Down but not out

“When you're sick, nobody takes care of you like your mom.”

—Trisha Yearwood

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

I LANDED in, of all places, the Elmhurst Hospital Center on Wednesday (October 21) and became Patient No. 48157146 in the emergency room.

I was right there in the area where hundreds of COVID-19 patients died when Elmhurst became the “center of the center” in the New York State from March to April 2020, the height of the pandemic’s murderous binge in the United States, especially in New York.

The emergency room, the busiest area in the 545-bed mammoth edifice, was where cadavers of COVID-19 patients overflowed, a shocking episode that placed the Elmhurst neighborhood in the borough of Queens on the map seven months ago.

The hospital, located in Northwest Queens, and predominantly serves neighborhoods in northwest, west-central, and western Queens, mostly the area west of Interstate 678 and north of Atlantic Avenue, except for Middle Village, Rego Park, Forest Hills, and Kew Gardens, is only 15 minutes away by walk from our apartment.

When the pandemic spread to the New York City area in March this year, available beds were quickly filled up and patients without COVID-19 were transferred to other facilities. 

During the pandemic, it was reported that 13 people died in a single day, including at least one who died while waiting for a bed.

 

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I suffered a difficulty in breathing or shortness of breath, which is normally associated with asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, pneumothorax, anemia, lung cancer, inhalation injury, pulmonary embolism, anxiety, COPD, high altitude with lower oxygen levels, congestive heart failure, arrhythmia, allergic reaction, anaphylaxis, subglottic stenosis, interstitial lung disease.

Interestingly, I have none of these pre-existing conditions; I have a clean bill of health, so to speak, and was never hospitalized in my entire life.

I have never been diagnosed with any life-threatening disease or just a simple ailment that requires hospitalization.

I’m no heavy drinker and a non-smoker. 

I started to feel uncomfortable a day before I decided to walk inside the hospital emergency room for treatment. 

This was after I inhaled a suspected Clorox and Lysol while inside a closed bathroom in Manhattan for almost 15 minutes. 

 

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While cleaning the bathroom, I used disinfectants, among them Clorox and Lysol, suspected to be carrying powerful chemicals. 

I must have inhaled a large amount of chemicals.

After several minutes, when I was already outside the bathroom, I felt nauseous and experienced dizziness; my breathing became difficult. 

Inhaling a large quantity and injecting bleach or highly concentrated rubbing alcohol “causes massive organ damage and the blood cells in the body to basically burst,” Dr. Diane P. Calello, the medical director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System, said in an interview by the New York Times on April 24. “It can definitely be a fatal event.”

Shortness of breath has many causes affecting either the breathing passages and lungs or the heart or blood vessels, according to medical author, Dr. William C. Shiel Jr.

An average 150-pound (70 kilogram) adult will breathe at an average rate of 14 breaths per minute at rest. 

Excessively rapid breathing is referred to as hyperventilation. Shortness of breath is also referred to as dyspnea.

Dr. Shiel Jr. stressed that doctors will further classify dyspnea as either occurring at rest or being associated with activity, exertion, or exercise. They will also want to know if the dyspnea occurs gradually or all of a sudden. Each of these symptoms help to detect the precise cause of the shortness of breath, explained the medical author.

Meanwhile, other causes of shortness of breath include also obesity, tuberculosis, epiglottitis, emphysema, pulmonary fibrosis, pulmonary artery hypertension, pleurisy, croup, polymyositis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, sarcoidosis, rib fracture, carbon monoxide poisoning, and aerobic exercise, according to Dr. Shiel Jr.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two dailies in Iloilo)