So on Friday, 21 August I visited my dentist because I hand some pain in my jaw near some recent crowns. They took some Xrays and didn't see anything wrong, wrote me a couple prescriptions. I don't have a good perception of time for much of this but I think it was the following Monday that my wife found me shivering uncontrollably, weak, and confused. She called EMS and I was taken to the local military hospital. I was in septic shock from an infected wisdom tooth (adjacent to the two teeth that just had crowns). They were not going to treat me and send me home. Many of my organs were in various states of failure.

They didn't have the appropriate experts on staff that night so the decision was to move me to another hospital. It took some time to find one that could treat me and I was life flighted to Centennial Medical Center in Nashville. I think that was my first ride in a helicopter since a flight over Baghdad in a Chinook in '08. The Chinook was roomier but at least I didn't have to carry my own ****. Well, I didn't have any this time anyway.

I was rolled right into ICU, it's rather disconcerting being an above average sized person and being lifted and moved from stretcher to stretcher.

At some point I had to get a panoramic mouth xray and they needed me to be in a wheel chair for that. I still ended up having to stand but from there they wheeled me to oral surgery. Some nurse flipped her **** because I couldn't be in there, presumably due to the septic infection. They explained they just needed to transfer me to a stretcher and get me back to surgery. There was some other poor lady in there groaning in pain but I got the sense she wasn't as bad off as she sounded due to the reaction of the staff.

They rolled me back to surgery and I was soon out like a light. That's when the "fun" began.



I don't have PTSD and, other than an occasional and slightly irrational depression (nothing major, mind you), I'm fairly well adjusted. The vivid, horrifying, and, yes, physically painful hallucinations I went through took me days to recover from. I can see how it could take others much longer.

My labs improved rapidly and they originally wanted to keep for for another day or two at least but I demonstrated my ability to take care of my self, went on several walks around the floor by myself, with my wife, and once or twice with a physical therapist. The day I decided I wanted to be my final day there I got up, got dressed, and stood up for every doctor that entered my room.

I do need to follow up with the oral surgeons, I have this hole running through my chin presumably to help drain the infection. And, as some of you might surmise, my liver numbers are pretty bad. Fortunately I'm not past the point of no return there so lifestyle changes should take care of that.

A few addendum's. When my dentist found nothing wrong I thought it would be a good idea to get COVID tested. I was negative and they re-did it at the ER, still negative. Weighed myself this morning. This whole ordeal took about 20lbs off of me. Might have been less if the hospital food wasn't so bad.

That sucks, man. Of course, since I get weird aching and other odd feelings in my mouth (oi oi) relatively often, this has made me even more paranoid. Boh!

Holy ****. That sounds absolutely dreadful. This kind of stuff can happen so fast and it's super confusing. I wouldn't even know where to begin though if you add hallucinations in the mix. It's cool you're in good enough shape to joke about it, though, which is reassuring. Hopefully you'll recover even more as you get some more rest.

Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO had a bad case of COVID-19 earlier this year. He apparently hallucinated that someone hit him in the head with a brick while shopping in Little Tokyo.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2020-08-31/mark-mothersbaugh-devo-covid-19-coronavirus

That's awful, and to think it starts from a little tooth like that. I'm happy you're alive!

Yikes. Nothing like a surprise prolonged hospital visit! I'm glad you're still with us. Any fun plans on how you'll gain the 20lbs back?

I can't even give any advice here. Sure, my jaw ached but I had no idea what was going on in my mouth, especially after my dentist missed it. I have a follow up on Friday with the oral surgeon and I'm hoping he will offer some perspective on how this could have been missed.



Thank you. The hallucinations were really the most troubling part of it. A friend of mine visited yesterday, he's been near death twice, and he totally understands the hallucinations.



Thank you!



Hell, I just weighed myself and now it's closer to 30 lbs. So, normal fat me is about 264. I just weighed 239. I don't really plan to gain weight back but rather gain the right sort of weight back and hopefully continue to lose fat. I really should be in the 210-220 range unless I start trying to add additional muscle.

Anyway, I still am a little weak to do much exercise other than routine activity and that can wear me out quick.

Once I spent a week in the ICU and was shocked at how fast atrophy sets in. It really ruined Kill Bill for me, because a coma for 4 years would make it utterly impossible to walk or even crawl away without weeks of physical therapy.
If your experience is anything like mine you'll feel more motivated with your new lease on life, which keeps the weight gain down. . . for a while at least.

This is horrifying and terrifying, I'm glad you're getting better.

Being in the hospital sucks at baseline. That hallucination thing sounds horrifying. I hope you keep improving.


If you have a bed with a traction scaffold above it, bat hanging from that scaffold is a good way to motivate the nurses to a doctor to discharge you.

My worse symptom lately is that if I'm out of the house for about an hour or so I end up with a splitting headache. I've theorized that I haven't been eating enough lately and this lack of calorie input is leading me to crash after mild exertion. I developed a plan for today while lying in bed last night. I would go to IHOP for breakfast. I ate most of a rather large omelette with a side of hashbrowns for breakfast. My jaw still hurts abit which makes it less enjoyable to eat. I've got some followup appointments tomorrow that I'm looking forward to.

The reason for the title of this thread was in case anyone had things going on in their life they wanted to discuss. I do recall that some people had some family issues as well as income issue due to the pandemic.

Last week I had a follow up with the oral surgeon that worked on me and he was stunned to see my condition. Something I didn't really know until just before that appointment was that I wasn't doing well the night after surgery at all. I'm certain that some of the troubling hallucinations I was having were visualizations of the breathing difficulties I was experiencing. Anyway, he was stunned to see how well I was doing, relatively speaking.

I have to work on jaw flexibility. I can probably only open my mouth about half of normal right now. Jaw flexibility just also happens to not be a particularly fun thing to work on.

I'm still around 235 lbs compared to about 264 a few weeks ago. I've been sleeping during the day most days but I slept in this morning to give me a shorter overall day. That's more realistic with my work schedule anyway and I plan to head back to work Monday. My work hours are 2:30 PM to 9:00 PM.

I've had zero interest in drinking lately although I did share some non-alcoholic beers with a friend of mine. Funny, I've got a full bottle of Jim Beam in the cupboard. I don't think one has ever lasted this long in my house before! I'm glad. Wouldn't bother me a bit if I've permanently lost my taste for it.

Wookie, that all sounds really rough, and please forgive me for rushing through that to get to the levity bit but the reason I can tell things are really bad is that you went so far as to drink nonalcoholic beer. I wish you a swift recovery.

LOL, I don't remember if I mentioned my friend above or not but I have a friend that is a double above the knee amputee from Iraq in '03. I didn't know him then, just the past couple years, but on top of those terrible injuries he was nearly killed last December in a motorcycle accident. He came to visit and he's not drinking now either and I think he had recently mentioned the NA beer to me so I had it in my head and he came to visit me a couple weeks back, after I got home, so I picked up a couple six packs. Still have some. Shocked that 0.0% Heineken was over $9 a six pack...

No surprise there, all the extra manufacturing effort to remove the alcohol, y'know.

Yeah but I didn't look at it that way until my friend pointed it out. It was still pretty good though.

This is infinitesimal on the spectrum of woes, but my wife and I just had our second kid a few weeks ago, and while that part is all fine and good, the lack of sleep has strained things emotionally for us. Around the same time the baby was born the storage lot across the street powered up their new two-story environmentally controlled building, and though they initially said the lights facing the residential side of the street would turn off at 10pm, I just found out they were actually hardwired to stay on all through the night. So once sun is down my bedroom is drenched in fluorescent light, which I'm starting to suspect is one of the larger factors in sleeplessness.

Aside from that my wife and I are house hunting and it sucks. But life in general has been really good. My wife got a new position at her job that allows her to work from home 3 days a week. because she accepted the job 10 minutes before her water broke her maternity leave corresponds with her substantially higher pay grade. I really cant complain about the little things seriously, I've just been up with the baby so these small woes are more in the forefront of my mind.

That's awful! I'm glad you seem to be on the mend.



I heard an interview with Dan Crenshaw (the SEAL eyepatch congressman from Texas) who experienced exactly what you've described. He was blind for several weeks following his injury and suffered the same painful hallucinations, but for weeks. Finally a nurse figured it out and they gave him a bunch of meds to help him sleep and not have the bad juju. He said the fallout from the hallucinations was far worse than the fallout from the injury. He lived in a literal nightmare for five weeks.

I don't agree with many of his politics, but man, that's rough and I have a lot of respect for him to get though it and continue to be successful.

I thought it was funny that you felt the need to say that you don't agree with many of his politics. I did listen and or watch his Jocko appearance but I don't remember anything about hallucinations. He probably talked about it but I think I was listening while I was working in the garage so I don't remember.

So the biggest lingering effect that I notice is some nerve damage. I haven't been to any doctor since this event.

I have received a couple of medical bills. Out of about $807 for the surgeon I had to pay $240 and out of about $33,100 for the hospital I owe $156. I have not yet seen any bill for the ambulance or helicopter. I also haven't contacted any of my insurance agencies yet. Still, $400 seems decent considering everything I went through.

Also, it took me some time to fully understand the extent of my hallucinations but I do now and it's somewhat embarrassing but I'm glad that I have a handle on it now. If you've ever gone through a significant medical event I'm sure you can understand my thoughts about wishing I could go back and personally thank all of the people that helped me.