First off, let me start by saying this story obviously has a happy ending. So if you’re reading this hoping for something with my end involved, this is not for you. Also wtf?

Anyhow, I think this story needs a little bit of prologue to give the correct idea of where things started from. To begin, I wasn’t feeling so well in early May. I had a low grade fever that I couldn’t seem to shake. I had gone to urgent care on Saturday because my right ear was in pain, plus fever. Naproxen and Tylenol just wasn’t doing it. I had already been in communication with my boss letting her know I wouldn’t be working on Monday cause I was sick. I was doing what is normally done when you’re sick. I had planned on going to an actual doctor on Monday for a better diagnosis investigation into what was going on with me. We are now on Sunday night.

Hubby and I are getting ready for bed. I am suffering from some brain fog. The ER docs (well over a year ago) said was an allergy to one of my meds and all I needed to do was take some allergy pills. This comes up later which is why I’m telling you now. Anyway, I’m sitting on the bed waiting for the allergy pill to kick in so my brain fog will go away. This is where things escalate and fast. I don’t remember any of this, so this part is what my husband has told me.

“You fell to the side, your body straightened out, and started convulsing. Your eyes rolled back into your head. Lasted maybe 10-15 seconds. Once you stopped I checked your pulse and breathing. I let you recover for about a minute and then woke you up.”

At this point, we’re not playing around with something as serious as a seizure is. We get into the car and go to the ER.

The nurses and doctor go through a litany of different tests to see what’s going on. Turns out I’m massively dehydrated and have the inability to pee. The wound up putting a catheter in me long enough to get a pee sample. Also dealing with a rather low blood pressure as well. Which for me isn’t that weird cause I normally have low BP. But this is dangerously low.

Test results are coming back and things are looking pretty gruesome. White blood cell count was very high. Urine test says I have an infection. A urinary tract infection. I would like to point out here, I had no pain. I’ve had UTIs before and those things hurt. This time….nothing. No pain. No blood in the urine. I just thought I had a flu type thing.

No…this is sepsis. As the infection has gotten into my pulmonary system as well. The ER arranges for me to be transported to the ICU department of our local hospital. While we’re waiting they get me on a med to help boost my blood pressure. It takes a bit before the transport is there but they get me loaded up….kinda.

The transport takes off before they have all my meds and stuff set up for the ride across town. They have the blood pressure cuff setup just fine, and I can see the numbers it’s recording as we motor our way to the other hospital. The med for the blood pressure hasn’t been setup to be in my IV during this trip. They are fighting with the machine to get it to work correctly to administer this crucial med. So I’m basically watching and feeling my death. There’s nothing I can do. Nothing. My blood pressure got down as low as 51/22. Finally she gets the machine to work correctly and the blood pressure med is back to being administered again. Great right? Ummm no, I then feel like my heart is going to beat out of my chest as my blood pressure jumps up to 119/77. My heart wasn’t ready for normal rate. I say something (if you know me, you know I don’t ask for things). I ask if we can turn it down just a little cause my heart can’t handle this yet. She does, and things are ok for the maybe 3 minutes til I get to the ICU. By the way it is no very early Monday morning.

I get moved over into my ICU bed. They give me a brief wash and then go through the steps of making sure I have everything on the right path. I would like to say that now I get to sleep, but I don’t. Most of this day is spent having tests done on me. MRI, EEG….and of course blood tests. They have administered an antibiotic now that is definitely helping. They stop giving me the blood pressure med and my heart manages to maintain a normal rate. The doctor has me moved to a different floor and out of ICU as I’m not critical now.

New room, new nurses, and new doc. Let me just say this, this hospital has been amazing in its treatment of me. I’m finally able to sleep. And sleep I do. At least until they wake me up because my oxygen saturation had gotten down to a dangerous level. So now when I sleep I have to have oxygen hooked up.

No I don’t snore. To my knowledge I don’t have sleep apnea. By the end of my stay there, we never did figure out why my oxygen saturation goes down when I sleep.

Initially when I first get to this floor, they still have me hooked up to my IV and they’re feeding me electrolytes. Also they have all these monitors all over my body to monitor my heart and other electrical signals to make sure I’m ok. So right now I very much so have a lot of things attached to me.

There was talk about them discharging me on day 2. That didn’t happen. My blood test results are getting better. But not good enough. Which at this point I’m fine with cause I don’t feel well enough to go home either.

A lot of the next couple of days is spent in bed waiting for time to pass. I know I have to be patient for the antibiotic to do its job. Add in the bonus of starting my menstrual cycle while I’m there (which given what’s going on, kinda scared me cause I thought it was blood in my urine initially).

Blood test results are pretty normal now. I get discharged on a Thursday. I spent about 4 1/2 days in the hospital. I just finished taking my antibiotic they prescribed me. I feel fine now. It got very scary for awhile there. It’s a very surreal feeling watching the numbers go down and there’s nothing you can do to make it better.

Now you may be asking why call this “The Fortunate Seizure?” My answer is this: if I hadn’t had that seizure there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be here to tell this story. Given how low my blood pressure got, there’s a high likelihood that I would’ve gone to sleep and just not woken up.