Beginning of 2025–sleeping in a kitchen chair, ER visit, appreciation for breathing

I knew I was really sick long before I was in the emergency room with concern about congestive heart failure.

The realization came on the fifth or sixth consecutive night sleeping while sitting in a kitchen chair, my head resting on a pillow propped against the kitchen counter. Every night, I woke after a couple of hours with coughing fits that resulted in me gagging.

I began 2025 with the worst illness of my life. While I don't generally write about my health (Editor's note: Yes, he does. In 2022, he wrote about a cancer diagnosis. In 2023, he wrote about having COVID. He's probably written about being a Type 1 diabetic 100 times), this is worth telling.

It began right before Christmas with a mild cough. Dec. 26, Mrs. Brad and I traveled to Southern California to see our son, daughter-in-law and granddaughters. I was recovering. Then I got a little worse. And a little worse. And worse. We cut the trip short and returned home the Saturday after Christmas. I kept getting worse.

By Sunday night, I was very sick. My cough was so bad that I couldn't lie down. In fact, I couldn't sit in a comfortable chair (such as a living room chair, with a slight tilt back) without developing spastic coughs that resulted in me hugging the toilet and gagging because I was coughing so hard.

I didn't sleep that night. The next day, I saw my doctor, had a chest X-ray to rule out pneumonia and started several prescriptions. Yet I kept coughing until I gagged. Still unable to sleep, I sat on a stool, leaning forward against my pillow. By Tuesday night, I sat in a kitchen chair and began sleeping pitched forward, a few hours at a time.

New Year's week passed in a blur of coughing. I couldn't nap because I couldn't rest. I was awake most of the night. I don't remember much beyond coughing and gagging and staring at the floor and being out of breath after taking 10 steps.

Several times I wondered how long a human can go without sleeping more than two hours a night. Slowly, I got slightly better. Until I didn't. The Sunday after New Year's Day (a week after the first night spent upright), I started to go backward again. Then Mrs. Brad noticed my legs were swollen.

The first Monday of 2025 – a week after I first saw my doctor – I messaged her again to tell her about my legs. Hours later, she finally saw my message and immediately called.

"You need to get to the emergency room," she told me. "This could be a myocardial event."

"I don't know what that means."

She was direct: "I don't mean to scare you, but these are the symptoms of congestive heart failure. You need to get to the emergency room."

Fighting back panic and coughs ("It's probably nothing." "This can't happen to me." "'Failure' seems like an overly dramatic word choice, right?"), Mrs. Brad and I headed across town to a packed ER. Blood work, an EKG, an X-ray and four hours later, we got the good news: I was just very, very sick. A terrible bronchitis. I needed another round of antibiotics, steroids and some other new drugs, including Lasix to stop my leg swelling.

More nights of sleeping upright. It was now 10 nights. Eleven. Twelve. Sitting in a kitchen chair, leaning forward to sleep from midnight until 2:30 a.m. or so, then being awake and perhaps returning to the chair to see if I could fall asleep again. Getting up at 4 a.m. and waiting for the day to start. Relentlessly coughing.

Gradually, the second round of drugs kicked in. By Thursday afternoon (two weeks after we left home for Southern California on the ill-fated trip), I felt better. Thursday night I slept in a recliner for the first time. By Sunday, I could sleep on the couch, with torso and head elevated. Able to rest, my body demanded long naps over that third weekend of being sick.

I was able to go outside and walk a short distance on the 17th day of my sickness. By the time my second round of antibiotics finished (three weeks after I started getting really sick), I was better. Weakened. Still come coughing. But more healthy than sick. More than three weeks into the illness, I slept in a bed for the first time in 2025.

There's no lesson in this, other than our bodies are fragile and if one thing goes wrong, it can be a mess. I spent a lot of time thanking God for things other than my health and pledging to Mrs. Brad that I'd never take breathing for granted again. I probably will, but that's a good goal, right?

Here's to a healthy 2025.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.