Today is February 15, 2011. It’s significantly warmer here in Charlotte than the February 15 of last year. It’s certainly a lot sunnier from where I am sitting. Down in the court yard below, a small army of professional photographers is snapping shots of a model. I don’t think the location is all that, but we get a lot of camera crews and model shoots here. I suppose it’s a nice view.
I look out over the city to the west and north – the Appalachians are invisible today; the cloud haze is too thick. Even nearby King’s and Crowder’s Mountains are bluish silhouettes. It’s morning; the sun is to the south and east on the far side of the building.
I glance up; the sky is blue, with streamer remnants of some far-off storm system pouring overhead. It was very windy yesterday, just as February 14 was the year before. Only it’s warmer this time around.
I can’t remember where I was at this time a year ago. I did not know at the time. I would not know for another three and a half weeks.
It is a time I have come to call the ghost weeks when, for approximately nineteen days, I was not part of the living world. Nor was a part of the other side, either, rather caught in the twilight.
I’ve done my best to make it easy for those who love and care to hear about this experience. Today, I’m not going to go easy on you.
I don’t know if it is possible to describe properly what it is like to be coughing your life out in massive, putrid gushes that, once ejected, are swiftly replaced. Be in my place, that year ago. You have not been able to cough at all for a week; the pain and pressure are incredible. You have had fever that stays north of 103 degrees Fahrenheit no matter how much ibuprofen you take, and occasionally spikes to 106 degrees. You cannot eat. You could not drink for two days and only now can, with incredible effort, after a doctor has filled an immense syringe with pus drawn out from behind your swollen left tonsil. The results marvel even the physician who jokes about taking a picture of the grayish 7 cc mass he’s drawn. That was some days before.
The day before (Feb 14) you finally fell your chest loosening. You are coughing, and stuff is coming out. Incredible amounts. You quickly realize tissues and toilet paper can’t keep up. You go with old T shirts, rags like a tuberculosis patient. It’s about that way. You are for all intents and purpose Doc Holiday from the O.K. Corral legend, hacking into brown-blooded rag after brown-blooded rag. It never stops. It stinks like death itself. You run through a dozen T shirts this way, trying to present it as normal to yourself, to your family. This is the healing process, you say. Finally it’s all getting out.
You are worried about work; the boss has been cross about your missing days last week. The message is: We’re busy. Get over this and get back to work. You are weighing how sick is too sick to show up tomorrow (the 15th). You do this while watching the Olympics with your two boys… who understandably keep their distance.
Something in you knows this might not be quite so good as you hope. You want to spend some normal time with those you love. You do so. You talk with a few friends, as best as you can. You nap off an on.
The hacking bleeding productive coughing continues.
You try to eat, make a go of it. It goes down. You think, okay, this might be promising. Then you go to sleep, very early. You have not slept well at all.
Then it is 1:20 AM February 15, 2010. Both sides of your throat are swollen now. The congestion is there but is tighter than before. You feel very warm. You are having true difficulty breathing. You feel faint when you stand.
Your first thought: You know you are dying. You’ve wondered before. You are in the habit of saying the phrase “I’m dying, here” in a variety of situations. You’ve been what you thought of as deathly ill before. That was crap. This is the real deal. The earlier sense of recovery was a false down. You are sliding fast know and know it.
Your second thought is the kids have school tomorrow and perhaps this can wait until they are dropped off and you can go to the doctor like you did two days before. You don’t want to alarm them.
Your third thought: You won’t make it until morning if you don’t get help, and now.
Your fourth: You consider driving yourself. You start to get dressed.
Your fifth: You’re faint just from putting on blue jeans. You’re not driving anywhere.
Quickly the family is awake and bundled into the car. You are back in the ER. They weren’t too impressed with your condition before but now they are. They run test after test. You are again in considerable discomfort, especially when laid down flat on a CT scan. The swelling is very evident to the doctors. They size you up and decide – we can’t treat you here. You need to go to the main hospital downtown.
So… you get a morphine drip and what turns out to be a $1,000 ambulance ride downtown and.. now you are in a much bigger ER. They park you in the back for a few hours. It’s quiet. You don’t sleep. You want to get something to drink but they’re not very cooperative in this respect. For some reason it’s important.
A while later doctors come in. They go outside. They move you from Bay #7 to Bay #3. There’s a lot more special gear in #3. There is more activity in the nearby area. The main ER desk is right across the way. Somewhere along the way, it got to be 6:30 AM.
Now you are told your plans for the day. (Hint: They don’t include going to work.) Your infection is throughout your throat and chest. They want to get at the infection in your throat because if they don’t the windpipe will be closed off completely – and this is widely considered to be a bad move. You are inclined to go with conventional wisdom. They say they have an ENT OR available at 1:30PM, you hear them say but there is more discussion in the hall. You miss that because you keep dozing off.
You realize at some point you have IV in your left arm and a pressing need to pee. You remark on this, and are handed a cup and helped to a seated position that happens to face the now heavily-trafficked ER main desk. You are in a hospital gown. You find you are not inclined to do this business on the hospital equivalent of a freeway during the hospital equivalent of rush hour, not even with the curtain drawn.
The nurse says, “It’s ok we’re going to cath you soon, anyway.”
You manage to ask “As in catheter?”
“Yes” is the answer.
Heh.
You prepare for what you have always heard is a very unpleasant experience… but you have been fed so much morphine now that it’s more like an unusual pressing and stretching sensation that goes up and up and up and then you are told to let loose.
You do. Cath works. That wasn’t so bad now was it?
You hear “Ok, a Cardiac OR is opening up at 10. We’re on.”
You’ve been moved up the schedule. A lot. There are preparations to be made. It is a little past 9 AM at this point. You are told you are going to be sedated and everything is going to be fine. You’re like, meh. I’m good. You are. People are taking care of you. You trust them, their expertise. Your wife is nearby. She loves you. Friends and family are being contacted. The kids are at friends’ now.
You are rolling down the hall out of ER. Your wife is there in the hall looking down. She squeezes your hand says “I love you so much it will be ok and I will see you soon…” or something like that. The sentiment is clear. Her eyes are wide and moist. Her smile is certain. She touches your face and kisses your forehead.
As I write this it is 11:45 AM, February 15, 2011. A year ago, I am still in surgery. I will be for some hours to come. The infection is indeed not just as bad as they feared, but much worse. Later, comments would get back to me – the ER docs were pressing to get me in surgery ASAP, else I was likely to be on the ‘make the patient comfortable’ path. Had they had to wait to 1:30 I would not have made it.
Someone cancelled that surgery in that Cardio OR. Perhaps the procedure wasn’t needed because the patient had a golf game that day, or got better.. or was beyond the need for care.
In past writings on this subject, I’ve commented that had I not had group health insurance I would have been a dead man. I would have been.
The thing is, as I write this, I realize – I might have been anyway.
I don’t know who you are, you person whose cardio surgery was cancelled that morning. I don’t know if you are a lurker, or a regular here, or even if you are among the living. But I wanted you to experience what I did that morning before the ghost weeks began. To live into the twilight of life as I did…
…because you are why I was able to live through the dusk and back into the dawn at all.
So thank you. Thank you with all my heart.
And thank you all waited for the twilight to end with me. I am so glad you stayed.
And you who were to have had that OR – though I will never know you or meet you, you are always with me too.