Hello all,

I have had a crazy week and wanted to share with everyone. I had my surgery last Wed April 6th. We came home the next day and everything was good. I felt good friday and Saturday and on Sunday I started having a hard time breathing again. I was worried I did too much to soon or I had a lot of swelling etc. So I got up monday morning and went to work, I got to work and was really struggling to breath so my friend and coworker told me to go to the ER. I went the the nearest ER which is the Indian Health Service Hospital. (I am able to go there because I am 1/4 Oglala Lakota Sioux) Anyway, I go there and I explain that I recently had throat surgery etc, they gave me a neb treatment, 2 steroid shots and uped my prednisone to 30 mg. I called the surgeon at Mayo and let them know and they also thought that would help. I went home to rest, and hope the breathing would get better. I woke up the next morning with the same breathing, no improvement. Meanwhile, I was drinking lots of liquids, gargling with warm water etc to help my throat. I called the Mayo nurse back and she said that its very unusual to breath this way after the surgery, she said that it would be best if an ENT could look down my throat to see what was going on. I called my local ENT whom I have seen before and he was not in that day, his colleague was also not in that day. Really, are you kidding me. I called Mayo back and I asked if they could get me in the next morning and she said yes. I decided to just make the trip back to Mayo since I knew something was wrong. My husband and I were making our arrangements with work, kids, packing etc and as we were heading out we decided to call the Indian Health Hospital and ask if we could get an oxygen tank to take just in case I would need it. They said yes but the Dr wanted to see me first, so we went in and he was concerned something was lodged in my throat but didnt have the (scope) to look down my throat so he wanted me to be transferred to the Regional Hospital in town, reluctantly I agreed, this hospital's ER is notorious for making you wait for hours and not giving good care. The other catch was they had to send me by ambulance across town, the paramedics were very nice and took great care of me. We get to the ER and it is very busy, so busy I have to start out in the hallway, a nurse takes my BP and puts a pulse ox on me, my pulse ox is a 94, so I am getting enough oxygen in, its just really difficult to get it in. So after about an hour in the hallway, another nurse puts me in a room and takes vitals and makes me put on a gown. That is it, for the next 2 hours I see no one! By this time its 3 in the afternoon and I have an appt at Mayo at 8 am the next morning and we live 10 hours from Rochester, this is not looking good. I call for a nurse and ask her when the Dr will be in and she said it still may be a while, we explained the situation about us getting to Mayo and we asked if we could just check ourselves out and get on the road. She said that would be against medical advice but she understood and she said she would do the same. She explained to the Dr (whom never did come see me) and he said it wouldn't actually be against medical advice because he never saw me to give me any medical advice! The reason this may be a concern is because I guess insurance doesn't have to pay if you leave without getting help, well they didn't do a damn thing anyway! So we left right away and were on the road to Rochester, we get to Rochester at 2 am. Got to our hotel and were up ready for my appt at 8 am. I got in the shower and while in the shower I had to cough and panicked because I really couldn't breath, I could tell that something was lodged and I stayed calm and tried to cough it up. After about thirty seconds of trying and thinking to myself, run out and get Bret to help you, I coughed up a large piece of bloody phlegm. It was about 1/2 inch long and was pretty congeled. Oddly, after I got it out I could breath just fine! I went out of the bathroom and showed my husband and he couldnt beleive how well I could breath. We went off to my appt and within two minutes of going into the room at Mayo the Dr had the scope with camera down my throat. My throat looked great, the peice I coughed up had been lodged in my airway for 3 days and now it was gone and it looked great, with just a little inflammation left. We were done with my appt in 20 mins and were done at Mayo. So the moral of my story is this: if my local hospital would have just taken the time to look down my throat I would never had to take a flying trip to Mayo. Altho, that is why we go to large specialty clinics because that's where we get the best care.
It has been quite a week and I had all kinds of thoughts running through my mind, like do I need to go back to surgery, did it not work will I need a trach now etc. It was stressful but Im glad to be home and breathing well. Jodi