A COVID TALE

 So, I have been hinting at doing this piece for some time now.  First I had to get feeling back in one pinky that was damaged during the two weeks I was in an induced coma, so I could hit the A key instead of the caps lock when typing quickly....

So, about the first week in November, I went with my family to the local shopping center about one hour away from my home.  Everything was normal until we were on our last errand and I could barely drive because nausea hit me like a wall with no warning.  It was so bad that my 16 year old daughter (who had not driven a stick shift on the highway - just around town) was the go-to to get us home.  I helped her shift into 5th gear and then promptly dropped off to sleep.  When we got to a three way intersection near our town, I coached her until we pulled in our driveway.  The rest is a blur.

I have an aversion to hospitals and hate needles, so I refused to go see a doc for about 8 days when things took a turn for the worse.  I was eating almost nothing and refused most of my wife's treatments including hyd peroxide in our nebulizer.  I just wanted to sleep or die.  One of the two.  It was so bad that my daughter says I staggered out of my room and made a puddle on the bathroom floor and then staggered back to my room to sleep some more.  We have an oxymeter and normal for me was in the mid to upper 80's on the machine - but I was dipping into the 50's and 60's.  This is also normal for me if I am shallow breathing, even after Covid.

A good friend that lives 35 mins away felt multiple promptings to call and check up on me.  I had changed phones so he did not have current information on me.  He finally got my info and, on talking to me, decided I was in desperate shape.  My wife, due to her "Covid brain", was also not thinking logically nor clearly and just did not call the ambulance, regardless of how I felt.  I kept saying (at her insistence) I would go in the next morning to the clinic to get checked out, but when my friend finally made it to our house, my oxy levels were at 37% and I was blue in my lips and extremities.  I was pretty much going to be dead by morning without an intervention.  My friend gave me a quick blessing and loaded me in his SUV.  Instead of taking me to the regional hospital one hour away, he took me to the local emergency room for fear of losing me on the way to cardiac arrest.  At least I would have cardiac care and oxygen on the way to the hospital in an ambulance.

I got to the regional hospital with my SpO2 levels in the 50's since I had been sucking down pure oxy for an hour.  I made it very clear I did not want the intubation and was quite belligerent.  I also said no vax.  I do not trust anyone that has to force something on anyone.  I grew up with an older brother that pulled stunts like getting me to pee on the electric fence and knew after the first few tricks, that the more he insisted on something, the worse the outcome was going to be.  I care not if people get the jab, just so long as they do not impinge on my agency in the process.  Some people are REAL control freaks...  I am confident that it will be found that Fauci and his wicked posse are sick, demented and have an agenda behind this of population control and complete world communism.  Yes, this is the pre-cursor to the mark of the beast....  No buying or selling without this thing.  The chip is next.

So, my wife overrode my signed DNR and Do Not Intubate order (with a stern warning not to use "Run death is Near" = Remdesivir on me) and I got to ride the Ronatisserie for two whole weeks.  The whole time being wrestled about like a giant sack of potatoes so that I did not get bed sores and poked like a pin cushion for fear of me going into diabetic shock or something.  Even when my blood sugar tested in the 5-6 range, they were still religiously poking me to check my levels.  Incidentally, when I came out of the induced coma, the nurse asked me if I had any hallucinations of torture.  I said I did.  She asked if an Asian female was involved.  Why yes, this Asian gal was in my delusions and she was doing almost non-stop accupuncture and rolling me over in bed.  I figure I was conscious of the poking and prodding, though I could not move my eyelids or muscles due to the fentanyl paralyzing me.  I could hear what was being said around me, but could not respond.  All I wanted was ice chips to soothe the dry throat and nostrils.  

The lack of mucus membrane hydration was horrifying.  Once I was out of ICU and I had some diaphragm power going on, we managed to hydrate and steam (using hot wash cloths) the left nostril which produced what looked like a black olive (blood clot).  I was sure my wife would never touch an olive again after hearing her dry heave....  Two months later, I am just barely nursing my nasal system back to a normal state.  All I wanted was something to ease the dryness.  In one delusion, my wife had died and they had stored her body in a clear plastic tub.  They had used the last of the ice from the ice machine to preserve her corpse (the power had gone out and there was mass death - so they did what they could do for her) and placed her next to my bed (the power outage actually occurred when we had 200kph winds over the Thanksgiving weekend and I believe the ICU lost power and people were rushing about to get critical people taken care of until the generators came on).  I could not reach the ice chips to satiate my thirst and I was begging someone to come help me.  I did not care whether I lived or died, and knew that having those ice chips that had been contaminated by her corpse would result in my demise.  I did not care and finally, someone relented and I was able to get some relief knowing I would likely die from it.

The hallucinations were so real, it was just intense.  Most people on the fentanyl end up having PTSD from the experience.  Some 70% end up having difficulty maintaining employment.  As far as the PTSD goes, I have been through enough PTSD-inducing events in my life that this was just a little over par for the course....  All I could think about was getting cold water whenever I wanted it and what I called, the "holy ice chips".  I also wanted out.  In the delusional state I was in, I was certain I had been put in a fat farm against my will by my wife.  I had lost 80lbs over those three weeks.  I had no recollection of being put in for low oxy levels and because the x-rays of my lungs looked like a blizzard was going on in there.  When the attending physician told me I had been intubated for two weeks, I just laughed at him.  Finally, after his insistence, I said, "Okay, trust - but verify".  A call to my wife verified that this was the case.  She was the only one I trusted for good information - even though a few days earlier, she was in a plastic tub, preserved on ice....  Go figure.  Several of my friends had come to the hospital to see me (in my delusion) and they had all died.  I was the only one surviving this....  It was intense.

During the intense wind storm when the power went out, I could hear it outside my room and personnel were running everywhere.  I believe my fentanyl drip had quit and I believe I was conscious at that time to see them going everywhere trying to resolve the problems.  I could not move my arms or even talk due to the paralysis, but my eyes were open for a time.  I was able to describe my room accurately to my wife when I came to.  The best part of my delusions was that I prayed until some friends came to the hospital to break me out.  They brought cordite and were going to blow a hole in the wall and bring down the alarms so I could slip out.  Every time I woke up and we were going to attempt another break out, I would yell, "Fire in the hole!" and told everyone to duck to avoid the shrapnel.  That was a great delusion.  Some were fun.  Some were tortuous.  

One of my favorite delusions was dealing with this one doctor that shaved his head and wore reflective aviator glasses like Jeff Bezos.  I had insulted Bezos and he wrote SLC and told the Brethren to rein in his followers that were too direct.  So, they released a memo and I got a copy of the memo.  I was mad at "Bezos" and swore I would never buy another Amazon product in my life....  I also swore I would have every doctor and nurse arrested for corruption (not giving me the ice chips I wanted and for not letting me out from my prison fat farm).  To prove I had some clout and that I would eventually effect these arrests, I called some people I am connected to who knew people and had Elon Musk de-fuel his Mars rocket so that it would show these people that I was a force to be reckoned with and that they must release me at once.  The announcement came across their newsfeeds on the screens they were constantly monitoring.  When I knew they got the message, I demanded some cool looking scrubs and some flip flops so I could walk the 50 miles home (in -20C) weather....  Seriously, it must have been a gong show when I was going in and out of consciousness and relaying my demands to the poor hospital staff.  They were entertained, I am sure.  One nurse later told me that the Bezos moniker stuck and this one fellow is now Bezos....  haha

After they pulled me off the ventilator, my wife was allowed to visit me.  She was allowed to talk to me through the negative pressure enclosure via two cell phones.  One of the first things she asked was if I was mad at her for "what I had done to you (me)".  My voice was gone, but I managed to tell her that I hated her for what she had done to me (putting me in a tortuous fat farm with all these Asian accupuncturists).  It is all quite hilarious in retrospect....

Within a day of being out, my hoarse whisper turned to talking and they could not shut me up.  I just wanted to download all of my delusions to anyone who would listen.  It takes about 4-6 days for the drugs to metabolize out of the body, so the post-ICU trips were a wild mix of reality mixed with wild dream states.  The nights were mostly sleepless due to the steriods.  They attempted to give me sleeping pills, but they did not work.   I would stare at the analog clock for hours into the night and wonder what the jumble of numbers and long pointy things meant.  They humidified the room, so the eerie fog emanating from the vents in the low night lights really tripped me out.  The brain was cooked!  I could make sense of nothing.  When they would ask me where I was, I would answer that I was in BC or anywhere but where I actually was.  In my mind, it was 2023 and I was two years younger than what the records showed.  I am sure the docs thought I had permanent dain brammage.

One night, while skyping with my family, I demanded that my kiddo come pick me up and tried bribing her.  In the process of that convo, I got the idea that my wife did not want me home because she said she could not care for me (this is true, as it took a team of nurses to roll me over).  In two weeks, the limbs had atrophied so much that walking was impossible.  In fact, when the coolest male nurse ever came in to the room with a popsicle, I had to work to get one hand, then the other to my mouth before he would let me have the prize.  I think this was after I had quit eating because I did not think anyone wanted to see me (my wife had been forbidden to come due to her vaccine status).  In addition to the starvation protest, I determined I was going to break out of the hospital and hitchhike home to see my family or run off with one of the local divorcees after I impressed her by putting a fresh coat of gravel on her driveway (yes, that was random).  I planned the breakout for the next morning after hearing that two other patients had successfully made a Code Yellow break for it.  Nurses were running everywhere in a panic since it was sub-zero outside.  I was determined and emboldened by their success!  The next morning around 4am, there was a power outage on the floor above me and all hands were on deck running around with flashlights and I could hear them.  I determined that this was my opportunity.  I could barely move my arms, but I managed to rip the pic lines out of my hand and, with blood thinners coursing through my veins, I had about one pint of thick almost brackish blood on the floor next to the bed where I had managed to drag myself over the bed rail.  The pool of blood was about the size of a dinner platter.  When I came to, I used my stronger right arm to pull myself along the bed until I think I got hung up on my catheter at the end of the bed.  I had probably moved 10'.  It felt like miles.  I collapsed on my back and passed out only to come to as I was shitting myself and peeing all over the place.  There was blood everywhere and I have to say it must have been quite the sight when the night nurse walked in.

There was a doctor who had emigrated from Westfalia, Germany and one of the first things he said in a very strong German accent as he looked on the scene was, "Vell, vee may hav lost z var, but it appearz zat yu have lost z battle."  I along with everyone else burst out in laughter because it was so freaking funny and politically incorrect....  From that time forward, everything was funny.  He changed the trajectory of my bad fentanyl trip.  I got my wife to call my friends that I had thought had died next to me in my room; and the relief that they were alive was overwhelming.  I wept.  I had spent the entire night planning on how I was going to break the news to the children that their parents and grandmother were all gone.  Even though it was not my fault, I felt a great responsibility for them....  Slowly, piece by piece, the delusions were deconstructed in my mind.  That was the hardest part!  It all seemed so real.

A few days later, I was able to eat solid food and they decided to transfer me to the smaller local hospital for convalescence and PT so I could walk again and care for myself.  My oxy levels were coming up nicely and I was consistently in the upper 80's.  Where I was at prior to Covid.  They said I would be out sometime the first or second week in January.  I informed them that this was unacceptable because I had a daughter coming home from school and I was going to spend Christmas with her.  I worked my buns off until I could walk ten days after having to be fed by a nurse due to lack of muscle coordination/control.  I met my daughter as she walked into the house.  Best Christmas present ever.  It truly was a Christmas miracle - from going from less than a 50% chance of survival, to walking out of the hospital under my own power less than four weeks later and with no oxy tank for home use.  

Getting Covid probably saved my life.  My wife had been warning me that she was going to lose me due to stress eating and these nagging health problems that doctors could not get a handle on.  I agreed that I probably only had six months before my heart would fail....  But, slowly my oxy levels have increased on their own to the mid-90's and I have more energy than from the long Covid I got the end of Feb 2020, which sapped my strength until the second bout.  The loss of the all the weight in the hospital was amazing for my health.  Long-standing health conditions including arrythmia disappeared while on the Ronatisserie.  I had explosive diarrhea from a bout with e-coli in Brazil 35 years ago.  All gone.  I can eat protein at will now.  Something (probably due to the Ivermectin my wife smuggled in to me before intubation) wiped that out.  I am humbled and gob-smacked by it all.

My wife hoped I would have an NDE while I was in the induced coma.  Some people do.  I did not.  I wish I could report something - and you know I would.  But I cannot recall even a shred of anything like that.  Just the wild hallucinations!  The takeaway from that is:  stay away from fentanyl and, if you have da covid, remember to get an outside advisor to help you through the decisions you need to make because the brain and logic are useless once you get into the downward spiral and attendant brain fog.  Early treatment with vit D and Zinc and critical and Ivermectin is an early prophylactic that needs to be employed.

Most of all:  the jab is neither safe nor effective; as folks on 95% jabbed cruise ships are finding out.  Use good diet and exercise to get your diabetes and weight under control.  Those two things will kill you!  Otherwise, it is over 99% survivable unless you are going to die anyway from old age.