It all started when one of the workers showed up with a cold. My dad was working alongside the man who was not feeling well (not Tio Bismarck) another worker and unfortunately my dad caught his cold. It really wasn’t a big cold for my dad he was over it in a couple of days and really did not feel bad. My dad is always washing his hands, and will even wear a mask if he even slightly thinks he is sick. This time the cold snuck up on him mainly because he never felt bad. Anyway,this is the exact reason why my family is so adamant about people that come over to wash their hands, and that workers do not come to work sick.
The day after Easter, I began to cough more and required taking oxygen. By Tuesday it was for sure I had a cold. Thankfully we have a small hospital at home and I can be taken well care of. We started with nebulizing treatments, cut back my food intake by half and respiratory therapy four times a day. A few days were pretty scary with me on 3L of oxygen, my heart at 145 and breathing was rapid and hard but everyone including me kept it together. It’s scary sometimes living where I do, my portable oxygen machine had been acting up and cutting on and off thankfully the last time we had a problem with the portable machine we bought a home concentrator. A very very good idea on my parents part! By Sunday exactly a week later I was better and actually off oxygen and my parents took me for a stroll that afternoon. I was smiling and things were looking up! I never had to take antibiotics and I was very proud of myself for shaking this cold on my own, and of course with the help of Mom, Naty and Dad.
On Monday, I started feeling sick again. I could not understand why I was feeling this way because I was finally feeling better Sunday! My mom could not understand why I was retching so much. She called Dra. Castro and she said it was probably because I had swallowed so much phlegm from being sick all week. She said that my stomach lining was probably irritated and this was why I was retching. ( I can not vomit since my Nissen surgery) Mom googles it and sure enough it can happen coughing and gagging all last week with all the phlegm has probably caused this new problem. By Wednesday, things had become worse. I could barely eat, the smallest amount of food made me feel sick. I had stopped sleeping as well. The week that I had my cold I slept for hours each day. All of a sudden my mom yells from the shower “I know what it is”!!! She jumps out of the shower and tells my dad and Naty, SIBO is back.
Do you remember when I had SIBO last year? It took over three months for the doctors to figure out I had it. SIBO is very hard to detect, especially in little people and also the main test is a breath test and #1 I can’t blow and #2 Costa Rica does not have this testing equipment anyway! My mom started piecing it all together. First the retching, then not being able to eat, no sleeping, excessive drooling (I am not a drooler), teeth grinding, constipation, lots of air in my tummy.. No it was not the phlegm causing this it was SIBO.
It turns out that over 50% of the people who contact SIBO have a chance of it coming back. It has been over a year since I have been sick, throw a little cold at me, let my defenses go down and bam, this hideous bacteria that likes to creep into my small intestine is back. It is a nightmare. My stomach is my kryptonite. You all know very well that I have conquered pneumonias,kidney infection, UTI’s back to back, two major surgeries, but mess with my stomach well it takes me down. Mom calls my GI, writes the GI we spoke to last year in CA, and sent Dra. Castro a video of me. Everyone is agreement, I am behaving exactly like I did last year with SIBO. Executive decision was made to start me on Metronidazole (Flagyl) for the next 14 days.
Antibiotics come with a double edged sword. They as well have a serious way of helping me and causing me all kinds of problems but at this point in time I will take anything to get rid of this pain. After five days of taking the ABX, I started feeling a little better. I was able to begin to eat a little more but I was still not sleeping at all! So you can understand how serious this was I eat by a feeding tube which I am fed by a machine that typically gives me my food at 210ML per hour. I was only able to receive food/water intake at 30ml to 40Ml per hour. Mom was stressing about me getting dehydrated because I had gone down to less than half of what I normally receive in one day. (I never became dehydrated) Besides from me still not sleeping the constant retching was causing me to aspirate saliva in my lungs. I was so tired from not sleeping that I was too tired to cough and my lungs were filling up with phlegm again. It is very hard to heal when you can not sleep. Dra Castro suggested that we try Chloral Hydrate again to help me sleep. At around 2am mom decided to give me a tiny bit, in ten minutes my 02 dropped from 92 on 1.5L of oxygen to 72! Not good! I was having trouble breathing and mom turned up the 02 to 4Liters! I stablized after 30 minutes and was able to turn back down the oxygen but it was very scary there for a moment.
By Monday evening the decision is made it is time for us to make the road trip into San Jose. My family is now worried I may have pneumonia, and since I am not coughing on my own I will probably need to have a deep lung cleaning by a professional respiratory therapist. What does that mean? It means after the beat on my chest and back for 20 minutes they will then follow by sticking a long slender hose down my nose and into my lung to pull out the phlegm. We will be leaving our house at 9:30am Tuesday morning to catch the 11 am ferry and head to emergencies to see Dr. Castro. I just hope I do not have to be admitted!
Love Malia