The Night From The Pit

Holy comedy of errors Batman.

Last night was hideous.  Horrendous.  Horrible.  Heinous.  Okay, I'm out of "h" adjectives for now.  I have a cold.  From the pit of hell. Last night better have been the worst of it.  If not, I will surely go barking mad.

So here I am, trying to go to sleep, and as physically exhausted as I am, I can't sleep.  Every 2 to 3 minutes I am either sneezing, blowing my nose, or doing suction.  Literally.  When I do suction, I have to sit up, take the vent off, TURN the vent off, do suction, turn the vent back on, and get back in bed and get the mask situated over the trach before the vent alarms (I think it's 7 seconds).

Finally I give up on the vent.  Yes, it helps me breathe, but this up and down, on and off, suction and readjusting is making me CRAZY.  So I go for the oxygen mask.  This I can at least keep ON while I do suction...I just have to pull the mask down.

Well, the blasted mask was old, and it kept unsnapping.  Oh. My. Flipping. Word.  REALLY???  So here I go again, out of bed, it's about 2-ish.  I start digging through the "extra medical supplies" drawer, and find a new mask and green dial thingy to attach it to which hooks up to the oxygen conentrator.

Mmmm-HM.  I hook it up, and not only does the concentrator make the big-rig air brake sound every 5 seconds (at least it's consistant) but now it also makes this kind of ping-ish bottle rocket sound because there is too much pressure for the new mask I put on.

Little did I know, McGuyver had drilled a hole in the OLD green dialy-pointy thingy that goes from the O2 hose to the O2 mask.  So he mutters something about do I need some help, and by this time I'm pretty sure my head was spinning....I KNEW at the very least my eyes were glowing and shooting daggars.  I had a scissors in one hand, and the old tubes and mask in the other and I'm just hacking away. 

So I get the OLD mask off the OLD green thingy and put the NEW mask on the OLD McGuyverized green thingy, and VIOLA, no more pingy-bottle rocket sound.  Still the every-5-second-big-rig-air-brake-sound, but I'm oddly used to it by now.

By this time I'm begging God to just end it all right here and now, come back and rescue me from this pit. Right about then, Molly pukes all over the floor.  I KNOW I cursed a bit, so I'll leave that part out, but I am telling you...what a night.  I feel like crap, my hubby is soundly sleeping away, my dogs are ralphing, my kid is sleepy soundly which means he's going to kick my butt all over the house tomorrow...

And by this time it's about 3AM, and I have yet to get one wink of sleep.  I just bawl.

Must have worked, because the next thing I know, I'm waking up at 6:50 to go potty.  Then Jacob jumps in my bed to "cuddle", and he seemed wide awake.  I said one thing:  "You WILL go back to sleep because Mommy feels terrible and needs to sleep."  Thankfully it was still nice and dark, and he went back to sleep, THANK YOU LORD until 9:45.  So I ended up with about 6 hours of shut-eye.  Not optimum for a sickie, but I'll take it. 

Today I pretty much feel like I have a hideous hangover without having any fun at all. {Sigh.}  Just another day in my life. Gotta love it.