@missy @rambo @lyxzen I suppose I'll have to give a bit of background for this one. I have scoliosis. It's fairly severe.
Mine is worse than this. It pushes in, and cramps the internal organs.
The heart and the lungs especially, aiding my COPD.
But before I knew this (except the scoliosis), all I knew was that I was getting tired more easily. I couldn't walk as much. It got progressively harder to climb stairs. I didn't feel like doing as much. I kept getting bad colds, which lasted forever and usually turned into pneumonia or bronchitis. By the time I shuffled my way into the hospital, I could barely walk. I was admitted, and kinda lost track of time for a few days. I do recall trying to tell my cousin that something was wrong. It felt like someone had put me on pause. I was frozen, as the world went on around me. Apparently I hallucinated a bit. They had me on a ventilator for a day and a half. I don't remember that at all.
The doctor told me later that if I had waited another day, I wouldn't have made it. This was my 2nd scariest day, because it happened again a few years later. I would fall asleep at the computer or watching tv or while riding in a vehicle. Sometimes in the middle of playing a game. It was harder to walk, and I could feel my heart laboring at times. My legs swelled up pretty badly.
The swelling seemed to get worse with time. My heart wasn't pumping strongly enough to circulate the blood efficiently and oxygenize my body. By the time I went to the hospital, the swelling had reached my middle thighs. (See a theme here? I procrastinate because I hate hospitals.) I lost another day (or two?) and woke up in ICU. My thinking was pretty cloudy here, because of how low the oxygen in my blood was.
I had to do a lot of mental therapy, as well as physical therapy. Imagine being asked to name as many farm animals as you can in 1 minute, and only getting two. I'm pretty sure there was some brain damage, but hey, I've got tons of brain cells that I wasn't even using! Most of it came back over the next few days. My mental tests got a lot better. My physical ones took longer, and I still get tired pretty easily. I think this month will make 3 years since I got out of the hospital. Or 2, I may have lost that brain cell. It's incredibly scary, not being able to think. Terrifying even.
