8 Years Old With Partial Pneumathorax

I was 8 years old when the first reaction to an allergen triggered childhood asthma. To the Children's Hospital, I went. Back then, they used adrenaline from horses' adrenal glands; it worked! However, because it was seasonal, I could go swimming in a Natatorium and participate in track indoors. I had a sensitivity to ragweed, pollen, trees, grass, and dust, except my parents hadn't gotten that information yet.

My first severe childhood asthma attack

That fall brought a repeat syndrome, except for an addition. This time, a sneeze was the enemy. I sneezed and afterwards I couldn't breathe. I tapped on the wall to my parents' room, and my dad came in. He thought it could pass. Three days later, my oldest sister came to my room to talk to me, but what I said back made no sense! Away she flew down the stairs. I heard her, but each step, then she came back, my mom in tow.

My mom asked a few questions, and next, I was being dressed. I had to make it down the stairs and then to the yellow van at the curb in front of my house, but I didn't know if I could make it that far! Neighbors were looking at me, and some of the kids I used to play with knew something was really wrong, and that van looked so far away! I'm in the cab, but I can't sit. I have half cocked myself down so I can hold on to the front seat and hang onto the strap above the window to pull myself up.

The end of Euclid to Wabash. Go left on Wabash, and you can see the Hospital. It was past the light at W. Market and another at West Exchange, and then up the ramp to the ER. I started to try to get out, but the cab driver ran inside for a nurse and a wheelchair. My dad went inside, and the nurse hurried me to a room. I smelled alcohol, and I heard that metallic sound when the injection was coming, but this time I was afraid!

They got the adrenaline in, and then another, and then after the 3rd injection, I could breathe again. Three doctors had been in and nurses galore. I had an X-ray, and then I tried a new approach: Coca-Cola Syrup. I vomited a lot of phlegm. There was so much that it clogged up the sink. I had what felt like Rice Crispies under my skin on both sides of my neck.

The ordeal of the oxygen tent and a mysterious recovery

I was a sick kid, but I didn't know. I had needles with lines in both arms, and they were taped to a board. I had needles and lines going into my feet, and I was placed flat on my back under an oxygen tent. I grew to HATE that thing. The nurses had to pour buckets of ice in the back, and the condensation from the ice made my bed and PJs wet in the back. I was a "slurpy".

Every 3 hours, it seemed, I had to be dried and changed, and my room was tight in front of the nurses' station. If I turned my head their way, I was being "gloomed" at. I could hear the constant blow of cold air into the tent, and when it sounded like a gurgle, I knew to tell the nurse the oxygen tent needed more ice.

About 2:00 AM that Wednesday, it was dark, and suddenly I could feel myself sinking. I thought it was because of the needles and lines, the doctors came in and stuck them into my veins at my temple on both sides, but I was sinking into the mattress, and I knew I was going to sink to the floor. Then, a nurse came in, sat by my bedside, zipped down the side of my oxygen tent, and blew over the metal spoon with a yellow content, placing the essence in my mouth. I swallowed the best chicken soup. As fast as I swallowed, she spooned in another. I could feel each spoonful go past my lungs, but it inflated them, and it warmed my back; my sinking body came back. She repeated the exact same behavior until the bowl was empty, and she got up and left. Every night for 3 nights, she came and did exactly the same!

Steps toward recovery

That Friday or Saturday, the doctors came in and removed the needles from my temples and from my feet. They shut off the O2 tent and pulled back the plastic. The nurse pulled away the metallic overhead bars that made up the tent. The doctor was taking the needle out of each arm, one by one, and then he unraveled the tape and bandages from my arms. Then he said, "Lift your arms." I tried, but they couldn't go. He repeated the command 2 more times with the same results.

Then he picked up my right arm and dropped it on my chest and that gave me great pain and it pissed me off because my hand smacked my lip; it made it bleed. Then he walked around the bed to the other arm and did the same thing. This time, he was more careful. Then he said, "Ok, I'm going to sit you up, ok?" I never answered anything he asked! I was an 8-year-old kid who did not know what happened to me and why I was such a "pssh psssh" patient. Nothing was said aloud. Everything was secret, so I didn't answer any questions.

So, he pulled me to sit. The first time I sat up in weeks, at home and in the hospital. I finally could say "Hi" and "Thank you" to the kid in the bed next to me for telling the nurses, "You need to get that nurse call tube out from under the O2 tent." The minute he had done that, I could see in my mind that entire tent ablaze. It wasn't. The white boy saved us all, including himself, a whole lot of grief. The doctor didn't know. He smiled at the little white boy—the doctor was white too—who now orders me to "swing my body around!" You know they do that to raise your blood pressure. He HAD to know I couldn't move my legs. See, that's why you always need somebody with your kids. I mean, this was back in the 1960s, but now a rehabilitation therapist would have done this.

Overcoming the severity of childhood asthma

So he grabs my legs and the little white boy is looking right at him, so he stops with the rough handling and he supports my hip and swings my legs over easily the edge of the hospital bed and says, "I'm going to let you catch your breath and then I want you to stand up. You do not have to walk. Just see if you can stand." I'm just an 8-year-old kid! I'm not sure if I can do anything. Over the last 5 days, you've had me under a contraption. A week before that, I lay on my bed at home and was out of my head. You ask a kid, "Can you stand up?" I don't know, and I'm afraid to try. What if my legs do what my arms did? But I slid off my bed and felt the floor push back, and as I pushed back, I stood!! I stood alone for the first time in weeks, and I could breathe normally.

I wasn't hungry. I hadn't eaten in GOD knows when. I sat back down on the bed and pinched the back of my hand, holding it for a minute, but the skin relaxed and returned to its normal state. In the ER, when I arrived, nurses were taking turns demonstrating what dehydration looks like. I learned too. You pinch up the skin, let go, and it stays raised all by itself. I wanted to walk to the bathroom, and they let me. Then back to my bed, and in came my lunch tray. A solid liquid diet. I ate the Jell-O, and the Broth was okay, but not as good as the broth the nurse brought every night. The kid next to me had double pneumonia. We got along like brothers and not patients.

The mysterious night nurse

Even when his parents came, they greeted me and sat around his bed, their backs to me, of course. However, their kid was their attraction, and they never pulled that curtain, nor did they allow the nurses to do so. I wondered what the kids in my neighborhood were doing. I could get up now and walk to the window and look out. I could walk to the entrance of my doorway and look up and down the hall. I got a smile or 2 from my nurses, and then back to bed.

My dad came to see me every night, but my sisters and my mom never came. I was a bit "high" from the drugs, and I could tell. My roommate at some point, while I was at X-ray or down in inhalation therapy, was no longer there. I wanted to ask, but I didn't. Saturday had come again.

I was watching a Porky Pig cartoon on a farm where a goat was attacking it. Well, to get even with the goat, he put skates on all the goat's hooves and gave him a shove. The goat was a wreck and breaking his neck. Porky Pig grabbed the goat by the tail and slung him again. I started to laugh, and I laughed, and the goat was helpless, running into hay bales and causing the chickens to scatter, their feathers flying, as I laughed.

All of a sudden, the goat started cross-legging in his skates and caught his balance, but Porky was bent over laughing, and the goat was coming. I was laughing so hard that the nurses came from the station just in time to see the goat hit Porky in the rump, and oh, did I laugh! Then, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw my mommie! I wasn't sure, but then I saw a pair of little boys' jeans with the belt already in the pants. I froze for a minute, and then she appeared at the door. It was my mom smiling with my clothes. I could go home now, too.

I got dressed and was ready to go, but I had to wait for a wheelchair. My mother said, "I want you to thank the nurses for caring for you." So they rolled me to the nurses' Station, and I thanked them, saying, "Please tell the nurse that came in every night and fed me chicken broth." They said, "Can you describe her?" I said, "Yes. She was a tall, white lady and very large. She wore a starched white uniform with a nurse's cap, adorned with a black band around the cap. She came every night at 2:00. She was a white lady." But they looked puzzled and looked at my mom, and then one nurse said, "We don't have a white nurse on night shift. Why didn't you tell us?" "Oh. Never mind. It's ok." I had to get beyond that and get out of there.

A later encounter with the angel

I saw her 27 years later when I had 27 feet of submucous impaction in each nostril after having a submucous resection at the Cleveland Clinic. If you accidentally closed your mouth at night while sleeping, you would suffocate. Well, I did that one night, and I got up to go to the bathroom, and the next thing I know, I'm collapsing, bouncing from wall to wall until I hit the floor.

The cardiac patient in the room with the other bed was over me, and he was sweating like crazy! The nurses are taking my blood pressure. I have no idea how long I was out! Anyway, that night she came into the room. I looked, and she put her index finger over her lips! She said, "I only come when you are critical." She said, "You will see me again," and left.

Another childhood asthma attack and a new doctor

Meanwhile, back when I was 8 years old. I turned 9, and I was having another childhood asthma attack. This time, you won't believe this, but this allergist and asthma doctor wanted to see me have an asthma attack. This time, my dad had me walk 7 miles, and the last 3 were uphill to the doctor's office. As soon as the secretary at the desk saw me, I went straight back to a cubicle. This doctor only had wealthy and millionaire patients. If I had been one of their kids, I'd have been brought there by ambulance. The doctor said, "I'm going to give you an injection to help you breathe, but Billy, I don't want to ruin my tests." So he gives me the injection, and a few minutes later, "My stuff's coming up." The injection was a powerful steroid called Kenolog, and it works! Boy! How it works!

The discovery of partial pneumothorax

He takes me into his office, which is really cool. All I see is mahogany and gold tone. He says, "Hop up on the table, I want to listen to your lungs. Then I'm going to prick your back 100 times with needles and inject a substance under your skin." He does, and he leaves my dad and me in that office with the instruction: "DO NOT SCRATCH THE ITCH!" My back did itch in several cases. I could hear him testing patients, and occasionally I'd hear, "Orcky? Yes, Doctor. Get a K2 for Mrs. Marinthrop. Yes, Doctor." And you could hear him see the next patient.

Each cubicle was like a room in the ER. He had 16 of them, 8 on one side and 8 on the other. When he completed 8, 8 more were brought in, and their files were opened to the last visit. It was crazy. Somewhere in the next 7 years, I found that at 8 years old, I had a partial pneumothorax, and the lung had pulled away from the lung wall and rolled up!!! This explained the extreme difficulty breathing and the sensation of sinking during my severe childhood asthma attack, highlighting the critical nature of the medical intervention I received.