Most college freshman move into their dorms, eager to begin a new phase of their life. Often it's a far cry from living at home with their parents and attending high school. I was ready for this adventure, or so I thought. I started out the Fall 2000 semester staying up late, waking up early, eating as little as possible of the ever-appetizing cafeteria food, and attending my daily classes. Life is good, I thought, but it soon turned into a malnourished, sleep-deprived nightmare. This is my story...

 

Would this pain ever stop? I screamed as it seared through my chest and down my left side. The more I sobbed, the sharper the pain; the sharper the pain, the more I sobbed. It was a vicious cycle of relentless torture. My living room couch had become my new home, since I could barely move.

Four trips to the ER and still they sent me home with no news. What were these doctors thinking? They had filled me with two bags of saline through an I.V. and sent me off with a temperature of 104°F. I had not slept in four days! The darvocet they prescribed didn’t touch the pain, and every day it continued to get worse. My physician wouldn’t refer me to the hospital until finally my mother put her foot down. "I'm losing her!" she sobbed into the phone, "I'm taking her to the hospital and I will NOT bring her home until they find out what's wrong!"

Thursday, December 7, was my final trip to the ER. The nurses kept me there all day as I screamed at the top of my lungs. They gave me an array of pain killers, ranging from over-the-counter ibuprofen, to narcotics, including darvocet AND percocet. For the first time in weeks, the pain subsided a little. A CAT scan later that same day revealed that my lungs were filling up with fluid. The fluid was creating pressure on my diaphragm, which was causing the sharp pains in my chest and side. My left lung was nearly 3/4 full, so it had to be drained immediately. I sat up on the edge of my bed as the doctor went to work draining the fluid from my left lung through my back. I couldn’t believe the relief I felt after the 2 liters of fluid were gone. We all said, "Thank God for maternal instincts," for if I had stayed home another 24 hours, I would have drowned. The doctors decided to keep me overnight for observations. That’s how it all started. At that point I never dreamed it would go as far as it did . . .

The ER doctor who drained my lungs had explained the "worst case scenario" to me, assuring me that it was only used as a last resort. Surgery on the lungs was only used in extreme cases. The draining in the ER was a standard procedure, and should have solved all my problems. After spending two more days under observation in the hospital, the worst case scenario became my new reality. My immune system had hit rock bottom, on top of my being anemic and malnourished. Besides the fluid, the doctors had discovered a bacterial infection in my lungs. My body wasn’t fighting off the infection. Instead, the infected parts were being walled off and my lungs were slowly dying. I was going to need surgery that involved scraping out the infection and removing part of my left lung. My bone marrow had stopped producing red blood cells, so my blood cell levels were half of what they should have been, normally. Thanks to the many blood donors out there, I was able to have two blood transfusions before the surgery.

* * * *

Emerging from the Operating Room, the first words out of the surgeon’s mouth were, "She’s not going to make it; her lungs are shot." The doctor brought the news to my parents, though no one said a word to me. I didn’t understand what all the tears were for then, but I do now.


I lay there in my isolation room in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of St. Mary’s Hospital. For the first time in weeks, I felt no pain; morphine was my new best friend. I felt relatively fine, considering I had a six-inch incision in my back and three chest tubes along the sides of my torso that were constantly draining more fluid from my lungs. A large portion of my left lung had also been removed during surgery. I had a central line I.V. in my chest that ran straight to my heart, and an I.V. in each arm. For two days my body responded to nothing. I watched as people washed their hands and donned hospital gowns and masks before coming in to visit me. I was being tested for tuberculosis, so every precaution was taken. So many faces came and went, and countless times I fell asleep in the middle of a conversation.

My mother spent long, agonizing days in the waiting room, greeting visitors. The hospital allowed her to sleep there overnight before and after my surgery. My father continued working during the days, but every spare minute he was by my side. After visiting me in ICU, my brother, Keith, met my parents in the waiting room with tears in his eyes and asked, "Is Lindsay going to die?" Nobody knew.
The doctors had no idea what was wrong with me. They felt like they were banging their heads against walls, trying to think of something they hadn’t tried yet. All we could do was wait and see if the medication worked after the surgery. My lungs should have been healing and regenerating, but they weren’t. The medications weren’t helping. The doctors told my parents to spend as much time with me as they could, because I probably wouldn’t make it out of the hospital. They were terrified of losing me, and still my sickness remained undefined. We waited and prayed.

During the first few days after my surgery, the device that measured my breathing capabilities read 500. A normal breath for an average person is about 3500. It was like breathing through a straw; I was getting very little oxygen. So, every day I used an oxygen machine as well as a nebulizer (which creates a medicinal steam that you inhale) to try and gain my lung capacity back. Towards the end of my stay at the hospital, my breathing was measuring about 1500.

After the chest tubes had been in my sides for three days, the doctor was able to remove them. My body started reacting to the antibiotics as well. More CAT scans and X-rays showed that my body was starting to heal. Fluid was no longer collecting in my lungs, and my bone marrow was beginning to produce red blood cells again. I was also beginning to eat small amounts of food. Even though things were starting to look up, my recovery was agonizingly slow and painful. The incision was on my left side, so I could hardly move my left arm. I felt faint if I sat in a chair for more than a few minutes at a time. After being bed-ridden for eight days, I had lost the use of most of the muscles in my legs. The physical therapist worked with me every day until I was able to walk again. Every movement of my body required exhaustive amounts of energy.

When I was able to walk on my own, and was using little or no morphine, I was moved out of Intensive Care to the pediatric wing. Once there, I continued meeting with the occupational and physical therapists, to rebuild my muscles. I was finally off the oxygen machine and nebulizer. My blood was drawn every morning to monitor my blood cell levels, and I had shots in every place imaginable. After four more days I was released to go home. It was two days before Christmas.

The day that I left the hospital, the closest thing the doctors could diagnose was that I had some kind of bacterial pneumonia in my lungs, that they had never encountered before. I was a mystery child. A Christmas miracle. Only then did I hear the stories about how they nearly lost me, and had I been 10 years older, they probably wouldn’t have been able to save me at all. I had lost twenty pounds during my 17 day stay at St. Mary’s, so I had to meet with a nutritionist to set up a high calorie diet and gain some weight back. My body was still weak, and my holes and incisions were still healing. My first day home I couldn't even stand up long enough to take a shower. I was taking 12 pills a day, a mixture of iron and antibiotics. My doctors and parents encouraged me to take a semester off from school. They wanted me to stay home where I would be protected from the germs in the dorms and could recover. I decided there was no way I was staying home for the semester. I fought about this with everyone. My entire family thought I was crazy, but I gained some of my weight and strength back and proved to them that I was willing to work hard to take care of myself and stay healthy.
No one believed that I would make it through that semester when I went back against everyone’s wishes. They all expected to see me come home in a matter of weeks, far too tired and weakened from the surgery to handle the stress of college. I had to completely reorganize my college lifestyle in order to prove them wrong.

Only now, three years later, as I look back on all this, can I say that I am back to normal. My lung capacity is close to what it was before, and my incision has faded into a terrible scar to remind me of this experience. Like I could ever forget. Besides being a horrifying nightmare, this has proved to be a lesson for me. I am now conscious of my eating habits, and I make an effort not to miss meals, or eat junk food. I realize the value of a good night’s sleep, and have drastically changed my sleeping habits. I also realize how close I came to never seeing my friends and family again. Before the doctors drained my lungs, I was living in my last 24 hours and didn't even know it. It saddens me to think that so many people who have touched me in some way, may have gone without being told how much they mean to me; how much I love them and need them in my life. I am determined never to take any person or any aspect of my life for granted again.

 

So, let me take this opportunity to tell each of you who have ever been a part of my life how important you are. Every person who has talked to me, befriended me, loved me, hurt me, held me or helped me, has shaped me into the person I am today. Together we've been through the good and the bad, and I wouldn't change that or trade it for all the world. I hope all my friends and loved ones never feel as though they are taken for granted. I love each of you more than you'll ever know, and I thank you for always being there for me, no matter the time or the place. As most of you know, I am an avid collector of quotes, so I leave you with this..."To the world you may be one person, but to one person, you may be the world." I love you.