Strong Like Bull (Scared Like Little Girl) Part 2

Well, I thought. This is how the world works. All energy flows according to the whims of the Great Magnet. What a fool I was to defy him. He knew. He knew all along.

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

It is decided that among all the tests they are running they are going to run an MRI on my brain, brain stem, and do a contrast dye scan of the veins in my neck.  I’ve had MRIs before, so I’m not concerned and they wheel me to another part of the hospital.  On the way we talk about how the hospital gets busier when the weather gets better, not because people suffer more injuries, but because they are more likely to go out in better weather to get to the hospital when they need to.  Why do we live here again?

One thing I neglected to tell the tech is that I developed claustrophobia a few years ago.  I have no explanation as to why.  I had no traumatic experience involving closed spaces.  I’ve never had claustrophobia before and have even had to exhale to squeeze myself under a car I was working on. I’ve been in MRIs before with no problem.  I figured if it became an issue I would just grunt it out.  Little did I know.

I’m strapped in with my head gear on and they slide me into the MRI tube.  I am definitely freaking out, but I keep taking breaths in through my mouth and out my nose.  I try every relaxation technique I can think of, but my mind is racing and I’m starting to lose control of my breathing.  I keep fighting the full on freak out with everything I have.

The tech had given me a little squeeze ball on the end of a cord to squeeze and alert him if I was having trouble while in the MRI.  I didn’t pay much mind to it because I didn’t think I would need it.  This ball and its cord are somewhere wrapped up in a multiplicity of cords, IVs, and blankets.  I try to find it, but I can’t.  I try not to let this freak me out more.   I keep trying to calm myself down counting time in my head.  I figured I had been in there about 30 minutes.  Another 45 minutes to go.  I can do this.  I’m starting to get light headed.  They are no monitors on me.  This is probably not good.  I search for the ball again and I don’t care if I pull out my IVs.  I find the ball and start squeezing over and over again.  Not quickly enough, they get me out of the MRI.

I’m bummed and they seemed disappointed that my only problem was freaking out.  I figure we have to start from the beginning again and I’m not sure what I can do.  I find out I was only in there about 15 minutes.  The nurse says she can get a hold of a doctor and see if she can get me a sedative.  They all leave the room.

I look back at the MRI machine as I sit there tethered by my IVs thinking we could have a little chat and come to an understanding.  At that moment I couldn’t help but notice that it looks sort of like a Paul Bunyon sized sex toy for self-gratification.  That didn’t help.

The nurse returns with Ativan and pushes it into my IV line.  It hits me quickly and I unintentionally smile as I answer their questions.  I think this might work.  They put on the head gear again and back in I go.  I’m definitely still freaking out, but seem better able to handle it.  I continue to freak out and try to maintain and make it all the way through. 

They are done and I need to get on the gurney to get wheeled back to the emergency room.  I swing my legs to the side of the MRI platform as the tech manages my IVs and the floor rushes up and slaps me on the bottoms of my feet as if I had jumped from an indeterminable height only defined by contact with the ground.  I let out an audible “whoa” and wobbled catching myself on the edge of the gurney before I fell.  I pull myself back up and manage to get on.

At this point I have been at this for about 5 hours.  It’s 1:30 AM.  The doctors and nurses that had previously been treating me are gone.  I’m back in the room in the ER and I ask them to leave my doors open since I’m right next to the ambulance bay doors and I can watch people come in. It's quiet.  A young barefoot hippie chick somnambulates in under her own power followed by EMTs.  A couple of older black men with vacant looks in their eyes are wheeled in.  Quiet.  None of the excitement when I first came in.

I meet my new nurses, one of which looks like an obese and unkempt version of Jerry Garcia.  Finally, a small, timid, mousy doctor comes in with my results.  She tells me in the form of an unfinished sentence that they can’t find anything wrong, and as I wait for her to finish I realize she has nothing else to say.  She leaves. 

After awhile Jerry Garcia comes back in, removes my IV, and starts unceremoniously tearing off the multiple monitor leads they have taped to my body.  I’m free to go.  I’m given a couple of pieces of paper I don’t read and told to go see a doctor in the next few days.  He leaves.

At this point it is past three in the morning, my car is at Urgent Care, and I have no idea where I am.  I know I’m at Regents, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to get out.  I head out the ambulance bay doors next to my room as the EMTs briefly take notice and I buy a Diet Coke from the machine outside.  I decide to walk.  My car is only a couple miles away.  The sedative is still affecting me like I was stepping on shore after being on a boat for a long time.  I still had my sea legs, but it was downhill and my footing had to come back at some point with a little effort.

It's dark out, and with a limited sense of direction I try to orient myself.  I see a highway that must be Hwy 94 and start walking.

_________________________________________________________________________________

I wake up the next morning and realize that I need to find a doctor.  The last time I found a doctor I ended up with a pernicious little 30 year old DO who represented everything bad about being 30.  Big ego with low self-esteem expressed in self-aggrandizing behavior.  That’s just a fancy of way saying she was a little shit, and I felt like I spent more time trying to work with her issues than her with mine.  Never again.

I call up the appointment line and expressed to the person helping me that I have a few requirements.  The doctor needs to be male, at least over 40, and speak English as their native language.  This narrows things down considerably and I have a choice of three doctors at the clinic I want to go to. 

She is willing to help me with these requirements and we are both online looking at the profiles of the doctors.  I click on the first link and a picture comes up of a blonde haired doctor with a porn star moustache and a bolo tie.  I’m sure he’s a nice man and a fine doctor, but no.  I randomly choose between the other two and an appointment is set for later in the day.

The waiting room on an early Wednesday afternoon is quite different than the early evening.  Instead of gangsters, the morbidly obese, and sullen teenagers, I’m sitting with the elderly.  The children have their own pen far on the other side of the building.  I am very thankful for this design. Things are calm and quiet and I prepare to wait the mandatory 45 minutes past my scheduled appointment time to get called back to a room where I sit for another half hour before the doctor shows.

I’m astonished when I’m called back right away and the nurse takes my vitals and gathers all the information she needs.  She lets me see my test results on the computer screen and tells me the doctor will be in soon. Now I am left in a room with the hardest word jumble ever…

…and wall paper brought to you from the shower scene in Psycho; which is either very appropriate or very inappropriate for a doctor’s office.  I can’t decide.

The doctor comes in and we get oriented as he starts into what I call, “The Doctor Talk”.  I’ve grown used to this.  For some reason doctors look at me and assume I am a fat piece of shit who lives on fast food, frozen pizza, Coke, and stripper’s broken dreams. 

I know what my test results are.  I know what my test results were last year. He hasn’t hopped on his high horse yet, but he’s cinching up the saddle as he fires up the computer choosing his first target – salt.  Good luck with that one, buddy.  He starts his admonishments as I tell him that I am already aware of what he is telling me.  Salt bad.  Got it.

He stops talking and scrolls through pages of test results from the hospital the night before.  All he sees is rows of green on a scale that goes from green to yellow to red.  He pushes the computer mouse to the side and turns his chair to face me.  We start a conversation. 

Strong Like Bull (Scared Like Little Girl) Part 1

Strong Like Bull (Scared Like Little Girl)

Part 1

  

“You better take care of me Lord, if you don't you're gonna have me on your hands.” 

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Some vacations you do not want to take. 

I had run some errands after work and stopped home for a bit before a late eye doctor appointment.  I got the mail, read it, and filed most of it in the circular bin.  I started up my computer and opened my Twitter account - a seemingly normal arrival home from work.

With the limitation of 140 characters, Twitter messages can sometimes be a little cryptic as people try to abbreviate, shorten, and compress their thoughts.  I looked at the messages and I couldn't make sense out of them.  I leaned closer to the computer screen hoping that would somehow help.  I could see letters, but I couldn’t make words.  I would recognize what was a person’s name, but I didn’t know who they were. 

I leaned closer to the screen and isolated one word - “Cah ha an ga ee”.  I ran the sounds through my mind and sounded out the word like a toddler, “Cah ha an ga ee”.  Finally, the word “Change” rang out in my head.  I was exhausted, but for some reason I pushed forward for another word.  I tried to sound it out, but this one was harder and it took me longer to figure it out.  By the time I figured out the second word I had forgotten the first word. 

At this point I’m not concerned.  I’m seeing this as some sort of mental cramp and if I just “walk it off” it’ll go away and I’ll be fine.  Or is this some sort of spoof on Twitter?  I look at some other web pages I have open and I can’t read those either.  No spoof.  I go back to Twitter and my eyes are drawn to the contrast of the bolded names against the messages.  I recognize that I should know who these people are and parts of their names do look familiar, but I don’t know these people and the first names don’t seem to go with the last names. 

I copy and paste a name into a search engine and a picture comes up of a famous person I recognize, but the name that comes up seems wrong.  That’s not her last name.  I try this again and get another incorrectly named celebrity.  Now I’m getting concerned and think stroke. 

For the first time in awhile I look away from the computer.  I know where I am, but I don’t really recognize the things in the room.  I’m not lost, it’s just strange here.  I look down at my legs and they look a little odd in proportion.  I check my hands, my legs, and my face and determine that I have feeling everywhere.  I go to the bathroom mirror and both pupils are equal, but appear small to me.  I go back to my chair in front of the computer.

I can recognize numbers and I see that it is still awhile until my eye doctor appointment.  It’s too exhausting to look at anything anymore, so I lean forward in my chair and drop my head to my chest with my eyes close.  I stay this way for awhile occasionally glancing at the clock on my computer. 

-----

At some point here you have to ask yourself what the hell is wrong with me.  A normal person would not just push aside the sudden inability to read.  This should raise concern and maybe even a cry for help.

Some examples of my past behavior may help explain this.  When I was taken out by a hit and run driver on my motorcycle a few blocks from home, I had a stranger help me lift the bike and I pushed the bike home with a functionless arm.  Later I drove myself to the hospital shifting my manual transmission with my knee and my floppy arm.  A few years later I was mountain biking in below zero weather and both my water bottles froze.  I got dehydrated and thought I was having a heart attack.  I took a shower, put on clean clothes and drove myself to the hospital.  They kept me for a few days.

The adage that you can always do more than you think you can is something that I hold as a foundational physical truth.  I’m not saying it leads to very good decision making, but it might put my current behavior in some sort of twisted context.  I figure I can work it out if I try hard enough.

---

My sense of time is a little distorted, but I see it’s getting close to the time to leave for my eye doctor appointment.  I can now read words, but it takes me a long time to put together a sentence and I can’t glean meaning from the strings of words.  I feel fine.  I can see fine.  I can walk fine.  Let’s find out if I can drive fine.

I cautiously pull out of the drive and take a tour around the quiet side streets.  Everything seems O.K. and away I go!  I make it to the eye doctor a few miles away, and I don’t tell him what problems I’ve been having.  I want to see if he notices anything wrong with my eyes.  He doesn’t. 

I run a few errands and when I arrive home I grab a bottle of wine and sit down at the computer to try and figure out what happened. By now my reading is back to normal.  Before I even pour a glass I run across the term Transient Ischemic Attack.  This is a fancy way of saying mini-stroke.  What I experienced fits right in with this sort of attack and what I find is there is a chance that I will have a major stroke in the next 24 hours if I don’t get treatment immediately. 

I skip over the part where it says this sort of event is a 911 situation and drive myself to urgent care. 

I arrive at urgent care and get in line.  When it is my turn I tell the older counter lady that I think I may have had a mini-stroke.  She pulls a piece of paper out of a file in front of her and declares, “This is bad” and shows me the paper with two columns.  One column, I guess, contains the not-so-bad stuff and the other column contains the bad stuff.  I can’t see what it says, but mini-stroke must be in the bad column.  She is flustered and as she is trying to figure out what to do a doctor calls her on the phone and, from what I can hear from her end, is yelling at her.  I am very tempted to grab the phone and yell at the doctor, but I don’t. 

After minutes of listening to her get yelled at, she finally ends her call and calls back to get help.  I’m standing there with my insurance card in my hand as she says nothing to me.  I ask her if she needs the card.  She says no, and I ask if I can go sit down. 

As I sit down two nurses, one right after the other, quickly come running.  One is immediately at my feet assessing me.  She grabs a magazine from the table and starts writing things down.  The second nurse arrives pulling a blood pressure machine and puts the cuff around my arm and activates it.  They are asking questions and writing things down, sometimes both of them at the same time.  The first reading displays on the blood pressure machine and they don’t believe it's right.  The cuff is adjusted and the process started again.

At this point the nurse with the blood pressure machine has her arm snaked around mine and is leaning into me supporting it.  I later find out that there is a new protocol for taking blood pressure that requires them to use the machine verses the manual cuff and to keep the patient’s arm at or above heart level.  All I know at the time is that it is comforting to have someone hold on to me as I sit in the waiting room surrounded by other patients while all this is happening. 

Shortly thereafter a doctor comes out and for what seems like the tenth time I confirm that I did indeed drive myself there.  This confirmation process will continue until there are no more people around me that know that I drove myself to Urgent Care.  Another reading comes across the blood pressure machine and there are furtive glances back and forth among the three as the cuff is adjusted and the process is started again.  The ambulance has already been called.

 The ambulance arrives and I’m loaded in.  The first thing the guy putting in the IV says is I should take off my watch and put it in my pocket because it’s expensive.  Where are you guys taking me that I have to be concerned about my watch?  I feel fine; can I get out right here?

The two mile, and I’m sure multi-thousand dollar ambulance ride concludes with me being wheeled into the emergency room and quickly rolled into a very small room.  The room is immediately filled with people - three nurses, that I can see, a doctor, and three interns.  All I focus on is my very pretty nurse, the handsome young doctor, and the intern that made an inappropriate joke.  My glare seems to push her right out of the room.  Questions are asked, information is corrected, and an initial plan is explained. 

At one point, while the majority of the group is still in the room, someone hands me the call button and explains to me how the TV controls on it work.  Really?  A TV in the emergency room?  Um, O.K., I guess.

Every few minutes the blood pressure cuff on my arm inflates and I lean my head back to see the results on the monitor.  Each time my nurse comes quickly into the room to look at me and check the leads and the cuff before she hurries out again.  Tests are starting to roll in and you can see the disappointment on the face of the person looking at the test as they find out that I am very healthy and there is no explanation for my incredibly high blood pressure.  Words like, “That is very good” keep coming out of their mouths followed by a concerned scowl as they walk back out of the room.  

To be continued, thankfully...