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. 

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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.

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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...