Listen to Your Body

One given with diseased lungs is that they are more susceptible to respiratory infections. In early 2018, we did our annual drive from WI to FL, and Danny was sick and miserable the entire way. After a couple days of refusing to go to a doctor, he finally caved. Then after a couple hours at urgent care, he walked out with a Pneumonia diagnosis, a shot in the butt and some cough medicine with hydrocodone that we later mixed with Sprite for a real party… Kidding. We didn’t even open it, because he hates taking medicine. My point for this story is, “Listen to your body when it’s screaming at you!”

I spent most of November 8, 2018 asking Danny diagnostic questions trying to determine if he was actually sick or if he was suffering from a severe case of the man flu. The first sign that he was actually sick was when he took the day off from work. I repeat… he took the day off from work. The next was the fact that he had fevers coming and going all day long. So we ended up being the a-holes that show up at Urgent Care right at 7:58 when they close at 8. They took him in for an appointment, but realized he would be more suited for the ER, which was a huge bummer as the ER is far more expensive.

In an effort to be transparent, the doctor let us know that he was initially presenting as Septic with tachycardia and a fever. His oxygen levels were dropping to 85% and lower when walking. We needed to prepare ourselves as we probably weren’t going home, and we were looking at a potential transfer to Madison to be closer to the ILD team. In the meantime, they did every test on the entire planet, including an EKG, blood cultures, and a flu swab. He was dehydrated and went through two bags of fluids very quickly.

Madison ended up being full, so they kept him at St. Mary’s in Janesville with a plant to simply keep communication open with the doctors in Madison to ensure we were all aligned on his care plan.

The flu came back negative. There was no elevated white count. The bloodwork looked good. No sepsis. We went the next several hours explaining what PPFE was to several healthcare workers. In the future, I’ll just reference this website to save us some time 😉
The next day we learned that he actually had the Human Parainfluenza Virus (HPIV). Normally it doesn’t knock people down as hard as it did for Danny, but these lungs just can’t bounce back like normal. He was given some medication and sent home, where we had Gram’s homemade chicken noodle waiting for us.