Lying in bed tonight after five nights in two hospitals, I’m really wishing someone had submitted their story for this week’s newsletter. Instead, you get mine.
Tuesday afternoon, I went to meet Andrew and Mikayla to record their interview. I realized, as I began the trek, that I had been aiming to do the interview Monday, but had spent the prior day driving John to get his new ID and a cell phone, and to re-establish his disability status in spite of his wearing a Raiders cap (turns out he only wears it because Raider fans are more generous). Fortunately, Andrew and Mikayla hadn’t planned on my showing up Monday anyway, but unfortunately, their focus had shifted toward gathering their belongings from their campsite half a mile from anything man-made because the “authorities” had found them and given notice of eviction. I almost wished they’d still done the interview, but they knew they wouldn’t be anything close to the representatives they’d hoped to portray, so we postponed with the hope that they’d ever reach out to me from their new location.
I trudged back through the Mesquite, dropped off a donated solar phone charger to Julie in her tent, and across the riverbed to the spot where I parked, lugging my donated red camping chair back out with me.
“It was too windy for decent audio anyway,” I told myself before heading back north. I was due for another chiropractic appointment–the second in a series which began Saturday, when I walked around afterward and met Non-Raider-fan John just a mile away. The back felt better after the adjustment and a much shorter walk, so I made my way across town to a friend’s birthday dinner at Casino del Sol. I figured, afterward, if Awesome Liz had had any success in clearing John’s phone, I’d be much closer to her location to pick it up from her. Great casino, fantastic dinner, but no such luck.
My back pain wasn’t the same as the pain I’d felt the previous few weeks before my first adjustment, but being back pain, I assumed another adjustment would be the next step on the road to recovery. It felt different by the time dinner was winding down, and I eventually admitted I could not make it to the parking lot.
The ambulance took me to the nearest hospital, dosing me with morphine to get the pain under control. Inhaling was almost impossible as any expansion of my lungs was met with excruciating pain. Morphine… good stuff. When the driver opened the ambulance doors, she saw a new patient, relaxed, alert, breathing steadily.
I was brought to a waiting room, eventually was taken to a different waiting room, and didn’t leave that waiting room til after 5 a.m. the next morning when the doctor told me she didn’t think there was much else they could do for me. The big donut scan showed blood clots in my lungs, one of which may have caused some sort of inflammation which was causing the acute pain on inspiration (inhaling). Geez, what do they call exhaling?
So they sent me home with a prescription for painkillers and blood thinners to make breathing possible while abating the clot growth. The plan was to get across town, get to the pharmacy, and take another pain pill before the last one wore off, then see my primary care physician asap to start the process of discovering the origin of the clots.
Good plan on paper, so I downloaded Uber and was underway. As it is, my preferred pharmacy, as explained by the pharmacist, won’t fulfill opioid prescriptions prior to some point in the day well beyond the expiration of my last pain medication dose. One would think such a policy would be well-known to hospitals in the area. After explaining the gravity of my situation, however, the pharmacist called an audible and gave me a chance at survival. I took the pill at once and… it doesn’t matter, it wasn’t soon enough.
My second ambulance ride wasn’t as pleasant as the first. Having taken the medication, they couldn’t take the same path to ease the pain. I don’t know what they did, but I made it there sitting up, hooked to an IV, sipping air as if my lungs were the size of a newborn’s, knowing each gasp would set off another shock wave of pain that would cause my entire midsection to seize. Each breath lasting a fraction of a second, the only respite was exhaling, and the brief relief quickly turned to dread at the inevitability of the next “inspiration.”
I’d actually wondered in the past if I’d have the psychological wherewithal to stomach not being able to take full breaths for an extended period of time. I like to think I did alright, but let’s be honest, the longer episode lasted no more than thirty minutes.
The next hospital kept me for days, doing their own donut scan, ultrasounds, countless blood-draws–it was a different experience within the same relative atmosphere.
I write this from a far more comfortable bed, still on painkillers and blood thinners and antibiotics. I think of my brief roommates, Al and Joe, hoping they’re resting well and finding the courage to face their forthcoming treatment and surgery, respectively. I think of Samuel–name of God–from a great tribe in DRC, studying at the community college here in America after years of piling onto motorbikes to get to school near Kinshasa. Wait–I just got a text from Al! Hold please… ok, he’s just wishing me well on the outside. It’s like I got out of prison.
This brings me to my point: can you imagine going through something like this, then returning to the tunnel? I didn’t even feel like writing The Tunnel, Mr. Williams is out there living in it! I think we can make a lot of progress here if we have the right leadership. Meanwhile, it’s up to us.
I collect names everywhere I go, and I could easily list thirty or more here, but between the morphine, opioids, desperation, sleeplessness, and fear, I’ll shorten it to specifically mention Brandon, Dr. Nguyen, Matthew, and the homeless Mr. Williams from part one; and Sam, Garrett, Wendy, Kayla, Jennifer, Mrs. Rothschild, and Melina from part two.
With so many sleepless hours at hand, I thought to ask these questions of anyone in any profession:
Do I know what to do when I don’t know what to do?
Do I have the knowledge and skill to handle an emergency until the specialist arrives?
Will I see situations from the multiple perspectives of everyone involved?
Can I foresee problems and communicate my concerns without creating anxiety?
Do I have big enough pockets to store my emotions while I go on with my work?
When I look in the mirror, am I invigorated when I’m going in and fulfilled when I’m leaving?
I think, if the answer is “yes” to each question, you are exactly where you should be.
Me? I’m still living on borrowed time…