Thursday, August 4th I took my brother and his son up to the Uinta
mountains for some quick dry fly fishing for brook trout. On the way
up I felt a fever coming on and by the time I got home I was sick with
some kind of flu. I spent the next three days in bed nursing a the
fever and was feeling better Sunday afternoon. But early Monday morning
I felt some chest pains which kept getting stronger as the day wore on.
So I went into my local clinic as soon as it opened that morning, and
discovered just how fast you can actually get a doctor when you have
gray hair and say something about "chest pains". I didn't think it
was a heart attack because I had no shortness of breath, but all of the
other symptoms were there: pressure, radiating pain, etc.
Well, as soon as the doc was certain I wasn't going to die on him he
put me through a series of tests, an EKG, Echo Cardiogram, and finally
a CT scan to figure out what was going on. Apparently the same virus
that made my throat sore had somehow worked its way into the lining of
my heart, and that was the cause of the pain. With a prescription for
Lortab and Prednezone I was sent home to recover.
But I had some kind or reaction to the pain medication and started
throwing up about every 90 minutes, regardless of the contents of my
stomach, which was mostly water since it was more pleasant to have
something coming out, and of course I was very thirsty by now. Things
really got weird in the morning when I woke up at 3:00 am with nausea
demanding a trip to the toilet, but I couldn't move! My muscles were
like rubber with no strength at all. So I had to rouse my wife to
throw me a towel. Gradually my strength came back a little, but for
the rest of the night I would wake up with the same paralyzed feeling
to contend with.
Well this kind of thing gets your attention, so we went back in the
clinic, told the doctor what had been happening and he ordered some
more blood tests... and had me in the hospital thirty minutes later. I
had become severely dehydrated and my kidneys were shutting down.
Well, after two days of re-hydration and more blood draws than I care
to remember, I have been sent home a little more aware of my mortality.
And the days of fishing five or six hours without a drink to avoid the
"nuisance" of leaving my kick boat for a nature call are gone forever.
My kidneys will now get nothing but TLC from me.
Tom Davenport
Home Page: http://homepage.mac.com/tsmd
Webshots Albums: http://community.webshots.com/user/tsmdav
