- I almost died from a cough,
and this is that story.
Okay, yeah there is no better way to say this.
So one night, June 2017, I am masturbating in bed.
And I start coughing up blood.
I'm like have I ever coughed up blood before, no.
Is this okay?
Probably not.
So I call 911 and they send an ambulance.
One of the EMT's when they're checking me out
like presses on my stomach and she's like,
"Is your stomach always this distended?"
I'm like okay I don't have a beach bod right now,
but like it's a little insulting.
I'm at the ER and the doctor asks me
like all the standard questions.
Am I smoker, have I been sick,
like what's been going on?
And at the end of his questions he asked me if
this there's anything I'd like to tell them him,
that I think might be relevant.
I'm like, "Okay there's no way that this is related but,
I was masturbating, is that--"
And he's like, "No, there's no way.
That has nothing to do with it."
But he was very polite about it.
So they give me an X-ray and let me go.
I'm walking out of the hospital
and the doctor comes running out after me,
yelling my name saying that the attending
physician saw my X-ray and wants to do a CT scan.
So they do a CT scan, they see a cloudy patch on my lung.
And they decide to quarantine me under
the suspicion that I have tuberculosis.
They keep my quarantined in the ER for a few days,
they run some tests.
The tests come back negative,
I don't have tuberculosis so they let me go.
I'm feeling good, I go get Popeye's for lunch
cause hey I'm alive, and Popeye's is delicious.
And then later that afternoon I go to
an open mic cause, I hustle baby.
On the way to the open mic I call my grandmother,
I'm very close with my family
and we didn't want to worry my grandmother.
So I just wanted to call her to let her know that,
yes I had been in the hospital but I was okay.
And as I'm on my phone with my grandmother,
I get this rattling feeling in my chest
and I start coughing up blood again.
Like, a lot of blood.
Like more than you're thinking right now.
Okay I'm freaked out, I see a friend walking
into the open mic, I sort of flag her down.
Cause I'm scared and I don't want to be alone.
We get into a cab, we go to another hospital.
The ER doctor tells me that unless
I'm coughing up like a cup of blood,
it's not an emergency.
There's nothing they can do for me.
It pretty much feels like an emergency.
Have you ever seen ER doctor,
a character in a movie coughing up blood,
they tend not to make it.
But it is enough of a concern that
they make me wear a mask the whole time.
So they don't want to get sick, but.
I don't know what's going on,
no one knows what's going on.
Thursday afternoon he sends me out
into the streets of New York to just,
cough up blood on my own.
Hey, have a great weekend.
Friday, June 16th, my mom set up a couple doctors
appointments for me in Manhattan.
The first one an internist,
he tells me there's a flesh eating bacteria in my lungs
but that I'm pretty much okay,
and I should just go about my life
until we can figure out what's going on.
I'm a little reassured so between
my first appointment and my second,
I decide to go back home to Brooklyn
to pack a bag to go and stay with my parents.
And when I'm on the train,
I feel that rattling in my chest again.
And I have a feeling that I'm gonna
start coughing up blood again.
But because I'm polite,
I open up the doors in between the train cars
so I can cough up blood onto the tracks.
I keep coughing blood even as the
train pulls into the station.
So I get off the train and I find
a trash can on the platform, and I just post up.
No one stops to help me or ask if I'm okay,
but I don't blame them.
What would you do if you
saw someone coughing up blood?
It's like more than the last time,
so each time it's more and more blood.
When it's over and I catch my breath,
I take a few selfies, cause I'm a millennial.
And I call my mom and I tell her,
"I don't want to die, standing on the train platform."
She tells me, "I'm not going to."
And I tell her, "You can't say that,
you don't know that!
I keep coughing up blood and everyone's telling me I'm fine!
How is this fine?"
I go home, I pack a bag, and I make
it to my second doctor's appointment.
I had taken a bunch of pictures on the
train platform to show to the doctors.
So I show this doctor a bunch of pictures
of blood that I've coughed up
and he's like why are you showing me these
pictures, I'm a doctor, I know what blood looks like.
And he tells me were gonna do a
procedure called a bronchoscopy,
and they're gonna do it first thing Monday morning.
Why is medicine a nine to five?
Coughing up blood is 24/7!
He tells me to go home to my parents place.
So now for the third time,
a medical professional has told me to go home.
So I'm like lying on the couch.
That day was the day that my sister's boyfriend
was planning on coming over to my parents place,
to ask for their blessing to propose to my sister.
It's a great time, everyone's celebrating,
sipping wine, eating cheese.
Meanwhile, I'm lying on the couch
wondering whether or not I'm gonna die.
I reach for the brie and someone's like,
"Hey maybe we could make a plate for him,
so he doesn't have to touch the food with his
coughing up blood ass fingers."
Anyway, parties over, I go to sleep.
About 2am I wake up to another
rattling feeling in my chest.
I call for my parents, my mom comes in with a bowl
and I just start coughing up blood into this bowl.
And I don't stop, for like a while.
And I just keep coughing up blood
and my mom is there with her hand on my back,
telling me it's gonna be okay.
And I'm mad at her, cause this doesn't feel okay.
When it's over, there's enough
blood to fill up like multiple bowls.
So now I understand, you can't tell your son
that you don't know if he's gonna die tonight.
And I'm a grateful that my parents
were there for me, and were strong for me,
and put me at ease because there
wasn't really anything to do.
The next morning, I wake up with a fever of 103.
My parents call the doctor,
they tell us it's time to go to the hospital.
They admit me to the pulmonary ICU,
and I'm like yes finally something is happening.
They're at least taking this seriously.
They just observe me that night,
Saturday I stay in the hospital.
Sunday afternoon, there's a doctor
talking to me and my parents.
They've another test for tuberculosis,
it comes back positive.
Five minutes later I'm in the OR,
and they decide to put me under general aesthesia.
They send a thingy up through
my groin to try stop to bleeding,
but apparently the infection was so advanced at that point.
So they put me in a coma,
and remove the infected part of my lung.
Four days later I wake up from a medically induced coma.
The doctors are going with tuberculosis.
When I graduated from college I took
a job teaching English in China,
then I sort of backpacked around Asia
for about six months after that.
The going theory is that I picked up tuberculosis
somewhere in Asia and that it sat dormant
in my system for about four years.
The CDC has basically declared me legally gross.
You have to report tuberculosis
because it can be a epidemic.
So the doctors are ready to release me
on like a Friday afternoon,
but the CDC has to approve my release
and they don't work on the weekends, go figure.
And meanwhile, by the way,
my family, my friends they're all visiting me.
Everyone has to wear masks.
I'm also grateful that I was on my
parents insurance by the way,
because having tuberculosis if you have it like me
can cost around like 300000 dollars.
So, I know a lot of people in my position
wouldn't have gotten the care that I got,
and would be much worse off.
So I've got like the weekend,
the CDC hasn't yet approved my release.
One day I think it's a Saturday,
I go to the bathroom, I've got my phone,
I've got the wifi password.
I'm pretty stoked that I'm alive so I decide
to give myself some celebratory me time.
And, I forget that I have a wireless
heart monitor strapped to my chest.
And the thing about wireless heart monitors
is that they can't tell the difference
between an orgasm and a heart attack.
So the nurses come rushing in,
they're like banging on the door.
I'm like, "Ah, its occupied!"
They're like, "We know, this is your hospital room."
I'm like, "I'm having a bowl movement."
They're like, "Okay."
I can't believe I'm talking about jerking off,
in a Buzzfeed video.
Monday the CDC comes to my room,
not only do they make me basically
promise to stay at home.
They send a representative to
watch me take pills every day,
that's how serious this is.
I forgot to mention that I was in the hospital
during my parent's anniversary,
father's day, and my sister and her soon
to be fiance's house warming party.
Really ruined a lot of good times for everyone.
Despite everything that happened,
that summer was like the best summer of my life.
My sister did get engaged in Italy,
I was there it was beautiful.
I took an amazing bike trip with
one of my best friend's in Montana.
Right before our other best friends
wedding I stood by his side
as he married the love of his life.
And I looked super hot doing it
cause here's the thing,
when you get tuberculosis and you're
in the hospital for like two weeks,
you lose a bunch of weight!
Yeah, I almost died but I also got
a lot of thirst traps out of it.
(upbeat pop music)