I heard a story from a youtuber about how years ago they had a bad reaction to some E-Liquid and then afterwards their health was never the same again. I was wondering if other people have similar stories, not necessarily about E-Liquids but also other things that seem to have changed your health forever.
Having a young family, working a commute away, I became addicted to CocaCola and burned out my pancreas. Hello my friend insulin.
I was having swallowing issues. Food would get stuck from time to time. I wouldn’t choke and could still breathe. My ENT told me it was due to reflux at night causing throat irritation. I didn’t take it super seriously because it didn’t seem like a big issue.
Then in December of 2020, I had something get stuck in my throat during dinner. I figured it was like it had always been and I would just drink some water and get it to swallow. I did…but when I did my throat ruptured and split where it meets the stomach. I ended up with sepsis and spent 50 days in the ICU and 322 days in the hospital. All told I went home 357 days after I left for the ER that night. My stomach was removed and I developed drop foot due to nerve damage, likely during one of my close to 3 dozen operations and now have to walk with an orthotic foot brace.
I had to change the way I eat as I can’t really get enough doing the standard 3 meals a day. I tend to graze small amounts throughout the day. My leg may or may never recover. There’s no real way to tell, it’s all dependent on nerve regrowth which happens pretty slowly. That has impacted playing with my kids, swimming, playing golf, etc.
I’m so sorry, I hope that your recovery exceeds your best case scenario. That’s terrifying and terrible.
Thanks. Fortunately my recovery has been good and it 100% could’ve been worse. The mortality rate for Boerhaaves Syndrome (esophagus rupture) is pretty high for the first 48 hours. Then with the sepsis, I came pretty close to not making it a few times as well.
Even after everything I went through, the drop foot is the thing with the biggest day to day impact for me. And even that is the left foot so I’m still able to drive independently. And if the nerve doesn’t repair and the foot doesn’t recover, I’ve come to terms with it and I’ll get by.
And one positive actually came out of it. I’ve struggled with my weight my whole life and this episode caused me to lose about 180 pounds. I could almost argue that my overall health is actually a little better now than it was before all this.
