Looking Back at the Worst Screw-up of My Life

Rhabdomyolysis (What happened to me):

A breakdown of skeletal muscle tissue due to direct or indirect muscle injury. If not treated immediately, it can lead to kidney damage. Treated by pumping a great deal of water into you with an I.V. and making sure you also drink a great deal of fluids.

🅐May be dangerous or life threatening.
🅑Very rare (Fewer than 1,000 cases per year in Canada).
🅒Treatable by a medical professional.
🅓Often requires lab test or imaging.
🅔Can last several days or weeks.
🅕Family history may increase likelihood.

I have been treated for heart failure for years now, and with it comes edema (fluid retention), and this can be life threatening - so the treatment I received has a very small chance of killing me. This was the worst case of edema I had ever had to date (caused by the treatment). If I was not admitted to the hospital and treated there would have been more damage to my muscles and possibly damage to my kidneys as well - maybe even kill me.

It was caused when I fell after getting blackout drunk and hurting myself. I ended up on the floor for 7 hours (or about) and it aggravated the condition to a dangerous level. I ended up having noticeable loss of strength in my legs and my left hand. At first I would hardly get out of a chair on my own, and by the end of the day, needed help getting into bed, as I could not lift my legs enough. Lucky for me, the strength came back enough to get into bed myself by the end of my hospital stay.

I have been given exercises for my legs and have been doing them twice a day, as well as walking the hall twice a day. I have not tried in a few days, but I was not able to lift my legs into the tub, but I think I probably can manage it now - so a shower will be much appreciated. Sponge baths in the sink just are not as cleansing as a shower to day the least. In hospital I was using these towelettes they gave me to clean myself with - I did not like them, but it was better than not being clean.

This is a bit of a struggle so far, as I still have pain in my right side of my ribs, and my left wrist is rather painful when I hold my phone - there is also a dull ache in my left wrist all the time. I don't know how long the wrist will take, but the ribs are noticeably less painful than when I was in hospital.

I managed to hurt the hell out of my back the first day in hospital as I got up from the x-ray table. That is just my luck, to injure myself in a hospital of all places LOL. The back pain lasted about 2 weeks then faded out to it's normal level of slight pain (I've had a slight pain in my back for over 20 years).

What I can take out of this is bloody well never drink any booze ever again, no matter how little. I obviously can't be trusted to not drink too much, so there is no way I should ever try. The last episode was me falling off the wagon, and thinking "I can handle it", when the reality is, I should have known I just cannot handle it.

To be honest, other than a craving a few days after being out of hospital, I don't desire it at all right now. I am just trying to get back to at least how I was before I had this happen to me. I want to keep up with the exercises so I don't lose mobility in the future and to try and gain more strength in my legs than I had before.

Every day gets a bit more easy than the one before, and I am on the mend. I got lucky to say the least. I am on blood thinners and if I had hit my head, I may have ended up neurologically impaired from bleeding on the brain.

Someone asked me (a friend) if I was embarrassed that a female paramedic saved me that morning after the fall, I have to say no, not at all - it will be a frosty day in hell when I am embarrassed by being seen nude (and I was nude). What embarrassed me is the fact I knew better and decided to drink anyway - even though all my friends told me to never do that again, and I saw how it messed up my brothers life and knew how dangerous it was for me.

The back story here is, I ended up on the floor all night and for several hours after I woke up, I was calling for help. I managed to drag myself into the hall by my door, but I could not for the life of me get up off the floor by myself. The paramedics needed to use a device that inflates to get me standing. I damaged my right ribs, my right shin by the knee has a big carpet burn, my left wrist was fractured, I ended up with loss of muscle tissue and had to be hospitalized to not have it worse than it was. All in all, this is the biggest screw-up of my entire life.

I am deeply thankful for the person who read me calling for help and called an ambulance for me. It's not like the people on either side of me heard me yelling help for hours - or they just did not care to get involved - I will never know either way. I will feel lucky to have every day I have left from now on as well.

That is about it, all there is now, is to get stronger and to keep the hell away from alcohol for the rest of my life.