“If Amanda got her leg lopped off, she’d be insisting she could bandage it herself rather than go there.”

That sounds too familiar. Glad someone persuaded you to go in. In a way, I like that my husband seems to consider it more respectful not to push (especially with the PTSD), but, yeah, sometimes that really is necessary.

They’ve apparently found that bipaps work better than oxygen for certain applications with people with asthma. And since I have other things that can impair breathing, the machine can really help me take deeper breaths. At one point during this recent illness, just turning on the bipap made my oxygen level go from 93 to 99 very quickly.

You mentioned flooding and tornado watches in an email list………..yep that’s happened here too. Not too far down from you.

What is a bipap? I’ve heard of a c-pap………..my significant other uses one because he has sleep apnea. Never heard of bipap before……..

Can you tolerate cranberry juice? That’s good for warding off UTI’s………..if you can’t stand the taste of cranberries there are red tablets……….I cannot remember what they are called……….basically they do the same thing. cranberry essence in a tablet form you can swallow.

I also find that I feel like crap when I don’t drink enough water.

As for that instinct, thank goodness it is there and that you have learned from it and continue to hone it. I have always thought the more we trust in our instincts the stronger they become. They aren’t tangible so initially I think they get questioned but after such dramatic events as you have had and I know you have come close to death more then once, you pay attention. At some point you never 2nd guess them again. They become like a trusted confidante with specialized knwoledge.

When you don’t have good body awareness I wonder if there is some sort of flow chart type check sheet that can be instituted on a daily basis to take the place of such awareness. This before the situation becomes so dire that instinct jumps in and gets your attention sometimes at the 11th hour. I think of this similar to a diabetic checking their feet every day to make sure they are ok since they may not be able to sense a cut or problem. While I don’t have diabetes I do have a sensory neuropathy that prevents me from feeling certain things in my legs and feet. Yesterday I walked by some thorns and later happened to look at my leg and see blood flowing downward in two spots. I didn’t feel a thing. If I had a knowledge that I should look at exposed legs after walking through a thorny patch…just in case a problem developed…I would have caught it sooner. I am still learning how to live with this new development intelligently.

Adaption is so important.

From that perspective it is probably a good thing that I’m not aware of having any instinct like that.

I remember the first time I ever noticed it, first couple times, I didn’t know what it was saying. I’d keep thinking about death a lot. Not in a morbid or suicidal way. The topic just kept intruding on my consciousness. Then I started to notice I’d be “keep thinking about death a lot” just before a major medical crisis. Then I started learning the feel of it even without the thoughts of death.  Another time, I just randomly blurted out to someone “I’m going to die” with no thoughts attached, like no intent before saying it. Then I collapsed, started shaking, and started throwing up in pretty rapid succession.  The person fortunately took this seriously and called an ambulance.  By the time I got to the hospital I was delirious, my liver was doing weird things, and I felt alternately boiling hot and freezing cold. 

And I think as time went on it became easier to detect this instinct being activated before things went quite so totally haywire. Not always too much before, but before. 

The most frustrating one was with bronchiectasis. Because I knew something was going wrong that could kill me, but had very few leads on what it could be. I’d had a lot of lung problems going on but everything we tested kept coming up negative or not positive enough to be a problem. Then they did a CT scan and found it and got me under treatment, and it was like… I went from every breath being a conscious effort to breathing back in the background again. But that whole time, I had that knowledge something was wrong and not a clue what to do or even where to look.

So I think you’re right that it’s evolved from necessity. But I also think it’s been there since long before I could recognize what it meant, in the form of feelings or thoughts “out of nowhere”. 

I definitely wouldn’t want to be in the situation needing medical help and not being able to communicate things, though I imagine that situation would trigger all the things that make it hard to communicate. Your lucky to have a friend who’s willing to help you navigate stuff like this when you can’t, though I guess even that won’t help when people just don’t want to listen.

Echoing 403 too- I hope your physiology is back in business quickly.