Tough it Out
Last year, December 1. I had slept for almost a week trying to fight what I thought was the flu. I woke up and had a gut feeling telling me that something wasn’t right with me.
I called my parents to tell them, and then cabbed myself to the emergency room. The staff took blood and ran tests on me for 8 hours, then discharged me and sent me home.
I got a call the next morning asking me to come back because they found something in my blood: Bacteremia and Endocarditis. I was put on penicillin immediately, for two months.
But I kept feeling like there was something wrong. I went for a specialized test on December 21, and woke up to the doctors telling me I need surgery as soon as possible. They’re trying to find a surgical team, earliest is the 24.
I go in and while they’re operating, I have an ascending aortic aneurysm and it caused an aortic dissection. They’re able to fix it. I’ve got a synthetic valve in there now.
But that’s not even the scariest part: I work in a restaurant kitchen, just before the start of the holiday season. Normally, cooks will tough it out and just work. Most think they’ll get better soon.
I’m told that if I had done that, I more than likely would have passed on before my birthday and they would have found out about the aneurysm during the autopsy. That still sends freaking chills down my spine.