poison
A few weeks back, I nearly died.
I don’t mean this in any figurative sense. I. Nearly. Died.
I didn’t write about it close to the event, because it felt a bit glib to do so at the time. But now that we’re a few weeks out, I’m more of the mindset that “all’s well that ends well.” What’s more, I experienced something I don’t believe would have been possible had it not been for my visit to death’s door and back.
If you’re a regular here, you know that I experienced some prolonged and progressively worsening health issues over the course of a year and a half, from spring of 2015 until late 2016 — a situation that mystified specialists until I realized around Christmas time that I’d been severely overdosing on zinc of all things. That day, I cut zinc entirely. I even replaced my daily multi-vitamin with one that contained no zinc or other minerals. Within two weeks, all symptoms that had been plaguing me for so long subsided.
As fate would have it, my doctor decided to take a blood test before re-upping my regular thyroid meds — a dose that hasn’t changed in eighteen years. My research on the zinc situation had revealed that, along with everything else, too much zinc interferes with the uptake of thyroid meds. I had a feeling the test would come back wrong. It did. I suggested that we simply wait a few weeks for the excess zinc to be out of my system and then do another blood test. The doctor, however, decided that I was “way overdosed” on the thyroid medication — that after eighteen years, my thyroid must’ve started working again somehow, putting out some amount of its own hormone.
*sigh *
He cut the dose by 20%.
And within just a few days, I was so tired, lethargic and unable to focus that basic daily living became a struggle.
I began drinking bottles of 5-Hour Energy regularly, and even started into Red Bull for the first time in my life … just to stay conscious. And of course, that created its own set of problems.
While picking up my next refill of the lowered dose of thyroid meds at the pharmacy, I happened down an aisle that offered supplements claiming to boost metabolism and provide “natural energy.”
Anything had to be better than continually feeling that I was just waking up from anesthesia, or having the all-over body buzz and subsequent crash cycle caused by all the energy drinks.
I’d be willing to bet that you see where all of this is going …
I grabbed the black-and-gold box from the shelf and had the pharmacist ring it in with my regular prescription. Nary a word did she say by way of warning about the product as she punched it into her computer and I swiped my card. Nope. She sent me off with a smile and a “Have a good day.” And that was that.
Once home, I opened the box, read the directions and shook out the first of the magical pills that would surely finally solve my energy problems: two large, oval pills.
Black.
Yes, I know. Why wasn’t the fact that they were black my first clue that, perhaps, I shouldn’t take them?
I suppose I can only fall back on the fact that we all do stupid things sometimes in moments of desperation. And I was desperate.
Down the hatch they went with a few gulps of cold water. All there was to do now was to wait for that burst of natural energy to hit.
Within five minutes, I felt hot.
Within seven, my skin felt like the worst sunburn I’d ever had as a kid, especially my face.
Eight and I felt like my face was … swelling?
I went to the bathroom to see if there was any actual outward sign of what I was feeling.
The mirror showed that I was turning plum purple. The blood vessels in my eyes were breaking. I felt like I was on fire.
A moment later, my vision grayed as I felt hands around my throat choking me. This was what it must be like to be hanged.
Then my vision blacked out completely.
I tried to use Siri to call my mother. I couldn’t talk. My tongue was thick in my mouth. I couldn’t get a breath.
I was surprisingly calm, all the while thinking, I think I am going to die today. I never picture it being this way.
I knew the neighbor had left. No one was home downstairs.
I did my best to guess the buttons that would open the phone dialing screen and dialed 9-1-1.
I stumbled, sightless, to the kitchen and opened the freezer, snatching out every ice pack I had.
I lay on the couch, suffocating. I’d practiced my whole life holding my breath for as long as I could, since I have asthma, being able to function long enough to get to an inhaler … if I had to. But an inhaler wouldn’t solve this.
I packed my face and throat in ice.
I felt beside me on the coffee table for a pen and started to dismantle it. I’d read in a book somewhere about how to do an emergency tracheotomy. But could I actually go through with it? And on myself?
Just as my ears started ringing and my head and lungs felt they would explode, I eked in the first air in … I don’t know how long it had been. Not long enough to die, it would seem.
Slowly, the ice started to have an effect.
Perhaps fifteen minutes later, my vision returned, foggy at first, then clearing.
I was shaking terribly. But as you’ve likely deduced, I lived. Somehow.
I later realized that I’d dialed #-1-1. Close but no cigar, as they say. That explained why no one had come to the rescue.
I called my mother, a lifelong nurse. As I had suspected: anaphylactic reaction. She quickly researched the supplement and — lo and behold — there were scads of reviews from other users who’d had the same reaction or similar.
What an idiot, I scolded myself once more. The pills were pitch black, for crying out loud.
But once the crisis had passed, do you know what else I realized?
As I had lain there, faced with the very real possibility that I wouldn’t make it — that this was it for me — my life didn’t flash before my eyes. I didn’t think of all the people I hadn’t told what I’d meant to tell them, or the ones to whom I said things I shouldn’t have.
I wouldn’t say I was peaceful. I was as calm as I suppose anyone could be while still trying to think rationally about a plan to survive.
Dying is no fun. But what I realized in retrospect is that I had no regrets. I’d managed to poison my body in a rash moment — but across a lifetime thus far, I apparently hadn’t poisoned my soul.
So I lived. I’m rather happy about that.
But it occurred to me that perhaps the greater goal isn’t simply to live, but to live without regret.
It does realign and reaffirm the real priorities. I wasn’t much better last year after a bad reaction to multiple spider bites and a very much worse one to the meds the hospital gave me for that. For several days, I hovered. The attention demanded by the body meant there was no space to regret what I had or had not done. My one regret during those days was that I was alone and there was no-one there to hold me… a purely selfish feeling… as my choices to care for my son keep me hundreds of miles away from the man who would have done so. But that choice is not one I regret.
Oh, wow, Sue. Spider bites — and not just one!
I hardly know what to say about the rest other than that your real life is more “story-worthy” than many made-up stories that make it to print. I’m just sorry you couldn’t have both loves. But you know me well enough by now to know that “You always have a choice” doesn’t mean we get every choice we might like. As hard as that one was to make, you of course chose well.
Considering British spiders don’t do that as a rule, it was a bit of bad luck meeting one that did 🙂
Yes, there are always choices… and not always easy ones, but I do have both loves… and a lot of long drives north. Which is fine.. I love driving and love the north 🙂
Yay! So happy to know that, Sue! Perhaps not the way you’d imagined, but life rarely matches the fantasies we at first create in our minds.
That’s part of the advenure 🙂
When my father passed away last year, it was not as sad as it could have been, for that same reason. I took the time over the previous months to make sure that nothing was unsaid, any feelings were resolved between us. [note: that didn’t mean we agreed on everything and apologized, just meant it was out in the open]
No regrets is a good place to be.
Thanks for reading and jumping in, Rod. I think the comments people like you share are just as important as the post. My words can only go so far, and your words will reach specific people mine alone may not have.
Goodness, Erik, You push me into mother-mode, and I just want to shake some sense into you (in a gentle way, of course). For someone who works out and takes good care of himself, stop putting all that stuff in your body, my friend. Eat nature’s foods, a wide variety of colors, all in moderation, plenty of veggies, and lay off the gimmicks. And if you can’t pronounce everything in the ingredients, skip it. Yeesh. Though I’m delighted that you had no regrets on your death bed, I’m glad you’re still with the living and let’s keep it that way.
That’s my rant. I couldn’t help it, and no regrets (giggling). Take care, my friend.
I don’t mind extra motherly care. Thanks, Diana. 😉
Believe me: I’ve researched and tried all kinds of foods for energy. When you don’t have enough thyroid hormone, it really is like being drugged. The closest I can compare it is that feeling about two minutes after starting to wake up from anesthesia: foggy, loopy, unable to focus, eyes rolling every 30 seconds, a feeling like something is pulling your skull backward. And my PCP cut my standard dose by 20%, despite the info from Mayo Clinic I gave him, which states that zinc overdose inhibits thyroid hormone uptake (thus causing false readings, because the meds stay concentrated in the bloodstream while not being absorbed by the actual body where it’s needed). I don’t even think he read the material, because he shrugged it off every time I asked. I more or less demanded to see an endocrinologist, and he finally capitulated — though apparently, the soonest I can get in anywhere is late fall! I just knew I couldn’t continue on that long feeling this way. But … as the post points out, I almost didn’t continue on feeling any way at all!
Somehow, it’ll all get sorted eventually. I have to keep believing that much.
I know. I just want you to be careful with supplements and stay away from those energy drinks and pills. For some people, they are fatal. I think you need a new PCP if he’s such a poor listener. There, enough of my best advice so far. 😀 I’ll stop nagging.
I agree with Diana: Scale back dramatically on the supplements, and only see an endocrinologist for your annual thyroid check. Thyroids are so sensitive, you want a specialist monitoring yours from year to year. Talk to him about everything you’re on — Rx and over-the-counter — and get his opinion on what you really need, and what you’d be better off without.
I had the same doctor from childhood until just a few years back. He knew me inside and out, knew my entire chronology. He’d see me the day I called no matter what, even if it meant house visits. So changing to a new PCP was really hard. I really do think I’m going to need to change and look around. I don’t expect a new person to know what a doctor of 40 years knows; but the whole office seems to be in continual disarray, with the right hand never quite knowing what the left is doing.
Thanks for backing me up, Sean. You are less naggy than I am. 😀
It’s all done out of love!
Living without regret is good. Know what’s better? Living an additional forty years!
I’m a supplement guy, too, but, yeah — you gotta do your research on those things before you wash ’em down. (Not that you don’t know that.) Sometimes I think about tossing them all in the garbage and seeing if my life — and health — would really be adversely impacted without them…
Glad you’re feeling better, buddy. Do me a favor: Keep your body as pure as your soul, and live to laugh about these days for a long time to come…
I’m generally not one to think or believe a supplement will make a huge change in anything. In fact, I think I’m more skeptical than most as a general rule. But like I say, I was fairly desperate.
It’s a joke among friends, that I’m the sickest healthy guy they know (or the healthiest sick one).
My God! I’m so glad you recovered, Erik… What an awful experience it must of been. I too suffer from thyroid problems so I can relate there and one can even die from an overdose of thyroid medication, but these other pills you took are way beyond any experience I’ve ever had. You must be really fit to have pulled through that!
Hi, Kev! Funny, I was just reading Diana’s post on interesting finds in her SPAM folder, so I thought I’d check to see what might be in my own … and there you were! Who knows how WP makes these decisions. I wonder if it was the word “medication” (which tends to be a high-frequency word in SPAM ads).
Most people don’t realize that the tiny amount of thyroid hormone our bodies produce is like the oil that runs the whole vehicle. It really effects everything, from energy and focus to digestion to skin and hair health. But you know this! As of this moment, I feel great! So if I can only figure out how to keep it this way, I’ll be golden!
Thanks for your concern, Kev. 🙂
Lately I’ve been ending up in just about everyone’s spam folder it seems and have to check my own regularly. Most of what I find really is spam, and of the worst kind and I’m thankful to WordPress for screening them, but I also find a mixture of my regular visitors in there from time to time… go figure. I have no idea how what criteria they use in these cases.
Glad you’re feeling much better, Erik… Let’s keep it golden! Btw Congrats are in order… Your book is my latest, Book of the Month choice! 😀
Kev, you are full of surprises. Thank you so much for the kindness and support! (I will have to speak firmly with WP about putting you in the SPAM folder again in the future.)
Lol… Good luck with WP! 😀
My heart felt the constriction as I read your adventure with death!
Erik, your near death experience is no less riveting than a fictional story and I kept jumping the lines to read all would be well…to calm my nerves.
Self-medication is extremely detrimental, we all know it yet get carried away by our better sense. Please take care Erik, you are a lucky guy though. Stay blessed!
Thanks, Balroop. It’s nothing I want to repeat anytime soon.
And often, I find, our real lives are more compelling stories than fictional plots!
How true! All fiction originates somewhere and is inspired from real lives. 🙂
I’m glad I didn’t get to this post until now, because if I read it sooner, I’d find out where you live and come knocking on your door – perhaps with Diana in hand (she could make a quick cross country flight) and we’d both knock some sense in you. That was TOO scary for us, and we WOULD have regrets that you took the black pill. Okay, I’m breathing in here. I take a small dose thyroid pill every day also. I began years ago, when no matter how little I ate and how much I exercised, I didn’t lose weight, AND my energy was as low as a snake. My guy said to me, “have your doctor check your thyroid level.” (To this day I don’t know what made him think of it – he’s an engineer for heaven’s sake). Anyway, my small town doc at the time was happy to do the blood test. I was on ‘borderline,’ but he explained that the thyroid level needs are different for each individual – the ‘borderline’ is just a guess. So he put me on the small dose and it’s been wonderful for 15 years. Soooo, I agree with others (above) – get a new doctor!
Now, no regrets. Yes, that was a wonderful lesson to learn, but I’m not surprised. You live your life (except for pharmacy visits) with a clear and beautiful heart.
Hi, Pam! Soon, I’m going to write about my stolen wallet incident of last week. I so appreciated your own story in that vein; and though mine didn’t work out quite so nicely, I did think of your own story and remember the many good and kindhearted people out there.
No more black pills, promise! And thanks for your concern. I need a good butt-kicking every so often.
And, while I do try to live life with a “clear and beautiful heart,” I have to work at it just like everyone else. Practice makes … less imperfect. 😉
Yes, practice makes a little less imperfect. But truly, our hearts (spirit/soul) are quite beautiful. We just need to let them shine… Yours shine in your writing, for sure.
Just seeing this, Pam. Thanks for the kind words. 🙂