Y’all, that’s exactly how I feel this morning. I just want to get back to the fun stuff! Last week was a total failure. I had been really excited to have four days of uninterrupted work in a row to focus on my studying and check off some of these remaining projects. And then Tuesday night my sciatica decided to come back and stay for a few days. And then early Friday morning, Matt had to go to the emergency room and was admitted to the hospital for the weekend. Yesterday afternoon we arrived home.
This was Matt’s fourth hospital stay since 2020. While the other three times were things like the flu, COVID, and just regular (but much more extreme than usual) weakness and exhaustion due to his MS, this time was different.
Thursday afternoon started like any other night. Matt and I like to watch a show before bed and he likes to have a snack while we watch TV. But since the end of the day is when he feels most exhausted and weak (because, again, he has MS), he likes to take niacin and let it take effect before eating his snack. He loves niacin because it gives him a little boost of energy and strength.
But this time it wasn’t like most times. He swallowed the first capsule well. But the second was not easy. He said he felt like it just stayed in his throat and wouldn’t come down, and then he said he felt like the capsule burst open. Some of it went down, but she felt another part going down the wrong side and inhaled it.
He coughed very hard from time to time for a good hour. She was breathing the entire time, so there was no airway obstruction. He really he didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t drowning. She was breathing and, between coughs, she spoke normally. She didn’t say anything about feeling like she needed medical attention. She just coughed and coughed and kept drinking water. After what seemed like an eternity, she finally stopped coughing, ate only part of his snack, and then we went to sleep.
Well, I woke up at 5:00 am to the sound of Matt moaning and groaning quite loudly. I asked him what was wrong, but he seemed completely out of it. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. He had lost all strength to the point that he could not communicate to me what the problem was. Everything was very different. This was not like previous times where extreme weakness appeared gradually over a 24-hour period due to the flu or COVID. This happened very quickly and I knew it was something completely different. I assumed it had something to do with the niacin and his coughing for an hour.
Long story short, I called 911 and the paramedics took him to the hospital. They usually ask Matt if he wants to go to the hospital, but this time they didn’t even ask him. They just walked in, looked at him, picked him up and took him away. And after hours in the emergency room and all kinds of tests and scans, they finally came to the conclusion that something was showing up on the x-ray of his lung that had caused the infection. So they hospitalized him and treated the infection until he regained his strength and returned to normal.
It was a crazy weekend, not only because the circumstances of Matt’s hospital stay were so different from the other three hospital stays, but because I was still dealing with my sciatica and felt absolutely miserable. There was no way I could get comfortable on the strange sofa bed in Matt’s hospital room, so from 5:00 am on Friday morning until midnight on Saturday night, I slept a total of 1.5 hours.
But on Saturday I decided to stop the ibuprofen I had been taking (which wasn’t giving me much pain relief) and try the naproxen + acetaminophen combo that someone left in a comment on my last blog post (thanks, Cyndy!!), and it worked incredibly well!! That powerful pain-relieving combination plus a 10-hour white noise video on YouTube (played on my phone, which I placed right next to my head to drown out all the nighttime hospital noises) worked wonders, and I actually slept for 7 ,5 hours. Saturday night. I don’t even sleep that well at home! 😀
Matt and I were so relieved to be back home last night. He feels great now, but will rest for a few days before returning to his normal daily routine. I, on the other hand, am looking forward to getting to work. And now that I have a pain reliever combination that really works for my sciatica, I hope to not miss any more work days due to pain. And now that Matt is back home and feeling good, I’ll be going back to the chiropractor and massage therapist very soon too.
But let’s get back to DIY and decorating, shall we? 🙂 My plan for today is to finally paint the walls at the back entrance of the studio. I’m looking forward to getting rid of the green that’s there now…
And see a much softer and less direct green on those walls.
And I’m also rethinking the black doors. This room has a lot of doors and I don’t know if I want so much black in the room. There are four single doors and then French doors leading to the garage. So technically, there are six doors in the room, and four of them are close together in a relatively small space. There is a lot of black and it can get overwhelming very quickly. So I could do white doors if I can’t think of another alternative. But I want to keep them light and bright so I can keep the overall look of the room light and bright. We’ll see where I end up with that decision. But at this point, I’m almost 100% sure it won’t be black.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 upper that my husband, Matt, and I purchased in 2013. Matt has MS and can’t do physical work, so I do most of the I work at home alone. You can learn more about me here.
