Wednesday, February 1, 2017
When I look back on the entire experience, Wednesday morning was, to me, the turning point. That was the day when everything changed.
My wife and I sat at the table together eating breakfast. We homeschooled our boys, so they were not only home, but within sight, offering them front row seats to what was about to transpire.
As we finished breakfast, I suddenly felt tired. I mean… extremely exhausted!
The fatigue washed over me, and all my energy faded away. It wasn’t like feeling tired at the end of a busy day. It felt as if all the energy in my body just flushed out my system in a moment’s time.
My first thought was that I needed to get to the other room and have a nap, but I never made it there. The last thing I said to my wife before losing consciousness was, “I’m fading fast.” I remember slowly putting my head down toward the table, but I don’t remember reaching it.
For me, the next five minutes were restful and comfortable. I lost consciousness and could simply enjoy the ride. For my wife and sons, however, it was not only traumatic, but nightmarish.
From what I’ve learned about their experience, this is what happened:
My wife came around the table to check on me, concerned that I’d become unresponsive. When she tried to put me back into a sitting position, I flopped backward, and she found I wasn’t breathing. She grabbed the phone and called for an ambulance right away, and then my sons stood by and watched as I had a seizure, my body convulsing right there at the table.
Eventually, the seizure ended, and I started to breathe again (both of which I see as positives).
When I came to, I remember seeing and hearing things, but I couldn’t make sense of either sight or sound. What I saw actually looked like plaid. It was as if I saw many colours but couldn’t interpret what I saw. I also heard voices, but what I heard was incomprehensible.
Again, for me, it was a relaxing experience, at least until this point. I remember thinking to myself, “I don’t understand what’s going on, but it’ll come clear in time. I’ll just wait it out.”
How odd is that?
What seemed like a short while later, my sight and hearing cleared enough for me to see my wife on the phone with 911. She was in a panic and telling my son to prop open the door.
I knew whatever had happened, it was serious enough that an ambulance needed to be involved.
We’re only a matter of blocks from the local hospital, so it didn’t take long before two paramedics entered the house. Apparently, a third was out shoveling our walkway so they could get me to the ambulance. We live in Canada… it was February… I was sick… so we hadn’t shoved the walkway.
They carried me out and loaded me up in the ambulance, and on the way to the hospital, they tried to do a quick ECG to see if my heart was okay. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get a reading.
At the hospital, three doctors came in and examined me. Two doctors felt I hadn’t had a seizure, while the third one thought I had.
I still didn’t know at the time how serious the situation was. I figured whatever was going on, I would just get through it. But what I learned right then was that if you have a seizure, you lose your driver’s license, so I was actually quite upset at the one doctor for pushing the “seizure” idea. I didn’t want to lose my license!
I wanted the three to deal with it democratically. Two thought it wasn’t a seizure… so go with that option!
In the end, however, I’m grateful to her. I wish I could thank her as she saved my life, but I don’t remember her name, and I’m not sure I’ve seen her since.
One thing she said stood out to me as they discussed my situation and argued through it all. I remember she hollered out, “He needs to be on an IV!”
That statement might not sound like anything overly important, but when they finally diagnosed me with encephalitis two days later, I learned that the antivirals I was taking at the time weren’t enough. The same antiviral needed to be administered through an IV to be effective. Somehow that doctor had diagnosed my actual condition with next to no information and stood her ground despite my reluctance and the opinions of two other doctors.
I’m grateful to her.
To be continued…
2 responses to “Day Six of Encephalitis and New Directions”
Wow, I didn’t realize how serious your situation was at that time. Thank God for that Doctor.
It was a wild time!