My fears were confirmed a few days later, after a few throat-culture samples were taken. I had a pretty serious Pseudomonas infection in my sinuses. But since it wasn't in my lungs, or proved to be antibiotic resistant, I was sent home with a month's supply of Tobramycin, an inhaled antibiotic, and enough Ciprofloxacin, an oral antibiotic, to kill a horse. If things got worse, I was instructed to contact my doctors right away so I could be put on a different set of antibiotics. But, if that didn't work out, and my Pseudomonas infection became completely antibiotic resistant, I'd just be stuck with it.
Unfortunately, living with a chronic Psuedomonas infection was not really an option. Pseudomonas is an aggressive flesh-eating bacteria. It was literally eating my sinuses, slowly but surely making its way through the layers, which explains the extreme nosebleed I had about a month before. If it was allowed to chew away at my sinus tissues for just a few more years, or worse, somehow found its way into my lungs, I wasn't gonna live for very long, and the last years of my life would've been too miserable to enjoy. I wouldn't have the energy, or the comfort, to do things I loved doing, such as dirtbike riding or hunting. I would've been home bound, or hospital bound, slowly but surely dying from something I couldn't fight back against.
I knew if my Pseudomonas infection became chronic, my life would come to an abrupt and bitter end.
I breathed in the Tobramycin, which burned my eyes and drenched everything it touched within me in a thick, sticky, bitter-tasting layer of gunk, and took the Ciprofloxacin twice a day, which obliterated every living bacterial cell in my digestive tract. I cursed God for allowing such a terrible thing to happen to me. As much as I considered myself an atheist at that point, a part of me still believed in God, and that part of me was ultra-pissed at God for what He was doing to me, assuming He existed. I didn't understand why He was allowing such a terrible illness to hit me, or why He'd miraculously heal me so many times throughout my life, only to lift His protection and deal me a deadly blow to my health. As much as I wanted to deny it, I knew I was dying, and I was dying quickly.
As the days wore on, my health only got worse. The more optimistic people in my life tried to reassure me by saying things like, "It always gets worse before it gets better", and "Trust in the Lord! He will heal you!" but words like that only made me more upset. They clearly didn't understand the pain I was in, the state of my faith in God, or the seriousness of the illness I was battling. I knew they could see the torment in my eyes, but that doesn't mean they could empathize with me.
The pain in my sinuses got to be so unbearable at times, that I'd have to lay down in a fetal position and cry. My sinuses also bled nearly constantly. While it was a very slow bleed, a considerable amount of blood still came out whenever I made a pitiful attempt to blow my nose. Only, there was just too much snot and clotted blood in my sinuses to really get anything out, so I'd only irritate the increasingly sensitive tissue in my sinuses, which would sometimes sting for hours. The stinging in my sinuses felt the same as rubbing shards of salt in a sensitive wound, if that salt was also white-hot.
Unfortunately, due to my mom's job and us living so far away from relatives, I was often left alone during the day. I lived off of chicken noodle soup that was kept warm in a crock pot all day for me, but otherwise spent every hour of every day in bed. Due to the drainage from my sinuses, I lost my voice for the most part. Whenever I spoke, my voice was deeper and croakier than usual. Sometimes, no words would come out at all.
My mom would return to my school weekly to pick up assignments for me to do. Unfortunately, I usually lacked the capacity and the motivation to do my school work. I was just too tired and in too much pain to even think about doing my school work, but that didn't stop me from blaming myself for missing so much work. My mental health was just as affected by Pseudomonas as my physical health, and without a solid faith in God, and the hope and reassurance that comes with such faith, I had to face my troubles completely alone.
I had no hope for my future. I was convinced that I was actually dying. In fact, I knew I was dying. And, without faith in God, I had no faith in an afterlife. I was absolutely petrified of death. Neither the Tobramycin or the Ciprofloxacin seemed to have an affect on the Pseudomonas infection, and I knew IV-injected antibiotics would do more harm than good. However, what other choice did I have? As far as I knew, I had no other choice.
Less than two weeks after my mom forced me to stay home from school, we were playing around with a new pulse-ox monitor my mom bought off the internet. She tried it on herself, and then my little brother, to ensure it was accurate. Then, she handed it over to me. Due to Pulmonary Atresia, my pulse-ox has always been a little lower than usual. However, the pulse-ox monitor showed numbers that were way lower than my usual. In fact, my oxygen saturation percent was at 85% and dwindling by the hour. If my oxygen saturation percentile went below 80%, I'd officially be suffering from Hypoxia, and I could be dead within an hour. But every minute in Hypoxia meant critical organs in my body would be starved of oxygen and permanently damaged, especially my heart, lungs, and liver, which have all been affected by my chronic conditions one way or another.
So, my mom called the doctor and asked what we should do. The doctor freaked out and told my mom to get me to the ER immediately! This, of course, scared me. The absolute last thing I wanted was to end up in the hospital again. Yet, I was on my way to being admitted against my will. At first, I tried to fight it, but when my mom dialed 9-1-1 and was ready to call them if I spent another second arguing with her, I hung my head and slowly plodded to the car.
In my panic, I was hyperventilating uncontrollably and felt like I was gonna pass out at any moment. I was shaking so badly that I could barely buckle my seat belt, and my vision was blurred by my tears. On the way to the hospital, my mom tried to pray for me, but I viciously snapped at her by shouting, "If God was real, then we wouldn't be here now, would we?!"
My mom didn't say a word to me for the rest of the drive to the ER. She knew there was nothing she could say or do that would comfort me. All she could do was helplessly watch as I gasped for air and desperately tried to slow down my breathing, but to no avail. I honestly hoped I'd pass out, so my body could reset itself without my conscious anxieties getting in the way and riling things up. I wanted to pass out in that car, so I could wake up again in the comfort of my own bed and realize all of that was just an awful night terror. But, my consciousness refused to let go. While I could feel Hypoxia setting in as my airways slowly constricted, and I breathed in more rapidly and shallowly with each passing minute, I begged myself to let go, but I just couldn't.
My memory cuts out after that. One minute, I was in the passenger seat while my mom sped down the highway going way faster than the speed limit, and the next minute I was seated in a cold plastic chair while a kind nurse took my vitals. I wondered if I passed out, but according to my mom, I managed to walk myself into the ER without help, despite tripping over my feet a few times along the way.
My vitals showed that I had record-breaking levels of anxiety coursing through me. My heart-rate was somewhere near the 160-180 beats-per-minute range, which was almost twice as fast as a person's average resting heart-rate. I was also still hyperventilating to the point I could not tell the nurse if I had any pain. I didn't notice any pain at the time. All I could feel was fear.
While I sat completely frozen in fear, my mom was staring at the pulse-ox monitor completely slack-jawed. The pulse-ox monitor showed that my oxygen saturation level in my blood was 94%, which was technically impossible, considering the altitude, my illness, and my heart problems. But, my oxygen saturation continued to rise. While the nurse went to get another pulse-ox monitor assuming the one I was currently hooked up to was glitching, my pulse-ox rose to 96%.
Hyperventilation can (and often does) cause false pulse-ox readings, especially since during hyperventilation, the human body struggles to process oxygen. However, the oxygen levels in my blood were rising at a rate that was basically impossible considering the circumstances. What I was experiencing was something else science had no answers for.
When I was hooked up to the second pulse-ox monitor, it also read a 96% pulse-ox level. Tears of relief began to flow down my mom's cheeks while I continued to sit still, completely frozen in fear. I was in full-on panic mode, and no matter what my mom or the ER nurses tried, they could not get me to regain control.
The nurses decided it was best to lay me down in a hospital bed, while still keeping me hooked up to the second pulse-ox monitor. They were waiting for me to pass out so my body could reset itself, and then I could get a few chest x-rays to see what was going on in my lungs. However, I held on. For an hour, as I continued to pant, I was hooked up to yet another pulse-ox monitor, because the second one showed a steady pulse-ox increase from 96% to 98%. Either my body was not absorbing any oxygen into my tissues at all, which should've resulted in me passing out, or something beyond science was going on.
The third monitor picked up on the 98%, but then my oxygen saturation levels (SpO2) jumped from 98% to 100% and stayed there.
At this point, every nurse and doctor in the ER and surrounding wings were notified of my condition, and I ended up getting a lot of unwanted visitors. Unfortunately, while I was beginning to retain a few of my logic and reasoning skills, I still couldn't really tell anyone what I felt or what was going on. All I could focus on was my breathing. It felt like I was trying to breathe through a coffee stir straw, while I fought to remain awake and alive. I didn't want to pass out, and then be completely at the mercy of all those strangers in yellow gowns while my mom bawled her eyes out. I wanted to at least be aware of what was happening to me. At least then, I'd actually have some memories to go off of when I survived it all and began therapy again.
After another full hour of drama, my heart rate finally slowed down to a reasonable, but still anxious pace. My blood oxygen levels remained at 100%, even as I finally took control of my breathing and began to force myself to relax. The nurse that my doctor talked to as my mom drove me to the ER, gave me a hospital gown to change in, so I could get my chest x-rays done, and we could finally get to the bottom of everything.
Once those were taken, I was led back to my room in the ER, and the nurse pulled up the x-rays so they could be reviewed by the ER doctors. While they were a little congested, my lungs didn't look very infected, beyond a couple of clusters of mucus in the superior lobes of both lungs. But, the doctors and nurses determined that those clusters were just a normal CF thing. Pseudomonas obviously pent itself up in my sinuses. I was just glad to know it hadn't found its way into my lungs yet.
After a few more conversations with baffled doctors and nurses, the head nurse came in and got into interrogation mode while I pulled my boots back on. He asked me, sternly, why I'd made such a big deal over everything if I was obviously fine. While I wasn't very offended then, because I was just glad that I could continue treatment at home, I later reflected on my conversation with that nurse and realized how accusatory it was. Thankfully, my mom piped up, and admitted she was the one who got so frantic.
She explained the situation with the pulse-ox monitor we had at home, like how she made sure it was accurate before sticking it on me, and then called the doctor to ask if the low pulse-ox levels were ok, like any responsible parent would. Then, my doctor ordered my mom to take me to the ER right away, because if my pulse-ox levels were allowed to dip down 2% lower, Hypoxia would set in, and my funeral would be held. Clearly, it was an emergency, and I'd been taken to the ER against my will. My mom was ready to rip the nurse's head off once she was done explaining the situation to him.
The nurse quickly apologized, and that was the end of that whole episode.
At home, all I wanted to do was sleep. It was 9:00 at night, so my mom let me go to sleep without worrying so much about me. But, before she let me get all the way downstairs, she told me that I ought to pray and thank God for what He did for me that night. Even if I didn't pray, at the very least, I should reflect on what God did for me that night. He completely disregarded medical science, and saved my ass once again. Even if I was still skeptical of His existence, I should still consider the possibility of His existence.
I nodded, and then crept down the last flight of stairs to my bedroom. I'd never been more excited to fall back into the safety and comfort of my own bed. I still felt like death, but I was just too relieved to notice the pain I was still in. However, I was hesitant to thank God for everything. I did acknowledge His presence at the ER in my prayer, but I spent more time interrogating God for the reasoning behind letting me have such a close brush with the worst case scenario, than I spent actually thanking Him for saving me from such an awful fate.
One could call me ungrateful for that, but to me, that was just the very beginning. I was still at the brink of being hospitalized. If my infection was proven to be antibiotic resistant, or I got sicker, or both, I would end up being hospitalized. An antibiotic resistant infection as dangerous as Pseudomonas would likely slice decades off my lifespan. While it didn't progress as quickly in my sinuses as it could in my lungs, it was still eating away at bone and tissue in my sinuses, slowly working its way towards my brain. Just the thought of that alone is still enough to make me feel nauseous every time I think about it.
That night, I ended my prayer demanding God to heal me. If He didn't, I wouldn't waste my time anymore. I'd drop the faith and live the rest of my short, agonizing life as an atheist. I'd die in a horrific state of fear, not just because I had holes in my skull or an infection in my brain, but because I was afraid of death. I was afraid of dying and ending up in nothingness. And, with a swelling brain full of puss, and holes in my face exposing my brain to the outside world, I couldn't even imagine the pain I'd eventually be in. How could an all-powerful, all-loving God allow someone like me die from such a horrible condition? What was the purpose of that strife?
