Content Warning: Bodies being gross—my body in particular. Frank and somewhat harrowing medical talk.
“Alle Dinge sind Gift, und nichts ist ohne Gift; allein die Dosis macht, dass ein Ding kein Gift ist.”
“All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison.”
—Paracelsus, 1538
Mine goodely readerf, at which hour laft we fpake, our hero waft converfing by meanf of a moft ingeniouf device known as an "I Fone" with hif fifter, Ye Goode Nurfe Ieffica, about hif bewildering and ftupefying fymptomf of weakneff, tremourf, and unfteady gait. The lady hath afked him if 't be true peradventure he hadft been plagu'd by po'r air, 'r in that lady’f moft modern manner waft‘t poffible yond hif carbon dioxide level waft too high? He hath faid yond he waft unfure at which point hif goodly jointreff Gennifere did produce another object of moft wondrouf magickf, the pulfe oximeter. At thif point they didft difcov'r yond Ieremye'f yond heart that did beat didft poffeff a most leifurely rhythm.
I am fo forry about the faux Shakefperean introduction. Reading about thif Renaiffance toxicology pioneer haft me writing in a moft Elizabethan et Iacobian manner. I promife that it wilt defift nowe.
Let us pick up where we left off:
I’ve been admitted to a mental hospital a handful of times, but the last time I was in a general hospital was in February of 2004. I had a gallbladder attack that required me to get said said gallbladder removed. Because they were able to remove the offending organ via laparoscopy I only stayed in hospital overnight. Apparently it is an outpatient procedure now. I do not have a lot of experience as a patient with medical/surgical hospitals. As a family member of parents that have been in medical care for long periods of time, I know hospitals, rehab centers, etc. pretty well. Some have better cafeterias and vending machines than others. Some give better care than others. At this point I’m still thinking that I can go to the hospital after I get my vaccines and do my other errands. In hindsight it is utterly laughable.
Afterwards, Jennifer checks her pulse and O2 levels and they are still in normal ranges—her pulse is a bit high, but that is to be expected in a stressful situation. I put the device on a different finger and this reading was in the fifties; the next time it was back down in the thirties and I had a bit of dizziness—strangely this was one of the only times I felt dizzy during this whole ordeal.
We called 911. Two different ambulance crews from the Chicago Fire Department were there in less than five minutes. I was still sitting at the kitchen table when the first ambulance arrived. A very friendly woman and two men (also very friendly) came in when Jennifer opened the door. This first crew of beautiful children to arrive (seriously, all of them were the right age to be my kids) helped me walk out of the apartment and to the stairs while I continued to have massive tremors. Somehow just one of the firefighter/EMTs (who was less than half my size) was able to slowly, and I do mean slowly, help to get me down the dozen stairs to our mailroom/ante room/apartment entrance. Thank goodness the exertion sped my heart up enough to keep the dizziness at bay. Vertigo and stair climbing are not two flavors that go together well. A second crew arrived with a flimsy looking rolling chair which they lowered me into then strapped me in.
I have since learned that this contraption is called a stair chair. I am so glad that I was able, with aid, to climb down the stairs and not be transported down in this high tech lawn chair. Riding in this conveyance over mostly flat surfaces was absolutely terrifying. Those firefighter/EMTs move wicked fast! I could feel every crack on the sidewalk and bump on the grass. Getting down off of the curb felt like I was riding the Cliffhanger at Six Flags Over Texas back in 1989.
I felt as though the chair and I were going to visit the ground rather quickly, but they got me into the ambulance without incident. They were a bit rough, but efficient. From the time the first crew arrived and the second crew strapped me into the gurney was about five minutes. In the ambulance they tested my blood sugar, which was very high (I had just finished breakfast minutes before calling 911). I had not taken any of my morning meds which include my diabetes meds, metformin and glipizide. They also tested my blood pressure. It was incredibly low, but I don’t recall the exact numbers, but danger low. This ambulance crew were a friendly younger man, who we’ll call Johnny from here on out and an older man (around my age—we’ll call him Roy) who was just the right mix of seen-it-all gruff and good bedside manner.
Johnny wired me up for the first of the many EKGs I would be given over the next twelve days. By my lowest estimate I had a total of about fifty EKGs. Some days I had five or more, and never less than three in one day—it was intense. Unfortunately, the wiring needed adjusted for the EKG, so I got my luxuriant and plentiful chest hair pulled for the first of a couple of hundred times. Because my chest is so hairy, Jennifer has given it the sobriquet of “Eudora Pelty”. After fifty (or more) EKGs, let’s just say that there was quite a worn path through poor Eudora Pelty. Of all the insults and injuries my poor body suffered during my hospitalization, nothing made me yelp except for getting my chest hair pulled out by the root by EKG leads adhesive. Think of the chest hair waxing scene in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but done every day for several days—it was intense. Before the ambulance rolled away, they switched positions and Roy took over in the back attending to me. He began the first of several saline drips to get my hypotensive blood pressure back up into the normal range, and Johnny drove us the two miles or so to Ascension Saint Francis in Evanston. The ambulance ride was uneventful, except for when Roy radioed the hospital to let them know that I had a “potential infarction”. I’m no doctor, but I’ve watched enough hospital dramas to know that “infarction” is “heart attack” in Medicalese. Hearing him say this almost gives me a literal infarction, and I ask Roy if they really think that I’ve had a heart attack. I woke up scared that morning, but this is the first time that I’ve thought that I could die, and soon. Roy says that any time something is wrong with the heart, it is a potential infarction, but that he would be very surprised if I had suffered a heart attack, since I displayed none of the classic symptoms. This is a mild relief. He also said that they want to make sure that I am first in line in the emergency room when anything unusual is happening with the heart. And my heart was certainly being unusual. In the ambulance I learn the term Bradycardia, which is when the heartbeat is below sixty beats per minute. Mine has not gone above the fifties since we first measured it after breakfast. Even though I have an abnormally low heart rate, I am asymptomatic. I am no longer dizzy, I have no chest pain, and my breathing is fine—they have an oxygen cannula in my nose, but I think that was just a precaution.
I start to take inventory of my life as it may be very short. I’m not panicking, and my heart rate certainly isn’t rising. Like a lot of neurospicy folks, I get calm in emergencies and crises. I lose my shit over the smallest of perceived slights and inconveniences in normal life, but when I think that I might be in actual peril, I downshift into a mode that is far from relaxed, but that does not manifest the terror and dread that I am feeling in the moment. It must be a hardwired survival mechanism, because I certainly have not successfully trained for this behavior in therapy or my daily life. I do my best to focus on what is happening now and what I will do in the most immediate future. Who besides Jennifer and my closest family members do I want to talk to before I die etc.? I am wishing that I had given the kitties a good squish before I left the house—I’m going to miss those buddies. I reflect that I really should have written that will that I’ve been talking about for years. Morbid, I know, but at the time it sure seemed relevant.
Johnny gets us to the hospital quickly and they wheel me into the emergency room, where a stereotypically cranky ER nurse yells at Roy and Johnny because I’m not wearing a COVID mask. I tell the guys that I have an KN95 in my pocket, but they tell me not to worry about it, because I’m heading straight to an ER bay and everyone else is masked and I’m on oxygen. They take me to my room and get me into the hospital bed without incident despite the massive tremors I am still experienceing. I then bid Roy and Johnny adieu. A nurse comes in and gives me the first of dozens of blood draws. She also asks me about what medications I am on for the first of what it is also dozens of times, and what medical ailments I have. Well, I am a bipolar diabetic with hypertension, allergies, anxiety, and neuropathy, so I take fistfuls of pills every day. I take so many meds that Jennifer made a google document of all of them, because I honestly have a hard time remembering all of them. Jennifer correctly decided to take a shower before coming to the hospital, so she showed up about half an hour after me. I ask the nurse to help me get my iPhone out of my pocket because my tremors are too strong. She does. I attempt to bring up the list on my phone and accidentally fling it across the room for the first of many times. I’ve never broken a cellphone screen, knock on wood, and I have no idea how I didn’t shatter the poor thing as many times as my phone got slammed into the hospital’s hard tiled floor. Another miracle, perhaps? Because my former primary care physician is part of the same medical group as the hospital they have an old list of my medications, and between that and my rusty memory we are able to compile a fairly accurate list of my meds. Afterwards, I get another EKG. Jennifer comes into the room and shortly after I meet the first of approximately fifty doctors. She tells me that they are running several tests and checking my blood for markers of a heart attack, but that she does not think that I have had one, which is good news. A completely barmy gal named Linda comes in to admit me and thankfully for me begins to ask (unfortunately for her) Jennifer approximately one million questions and gives her the forms to fill out as I cannot reliably hold a pen for longer than it takes to scrawl out a signature giving them permission to treat me. After an interminably long time Jennifer sends Linda scurrying. While she was looking at the forms Jennifer noticed that I was being admitted for kidney failure. My eerie calm disappears entirely and I begin to openly weep. My dearest friend Mari and my old coworker Marc both died of kidney failure at very young ages, and I am absolutely terrified of kidney disease of any sort. Another doctor comes in and tells me I am being admitted because I have acute kidney failure. He can see how anxious this news has made me, so he tells me that he is all but certain that it is reversible. Jessica also helps to alleviate my fear.
The doctor also tells me that my lithium levels are too high.
This is all starting to make some sort of sense now.
The medication I take to keep me from wanting to kill myself is trying to kill me.
¡CLIFFHANGER!
Thank you, as always, for reading.
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