to run a marathon. Under water. With a bag on my head for an extra degree of difficultly.
The Ventolin only helped slightly, my breathing still coming out in hard fought gasps. Work seemed to take forever to finish, I drove myself home and fell flat on the couch again, now the greatest recovery venue I knew. I figured I’d sleep things off and hopefully with any amount of sleep, things would happen.
Well something did – the smoke alarm went off.
Not from anything actually smoking, because it was as defective as I was feeling. Worse, in the wisdom of whoever installed it, this one was super high up on the roof to the point where I had to drag the tallest ladder in and then stretch to stop the idiot thing beeping. And so I dragged in the ladder…and just about fell over from the effort. Still gasping, now shaking and everything hurting beyond hurt.
No choice now lovely wifey, can you please run me down to the local emergency department?
So what seems to be the problem?
The team at the desk at Albury emergency hit me with questions, I barely gasped out the answers. Then they took all their readings and hit the alert button – this guy is low on oxygen, get him in there. Seriously, I’ve never been admitted to anywhere so fast.
Suddenly there’s a needle in my arm to check my blood, a swab up the nose and then an oxygen hose. Unfortunately we’re going to have to break out the shaver here so they can some kind of non hairy contact area for the probes that would be my hospital pals for the next few hours. I had no problem with that, like Austin Powers I am ‘Hairy like animal!’ and they could shave me completely hairless for all I cared if they were going to get me breathing okay again.
I saw a few hospital rooms including a brief trip for a chest X-Ray (I spent more time waiting outside to be admitted than it did to take a snap shot of what was happening in my chest) and kept the monitors earning their weekend pay by making things beep due to low oxygen and a high heart rate, copious amounts of blast therapy Ventolin keeping everything pumping blood like a hyperactive race engine.
After an hour and a bit, the swab results and the reason my asthma was having one incredibly bad day became apparent. Well that would explain it, Ifluenza A! No wonder you’re feeling awful right now. It turns out they really don’t make good housemates in my body at all and proceeded to punch on with each other in record time, resulting in me on a gurney in emergency begging for breath and sleep in that order.
Lucky me.
Go home time
It took around 6 and a bit hours before the doctors decided I was well enough to go home and by that, I meant had enough oxygen in my body and not gasping like a busted steam engine, plus the monitoring machines had calmed down just a little. Now full of oxygen and steroids, I was feeling so much better than when I’d presented myself and so much wiser thanks to some very helpful medical staff:
THINGS I’D LEARNT IN EMERGENCY
-For some reason I had it in my head that blast therapy involved 6 puffs of spaced out Ventolin at a time, it turns out it’s actually 12.
-I had no idea Influenza A hated asthma. I’ve had the flu, I’ve had asthma attacks (like the storm asthma attack that bowled me over roughly a year back) but never them both trying to choke themselves out at the same time.
-I shouldn’t be taking cold and flu tablets with what I’ve got which came as a big surprise, because I have done for years. Apparently they’re full of stimulants to keep you going, but not stimulants that agree with asthma. No to keep fighting the good Influenza A fight, all I could have was paracetamol and ibuprofen.
And then I’d still have to be careful with ibuprofen because that could be a trigger too.
-I still hate prednisone (steroids) even though they actually clear things up. It’s more the fact that a) They taste like concrete but b) (far more important) they give me massive insomnia. And I struggle to sleep on a good day. Still, I’ll take the heavy duty stuff like if when Influenza A comes calling.
-Tamiflu only reduces the severity of Influenza A/flu symptoms by half a day. The doctors were undecided if I should go on them (for the record I did but I don’t think they changed anything. Also they were expensive, so lesson learned there.)
Influenza A – the road to recovery
After a week and a bit I’d like to tell you I bounced right back into the swing of things like I did earlier this year a couple of days after surgery but that would be a bigger lie than ‘Our energy company CEO desperately needs another pay rise!’
Truth be told, I’m probably at 80% even with all the time off work (a bit) and time spent sleeping (a lot). It took a few days for my appetite to return to semi normal levels (like animals, you know I’m sick if I don’t feel like eating!), I run out of energy quick smart doing anything slightly strenuous and while the mornings start off okay, I’m usually feeling a bit spaced out by the time I finish work.
It’s going to take another week and a bit at least to feel normal.
Worse still, it took roughly a day after my Influenza A admission for the rest of the family to catch it with various results. Coughs, headaches, runny noses, the works. Nothing that landed any of them in emergency thankfully but given how bad I’ve felt, this was the last thing any one in this house needed. Cue a week that felt like covid times all over again, complete with getting a lot of stuff delivered to the doorstep with instructions for the drivers to leave it there. Today’s the first day in a week the kids have gone to school – well one did, the youngest had a blood nose. I don’t know if that’s Influenza A related but it certainly hasn’t made her feel any better.
But on the breathing side of things? The wheezing and gasping has gone. I’m sleeping again (mostly). I’m armed up on paracetamol and Ventolin and eating my veggies (how good is home made vegie soup? Thanks Donna!) And I’m far more aware of my own mortality, especially in Influenza A, Influenza B and continuing covid times. Which leads me to this Influenza A public service announcement:
Have asthma? Struggling to breathe? Thing Influenza A might have things in a sleeper hold? FFS get yourself to a hospital you idiot, you’re not sleeping this one off!
-Me, being helpful.
No seriously, don’t risk it. Influenza A is rubbish already without punching your asthma in the face..