Emergency Room Drama

I had to travel to Denver, Colorado (from Maryland) last week for a work conference. Now, I live below sea level and Denver is a "mile high" so I should have expected some weird effects. But I was there Monday (Memorial Day) through Friday and I felt totally fine.

I got a few minor headaches but I attributed that to being in a hotel conference room all day without windows and sitting for hours on end.

On the last day of the conference, Friday, we had 2 morning sessions which ended at 11:30am local time. I was attending the conference with my boss, Bruce, and a co-worker, Kari. When the last session ended, I stood up from the table, and the entire room started to spin. VERTIGO!

I've had this lovely symptom of Lyme in the past. It usually lasts a few hours, maybe a day at the worst. In the past, when I wake up the next day it's gone. Easy Peasy! I work from home so that makes things a lot easier to deal with.

Not so much when you are leaving a conference, having to get into a car, drive to an airport, stand in line to check-in, stand in line through security, and then sit on a plane for 3 hours to get home.

We had an hour to burn before the first traveler had to be checked into the airport so we decided to grab some lunch on the way to the airport.

We pulled off to a place called "Wahoo's" which serves fish tacos (in Denver? really?). I was not feeling nauseous but was so dizzy/spinny that I just didn't have any interest in eating, nor waiting in line to order. I asked my boss to grab me a water and I went to find some seats.

Sitting in the booth, my vertigo got WAY worse. After a few minutes, the voices of everyone around me became a pounding inaudible sound (whomp! whomp! whomp!). I started to see floaters in my eyesight and my co-workers (sitting directly next to me) appeared to be sitting at the opposite end of the restaurant as if they were at the end of a very long tunnel.

I was sitting at the bench with my feet up, arms wrapped around my legs/knees. I started to feel a tingling sensation in my arms and legs so I went to put my feet down on the floor, only to realize I had zero feeling in my feet. I couldn't feel the floor at all. That's when the panic set in.

My heart started to race, and I started to breathe very rapidly. I was having a panic attack because I was absolutely sure I was having a stroke or a heart attack. Things went downhill from there.

I told my boss to call 9-1-1 which he did. The restaurant Manager came over and spoke to 911 to give them the address and ask my boss to sign a statement (CYA - cover your ass!!!!). The EMTs arrived and my bloodwork was ALL over the map. Low and high levels of everything (potassium, sodium, all the other weird stuff they look for). Long story short, they took me to the nearest Emergency Room.

In the ambulance I got oxygen, an IV bag of fluids, bloodwork, and an EKG. Thankfully the EKG was totally normal (whew!!!!). Too bad I was too incoherent to realize that news.

They gave me a shot of Valium to try and calm my breathing but it took no effect. By the time I got to the hospital, they gave me a much larger dose of Valium and my breathing finally slowed down. The ER Doc explained that the numbness in my extremities was due to the fact that I was breathing so abnormally fast. It actually changes the chemistry in your blood and can cause a laundry list of problems.

I had to tell the ER docs that I am a Lyme patient, and list the drugs I was taking (3 abx's, many supplements, vitamins, etc.). The ER Doc literally said, "Oh, you're from Maryland, right. We don't have Lyme here."

AHHHHHHHHH! I was too out-of-it to debate him on that fact but it really ticked me off (no pun intended). After 6 hours in the ER, I was released. My boss stayed with me and missed his own flight (God bless him). We flew home the next morning but I was still shaky on my feet.

I got home to MD around 4pm, had a quick snack and fell asleep at 5pm on Saturday night. I slept until almost noon on Sunday. When I woke up, the Vertigo was gone and I felt like a million bucks (relatively speaking from the ER visit).

I don't know if this recent ER visit is Lyme-related or maybe a combo effect of Lyme, altitude, lack-of-sleep, bad diet while traveling, etc. But I now know that I need to carry a list of my medication in my wallet in case I end up back in an ER anytime soon.

On the floor of Wahoo's, while we waited for the EMTs to arrive, I was dictating my meds and vitamins and supplements to my co-worker so she could write them down and give them to the EMTs in case I passed out.

This is not a good way to live. And being 1,500 miles from home, with no advocate, things could have gone very bad out there if I had passed out and they didn't know what medications I was currently on.