I've realized why that happened. Months before, after spending a long school year at a private Christian school, I was having serious doubts about my faith in God. I knew my doubts were pretty illogical, but I couldn't shake them. As I spent my days in North Dakota, those doubts were allowed to grow. So, one night, as I listened to coyotes howling, frogs chirping, and stared up at the Milky Way, I asked God for empirical evidence of His existence. And well, a few months later, I got it. 

As stubborn and skeptical I am, I can't begin to explain away that miracle, or many other miracles I've experienced. I spent a good few hours researching pulse-ox monitors and stats, and if the thing was glitching it would be making noises and jumping wildly between numbers. It's impossible to hyperventilate myself into those numbers. I guess people have tried it before and only deprived themselves of oxygen, which is why they passed out. Sure, you can become euphoric and energetic sometimes, but you quickly black out after that thanks to a lack of oxygen. I don't recall feeling stronger or better, even when my pulse-ox was higher than literally everyone else's above 4,000 feet. I was just frozen in terror, and kept thinking back to all the horrible things that happened to me during my past hospital stays. I've only been hospitalized twice since my first year of life, but both of those times were terrible and traumatic.