Hey just curious, what was your SPO2 at when you got admitted?
I work as a paramedic and I’ve been seeing them send lots of people home right away. You’re pretty lucky that they kept you and caught some of your problems while you were there.
This iteration seems much worse than the initial wave. I’m seeing a lot of young people getting critically ill or dying. Still, many are not needing any intervention.
Hope you get better bro.
I have a low baseline SpO2. For example, here is an overnight report from May, 2020:
As you can see, I wicked down to 82% without a corresponding pulse spike. They saw this while I was in the hospital as well. I would go to sleep with O2 rate at 2L, but wake up the next morning at 15L because they saw it drop like this.
It's hard to say what my admitting SpO2 was. It was a bit of a blur. If I had to guess, it was 92%. For my low baseline, it probably looked worse to them than it really was.
It really wasn't that unusual. I'm pointing out my low baseline because that was something that kept me in the hospital longer, I think.
Not trying to get too personal here, I understand if you decline to answer, but is your lower baseline due to underlying factors such as COPD?
I do not have a root cause for the low baseline. I'm going to investigate, though.
Generally speaking it’s COPD. (Typically chronic bronchitis.) That may not be true for you but if you’ve never looked into it sleep apnea may be at play. Look into getting in a sleep study to see if you fit the criteria where having a CPAP at night can help you. Everyone I know that did this raves about improvement in their quality of life.
Yup. All that has been brought up. Hopefully, it's something simple.
Cool man. Sounds like you're in with some good providers.
We are trained to put someone on a nasal cannula under 95% by the way. The hospital is a lot more stingy than the ambulance.
Turns out, ER said it was 84% when admitted.
Yeah that’s pretty low. If it was sustained for any considerable duration you were probably in an altered mental status.