It had been raining most of the day and our daughter had gotten her shoes pretty wet. Soaking wet. My doctor had prescribed antibiotics for my cough. She had done x-rays and felt my lungs were clear, but gave me the antibiotics to fight anything that could turn into pneumonia. These would be my second round of antibiotics in as many weeks. The pharmacy called and said they were ready for pick-up.
It was 6:30pm and we thought we’d kill two birds with one stone. Get my prescription and get our daughter some rain boots. What could go wrong?
The pharmacy has a drive-through window so we decided to use that even though the line was long, about 8-cars. Better to be warm and dry in the car than risk me getting worse. We were waiting in line for about 15 minutes, just waiting, hanging out in the car. Our daughter was reading a book and my wife and I were on our phones (the American way to socialize :D).
At this point we were the 4th car in line when we began to move again. My wife put the car in drive and moved forward, then came to a stop. Once she stopped she put the car in park and turned it off and we went back to socializing. That’s when we felt the bump from the rear. Out of nowhere, we’d been rear-ended. My wife and I got out of the car to see the damage. I was so tired and sick I considered, for 1 second, to just ignore it. Maybe it was a dream or I was having a syncope.
An SUV’s front bumper was mated to our rear. Yay, now I got to deal with this. I asked the driver to back up. He was super apologetic. I knew it was an accident and just wanted to check the damage, exchange insurance information and get back in the car. The faster the first two could happen, the better for me.
The driver backed up his vehicle and thankfully our bumper looked OK (there is a God). I walked over to the driver who was still apologizing but not getting out of the car. Why aren’t you getting out of the car? I’m out of my car and I’m dying, the least you can do is get out of your car and see what happened. He could not get out of the SUV because he was in a wheelchair. He had made a small mistake with the hand-brake and could not stop quickly enough. A true accident.
We exchanged insurance information and we returned to our car. At least the damage looked minimal and soon I’d get my antibiotics. To me, those were more important than anything else. Within 10 min we were through the line and on our way to get the rain boots.
I waited in the car as the girls went to the store and took the first dose of the prescription. I wanted those suckers to get to work as soon as possible. Within minutes they were back and we were driving back home.
At home I made dinner and noted my neck felt itchy. No big deal, I carried on. By 8pm we were done eating and my head felt like it on fire and my face felt like I had small bugs on it. I was going to take a shower to cool off. I just wanted to go to sleep and let the day end. That’s when my wife said, “You have hives all over your face. You are having an allergic reaction”.
Within minutes she was on the phone with the pharmacist who told her that an allergic reaction to the antibiotics was very dangerous and I needed to make my way to the ER. It was 8pm, I was feeling like I was on fire, I was super tired and looking forward to sleep and now I had to wait. My stupid pertussis was going to continue to find ways to steal my sleep and our sanity.
As we got ready to go to the ER, my wife gave me some benadryl. She is pretty smart and knew this would help with the hives. We made our way to the ER and waited to be called. The nurse asked a bunch of questions and admitted me. I was given more medicine and a small amount of adrenaline, observed for 30 minutes and sent home. It turns out, not surprisingly, that my taking the benadryl had helped me a bunch.
By the time we were back home it was close to 11pm. I felt thankful to live in a country where one could go into the ER in the evening, get seen, treated and be done within a couple of hours. We’ve lived elsewhere in the world and this would have taken considerably longer.
All the medicine they gave me to counteract the allergic reaction kept me up all night and it fed coughing fits. I had no syncopes, but I hardly slept. But after today, there was to be some light at the end of the tunnel. It may not have been shinning, but it was there to give me hope. In part 4 I’ll share with you the ups and downs of recovery.
