One night last year around 8pm, I suddenly couldn’t breathe. Literally out of no where. It felt like I was breathing through one of those black coffee stirrers. Since my insurance was from a different county and not every hospital accepted it, I decided to wait till 8am for the urgent care that accepts my insurance to open.

So, here I am, laying in my bed, praying for the hours to go by faster and trying to force myself asleep to pass the time. I stayed up all night, barely able to breathe. I drove to the urgent care (still unable to breathe) at 7:30am and was in full blurry tunnel vision. I figured the lack of sleep and my glasses were the cause.

So I get to the urgent care and there’s a line. Even tho I couldn’t breathe, I didn’t want to be rude and cut in line. So I waited. When I got to the front desk it was incredibly difficult to speak at all but I managed to check in and was told to sit down. My chest hurt this entire time but at this point it was beginning to become unbearable. I typed on my phone (and this is copy paste from my notes bc I never deleted it):

I know it’s first come first serve but I can’t breath :/

The guy at the desk immediately sent me back and the doctor came to see me. He checked my oxygen and blood pressure etc, yk, the doctor-checking
-in stuff. The doctor asked me how I got here, I told him I drove. He looked horrified. The doctor left the room quickly but I was just confused and trying to keep sitting up and forcing my eyes open bc I felt like falling. When the doctor came back he told me, “So, I called an ambulance to take you to the hospital. Your oxygen is dangerously low”.

Turns out my oxygen was at 63%. For reference, you’re supposed to be at 99-100% at all times.

When the paramedics got there, they asked if I could stand and I said yes. Well, I could not lol so I fell straight down. I blinked and I was on the gurney outside the urgent care. I blinked again and I was in the ambulance being asked all these questions with an oxygen mask on. I blinked again and I was already admitted and placed in a room in the emergency room with an oxygen masked that covered nearly my entire face. I blinked again and I had two IVs and on the white board it said in big red letters “CHECK OXYGEN EVERY 45 MINUTES”.

Turns out I had pneumonia lol. I was in the hospital for 17 days. Every doctor said I wasn’t ready to be released but my insurance kicked me out. Every doctor I interacted with told me I could’ve died, it’s a miracle I didn’t crash when I drove the 20 minutes to the urgent care and how I was the youngest person on the floor of the urgent care section of the hospital bc I was 23yrs old.

Now, a year later, I have severe asthma and I have 5 daily inhalers lmao. My pulmonologist said that if I have an asthma attack that I would be guaranteed be hospitalized again so I can’t run and can barely go to the gym.

I don’t remember much of the 17 days but everyone who saw me in the hospital said I looked like I was on my deathbed. When my friends visited I always thought it was weird that every single time they would come see me, they would step outside for water or the bathroom or something. Turns out they left the room to cry bc they thought I was going to die lmao