Chapter Forty: The End Of Mark, Part Two: What the Fuck?

That cough soon turned into a bad cold and we all went home. He went back to Seattle and I went back to work in Portland. After about a week, I got a call from Mark telling me his cold was getting worse, and he might be getting bronchitis. I said, "Ok". After the appointment, he told me the doctor did see an infection in his lungs and gave him antibiotics to get rid of the infection.

It didn't help and the infection got worse. He went back to the doctor and they ran a series of tests and weren't able to find out what was wrong, but decided to keep him overnight because he was having difficulty breathing and they wanted to monitor him. What none of us knew at the time was that he would not leave that hospital alive. That what he had caught would soon kill him. After he was admitted, I took some time off work and I went up to Seattle to see for myself what was going on.

When I got to the hospital and went into his room, he was alert and smiling but his color was off and he was getting weaker. He had various odd symptoms, he had decreased air flow to his lungs, I could hear what I would call a crackling to his lungs and wheezing when he took breaths and he had a rapid heart rate. They decided to run a series of tests.

They took a chest x-ray, they took what is called a sputum culture. A sputum culture tests the secretions from the lungs, they took a swab and got droplets from his nose, they took a computed tomography scan of his chest area, a blood culture. And the results of these tests showed the beginning stages of a viral pneumonia, but one doctor told me he thinks it's a bacterial pneumonia, which is more severe.

A viral pneumonia is caused by a flu virus but the bacterial pneumonia, which is normally called the Swine Flu in the media is caused by a severe inflammation of the lungs and is complicated by a secondary bacterial infection. Basically Mark's lungs had developed an infection and his air sacks inflamed and may also fill with fluid, emit pus and cellular debris. He was starting to cough up blood and had high fevers of over 105 degrees.

They decided to take precautions because bacterial pneumonia itself is not contagious but the infection that caused the bacteria is contagious. I was required to wear a mask to cover my mouth and nose and could not touch him. His mother and brother were informed and they took a trip up to Seattle. I did not tell my mom and dad, because I did not want them to be worried for me in case I caught it. The doctors decided to run another series of tests and found out the infection was spreading to his organ and that an acute pleural effusion was happeining. That is a buildup of fluid in the lungs, and it was causing an abscess in his left lung.

From where I was standing I could tell he was having difficulty breathing and he was sweating and the coughing is something I cannot get out of my head. It was just awful. His lips and nails had a bluish color do them and I asked why, and they said it was due to a lack of oxygen to the blood, which is the key funtion of the lungs. So with the infection blocking the oxygen, it was creating a vicious circle on his body. The more his lungs was blocking the oxygen, the more confused and delirious he was getting. At times I could see him coughing up blood, and I started shaking and simply didn't know what to do. Then about a week after he was admitted into the hospital, the worst thing in the world happened, he stopped breathing.