Days start early

The respiratory tech just came by at 05:31 to measure my lung capacity. I gotta say, I prefer my own clock radio as a wakeup call.

If the G-B starts affecting ones ability to breathe, it’s a pretty good chance that you’ll have to be on a ventilator for a bit; it’s a fate to be avoided if at all possible, so I’m a motivated test subject. Two parts to the test: take the biggest breath possible and exhale it through a meter to measure total lung capacity (aka “the how much do you blow” test) and then exhale completely and inhale sharply through another meter to measure inspiratory pressure (aka “the how hard do you suck” test).

When I could stand up, I was consistently blowing 5.3 liters, and was getting incredulous responses from the techs. Now that I’m struggling to flail myself into a slumped sort of sitting upright, I’m doing a little less… but still pretty good. I’m smug.

Across from me, roommate W–, also diagnosed with G-B, has had his O2 saturation alarm going off intermittently all night. The nurses walk over to his bed and call to him: “deep breaths! Take some deep breaths!” Next to me, the man on the vent gets turned and cleaned like a rag doll, inaudibly complaining of constipation and periodically having his vent tubes suctioned out with a wet sucking sound. Diagonally from me, the young guy M– has his family show up around 0500 to yell to him: “M–! What year is it? M–! Where are you?”

Me? I can’t find a comfortable position in which to sleep, and the increasing numbness is making even the iPhone’s correcting keyboard hard to use … But I feel pretty lucky just now, all things considered.

The MRI of my brain came back showing no stroke signs. As did the imaging of heart and central line, so nobody knows where the scary stroke-like symptoms the other day came from.. But they’re going to do another round of phoresis today, so that’s a good thing.

Numbness and weakness still making advances. Flopped my hand down onto a hairy leg in my bed and took several seconds to identify it as mine.

Currently reading: Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson.