Allergies + asthma = no fun

Thursday started out great.  It wasn't raining, was even almost sunny, and not cold either.  I was in a great mood for some reason, and sang my way to the bus stop. (Note to self: Viennese will look at you strangely if you sing while walking down the street.)  Nice bus ride as usual, good conversation, some great laughs on the way to my office.  As usual, I then dumped my stuff in my office and headed straight to my section's coffee room for our morning ritual of coffee and whatever snacks were brought in that day.  (OK, in my case, I drink milk or Coke Zero, and bring in my own snacks.)  We usually end up laughing like loons, and yesterday morning was no exception.  Unfortunately, that was the end of the good part of the day.

I started to cough a little, then some more.  So I went back to my office to use my inhaler.  By then I was hacking a fair bit.  Used the inhaler again.  Then someone walking by stopped in and asked if I needed help.  Seeing as I was bent over in my chair wheezing, the answer was of course yes.  I was helped down the hallway by 2 people and into a car, and they drove me up to the main gate.  Thankfully, the complex where I work has a medical office staffed with a nurse and/or doctor during working hours, complete with beds and medication.  Renate the nurse could tell right away this was not good, and called for an ambulance. I tried to stand up once, and basically just tipped over, quite scary! Within a few minutes, the room was full of people: me, the two guys who drove me over, the nurse, 3 emergency medical technicians, one emergency doctor, and one policeman from the front gate.  The EMTs told us that they were sending a helicopter over to ferry me to the hospital as that was faster than an ambulance (the hospital was about 20 km away as the crow flies).  In the meantime, I received a whole bunch more medication, both inhaled and injected, and also oxygen.  This combined with so many people in the standard "emergency" red jumpsuits and all the fuss was freaking me out! (Not to mention the not-breathing part)

By the time the helicopter arrived, I was starting to breathe a bit easier, which was reassuring to everyone (i.e. the patient is not critical) and off we went.  This was my first helicopter flight.  It was very smooth, but that's all I can say about it, seeing as I was strapped into a gurney facing into the tail section. :-(   When we got to the hospital, I was taken straight to the ICU cardiorespiratory ward.  I was X-rayed, poked and prodded, transferred to a bed, hooked up to a heart monitor, a finger pulsox reader and a blood pressure cuff, I had an IV line in one arm and a blood-sucking line in another, and was given yet more meds. All his before 10 AM. During the day, I got meds, check ups with stethoscopes, another X-ray, an EKG, and more meds. I wondered a bit if they were overreacting: I don't wheeze very loudly during an attack, and always wonder if maybe my attacks are not as bad as they could be.  But I now have read the medical report, which states "distict whistling in both lungs!" at arrival at the hospital.  I don't think the exclamation mark was there for fun, but rather for emphasis.  So I guess with a stethoscope the situation is better evaluated than just by my overt wheezing.  This is a good thing and a bad thing:  the good thing is that I can stop second-guessing myself and am allowed to rip off someone's head if they say "but it can't be that bad, you're not really wheezing much", which is often very tempting I assure you.  The bad thing is that I do get pretty bad asthma. Hmmm... Anyways, back to the story.

I was fed lunch, consisting of a puddle of veal in sauce with white noodles on the side, a "salad" of lettuce leaves in a bowl without dressing, and a vegetarian chicken noodle soup (how is this possible?) that looked like dishwater.  I ate a bit of the veal, and ignored the rest.  Wasn't that hungry yet anyways, and still not breathing well. The only upside to this period of the day is that the male nurse was very good-looking, with faulous clear blue eyes and a quick smile. Hey, that's something at least!

By about 2 PM I was breathing much better, and by 4 PM I was hoping to get transferred to a "normal" ward. This was not to happen. However, they did remove the heart monitor and pressure cuff.  They brought us dinner at 4:30 PM!! It consisted of 2 slices of bread (which I can't eat), a plate with 50g of a cheese-chive spread and 3 measly slices of deli meat, and a container of yogourt. I ate all but the bread, and sincerely hoped there'd be a snack later.  There wasn't. 

When the evening shift changed at 6PM, and Nurse Blue Eyes was replaced by Baby Nurse.  She looked like she was about 18, over-tanned and with streaks in her hair, and she immediately put on rave music on the radio at her station. Not reassuring!  But by 7PM I was ready to chew off my arm, and asked Baby Nurse for a snack. She came back with a tray loaded with containers of yogourt, a chocolate pudding, fruits, and apple sauce, which made me feel a bit more kindly towards her.   :-)

I stayed in that ICU ward overnight, along with another person in much worse shape than I.  Over 24 hours, I only saw the poor guy move his head a little and one leg a bit, and he had a tracheal intubation.  I felt bad for being in the same ward as I was in so much better shape.  But I had to be kept there for observation, I guess, because it's possible for allergy symptoms to reoccur up to 12 hours after the inital reaction, and possibly be worse the second time around. However, as they had removed all monitoring machines except the pulsox, and Baby Nurse basically ignored me all night, I have no idea how they thought they were observing me...

I said I guess, because hospitals here are very frustrating.  The doctors and nurses provide basically NO information about anything, from diagnosis to treatment to even "what happens now?"  For example, I found out I'd likely be staying overnight at about 3 PM, after talking to a coworker who had been in contact with the hospital (why they told him and not me is a mystery).  But the doctor and nurse this morning were much better about imparting information.  I was discharged around 10 AM, and my coworler Gyula was kind enough to leave Seibersdorf to pick me up and drive me back to Vienna.

By this morning, I was more or less back to normal. However, my lungs are quite irritated , and any slight exertion makes me cough and makes it a bit painful to breathe (hard to describe unless you've felt it).  Also, from all the hacking and working to breathe yeaterday, I have muscle pain in my whole ribcage, abdomen, even shoulders.  I will be laying low all weekend, basically no hiking or cycling, even long walks are discouraged.  Which SUCKS, because
1) the weather should be nice and my bike is finally fixed; and
2) I was very much looking forward to hiking up Schneeberg on Saturday.  The closest I will come to it this weekend was getting a decent look at it while driving past on the way home from the hospital.  But my very nice and supportive friends Owen and Mark have already promised to organize a hike up Schneeberg in a few weeks. Which actually may work out great, as MAYBE it will not rain as much between now and then, and the trails can dry up a bit.  Also, Owen was not going to make it this weekend anyways, so this rescheduling is good for him.

Conclusion: it appears that I had an allergic reaction in the coffee room, even though I didn't eat anything. (Proof of the concept of transferring allergens on hard surfaces)  I reacted once last week, but it was a minor asthma attack, nothing I don't deal with regularly.  But this one was in a whole other league!  The good thing about it (if you can call it such) is that I scared my coworkers shitless.  Maybe now they will be more sympathetic, and open to the idea of the coffee room being decontaminated and then designed nut-free.  It's either that, or I have to skip the twice-daily coffee routine.  This is where we bond, exchange stories, information, etc.  I would hate to miss out!

Note: I have been in Vienna for 2 months.  So far, there seems to be a "health issues" competiton going on: month 1 started things off with 4 visits to the dentist (2 of which emergency visits) for a crown that kept falling out.  Month 2 upped the ante with this asthma attack.  How will month 3 top that?