Y’all, that’s exactly how I’m feeling this morning. I just want to get back to the fun stuff! Last week was a total bust. I had been so excited about having four uninterrupted work days in a row to focus on my studio and check off some of these remaining projects. And then on Tuesday evening, my sciatica decided to return and stick around for a few days. And then early Friday morning, Matt had to go to the emergency room, and was admitted to the hospital over the weekend. We just got home yesterday evening.
This was Matt’s fourth hospital stay since 2020. While the other three times were things like the flu, COVID, and just regular (but way more extreme than usual) weakness and exhaustion due to his M.S., this time was different.
Thursday evening started out just like every other evening. Matt and I like to watch a show before going to bed, and he likes to have a snack while we’re watching TV. But because it’s the end of the day when he feels the most exhausted and weak (because, again, he has M.S.), he likes to take niacin and let that kick in before eating his snack. He loves niacin because it gives him a little boost of energy and strength.
But this time wasn’t like most times. He swallowed the first capsule just fine. But the second one didn’t go down smoothly. He said it felt like it just sat in his throat and wouldn’t go down, and then he said it felt as if the capsule burst open. Part of it went down, but he felt like part of it went down the wrong way and he inhaled it.
He coughed off and on really hard for a good solid hour. He was breathing the whole time, so there was no airway blockage. I didn’t really know what to do. He wasn’t choking. He was breathing, and between coughs, he was speaking normally. He didn’t say anything about feeling like he needed medical attention. He just coughed and coughed and kept drinking water. After what seemed like forever, he finally stopped coughing, ate only a part of his snack, and then we went to sleep.
Well, I was awakened at 5:00am by the sound of Matt moaning and groaning pretty loudly. I asked him what was wrong, but he seemed completely out of it. His couldn’t keep his eyes open. He had lost all strength to the point that he couldn’t communicate to me what the problem was. It was all very different. This wasn’t like previous times where the extreme weakness came on gradually over a 24-hour period from flu or COVID. This happened very quickly, and I knew it was something altogether different. I figured it had something to do with that niacin and his coughing for an hour.
Long story short, I called 911, and the paramedics took him to the hospital. They generally ask Matt if he wants to go to the hospital, but this time, they didn’t even ask. They just came in, took a look at him, and loaded him right up and took him. And after hours in the ER, and all kinds of tests and scans, they finally did conclude that there was something showing up on the x-ray of his lung that had caused infection. So they admitted him and treated the infection until he regained his strength and got back to (his) normal.
It was a crazy weekend, not only because this 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 was absolutely miserable. There was no way I could get comfortable on the strange sofa bed thing in Matt’s hospital room, so from 5:00am on Friday morning until midnight on Saturday night, I got a sum total of 1.5 hours of sleep.
But on Saturday, I decided to dump the ibuprofen that I had been taking (which wasn’t doing much for my pain at all) and try the naproxen + acetaminophen combo that someone left in a comment on my last blog post (thank you, Cyndy!!), and that worked amazingly well!! That mighty pain relieving combo plus a 10-hour white noise video on YouTube (played on my phone, which I placed right by my head to drown out all of the nighttime hospital noises) worked wonders, and I actually got 7.5 hours of sleep on Saturday night. I don’t even sleep that well at home! 😀
Matt and I were both so relieved to be back home last night. He’s feeling really good now, but he’s going to rest for a few days before getting back to his normal daily routine. I, on the other hand, am champing at the bit to get to work. And now that I have a pain med combo that actually works for my sciatica, I’m hoping I won’t be losing any more work days due to pain. And now that Matt is back home and feeling well, I’ll also be headed back to the chiropractor and massage therapist very soon.
But let’s get back to the DIY and decorating, shall we? 🙂 My plan for today is to finally paint the walls in the back entry of the studio. I’m anxious to get rid of the green that’s in there now…
And to see a much softer, less in-your-face green on those walls.
And I’m also rethinking the black doors. This room has a lot of doors, and I just don’t know if I want that much black in the room. There are four single doors, and then the French doors out to the carport. So technically, there area six doors in the room, and four of them are right together in a relatively small space. That’s a lot of black, and that can feel overpowering very quickly. So I might actually do white doors if I can’t think of another alternative. But I do want to keep them light and bright so that I can keep the overall look and feel of the room light and bright. We’ll see what I land on 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 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.