The Incident "The Awakening"
As the night drew to an end and the sun started to rise, unfortunately my family and I would not do the same. My mom was eagerly waiting for her morning coffee partner. 6 o’clock came and went. 7 o’clock, 8 o’clock and finally 9 o’clock. I am usually an early riser, so my mom started to get worried. She walked over to our trailer to make sure things were OK.
As she approached the trailer she noticed it was still locked up from the night before. She knocked on the door. Hmm dogs did not even bark, that’s unusual! For some reason, she just so happen to have a key to our trailer in her hand. She unlocked the patio door and opened it up. Everyone was still sleeping! Apparently, I was snoring, which I never do! She opened up and the dog’s cage. They staggered out and were barely able to walk. She immediately knew something was not right! As she approached the bed to check on us, she noticed I was foaming at the mouth. My mom started to swipe it away with her fingers. Sarah was unresponsive, but her eyes at least opened.
She, without hesitation, went and grabbed Carter to get him out of the trailer. Thankfully he was arousable. Once she got him out she called 911, ran throughout the trailer opening all of the windows. With the panic that ensued other campers were starting to take notice.
It just so happened that one of the emergency responders happened to camp in the same campground. He was the first on the scene. They dragged Sarah and I out of the camper, laid our lifeless bodies on our deck until the ambulance arrived.
The ambulance arrived and we were rushed to Sturgeon Bay Hospital. The only thing they thought it could be was CO2 poisoning. They needed to transport us to a hospital that had an oxygen chamber. Well, it turns out there are only two, in the whole state of Wisconsin, that have Oxygen chambers. One was Milwaukee and the other was Appleton, which coincidentally is where I grew up and my parents lived. My parents made the decision that we would be transported to Appleton. That Transit ended up in a med flight ride to St. Elizabeth Hospital! Great, my only helicopter ride and I wasn’t even awake for it! Carter was least affected by the CO2 and as a result he was transported by ambulance for observation.
As soon as the helicopter landed at St. Elizabeth’s they raced us inside. Once we were settled in they tried to get us in the oxygen chambers as soon as possible. Sarah was awake and coherent at this point and I was still unconscious. They wheeled us both down to the oxygen chamber. While we were on our way my blood pressure kept dropping. They put Sarah in one chamber immediately. As she laid in her chamber, she could only watch helplessly as they worked on trying to get my blood pressure back up. Eventually, what seemed like an eternity to Sarah, they would finally stabilized it again and put me in the chamber next to her.
Once they put you in, you are usually in it for an entire three-hour treatment of straight oxygen. As if things weren’t bad enough, while I was in there my left lung collapsed. Because of this I was not able to finish a full three-hour treatment. Sarah’s treatment ended before mine. As they wheeled her away to go back up to her room, she watched helplessly as the doctors were frantically trying to plan out their next moves with me.
It turned out they needed to put two chest tubes between my ribs to prevent my lung from collapsing again. Since it collapsed, I would only end up getting one treatment in the oxygen chamber, while my wife received two. Carter was only put under 24 hour surveillance at the hospital and thankfully turned out to be fine!
Finally, on Monday, I started to regain consciousness! I remember opening up my eyes, seeing a nurse standing above me saying, “Matt! Matt! You are at St. Elizabeth Hospital. You suffered from CO2 poisoning! Sarah and Carter…” My world would quickly go black again. This happened two or three times. As soon as I would hear them say Sarah and Carter’s names, I would start struggling! It was so bad that they needed to put restraints on me and strap me to the bed. The doctors decided, at this point, it would be better to put me in a self-induced coma rather than have me come to in my current state.
On Tuesday, they decided to try again to let me wake up. This time Sarah was at the head of my bed. As I started to wake up, the nurse gave her usual talk and all of a sudden I heard Sarah’s voice. I heard her say, “Matt it’s Sarah. You need to give us a sign that you are not going to struggle. Give me a thumbs up if you can do that!” I gave a thumbs up, the nurses looked at the doctor and the doctor nodded with the go ahead to pull my breathing tube. Who knew, after a couple of days, all it took was a simple thumbs up!
Lesson: When your gut tells you something is not right, it usually isn’t. Always trust your intuition!
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