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How I went from 'healthy' to a quadruple bypass in weeks · Best of: Features

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How I went from healthy to a quadruple bypass in weeks. Written
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by David Curran This article is being read by an automated voice
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generated by Everlet. As I lay on the gurney, the surgery technician
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wove us through the hospital halls. We seemed to be on an
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endless series of turns. Every so often a pair of doors swung
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open, we'd pass through, then take more turns. Even with a GPS
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I could never retrace my steps. Why was it so complicated? Was
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it a stealth plan to distract the patient from what's about to
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happen? I didn't need it. I had already tricked myself into being
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calm. Soon I told myself I'd be asleep. Then three or four
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hours later I'd wake up and everything would be done. Or, in
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the worst case scenario, I'd be literally done. But if it went
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that way, I wouldn't know about it, would I? We entered the
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operating room and a small crowd of people in blue scrubs looked
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over. I got a glimpse of my surgeon, whom I'd met once
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before on Zoom. Them, anesthesiologist introduced herself and someone else made a
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joke about how they're like an F one pit crew. They're pretty
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loosey goosey in here. For me it may be life or death.
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For them it was just another Monday morning. My sternum would be
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sawed open, my heart and lungs were about to be stopped for
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several hours, and a major vein would be taken from my leg,
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cut up, and used to bypass various defective arteries in my heart,
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and hopefully I wouldn't have a stroke, and then my heart would
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turn back on when they flipped the switch, or whatever they did.
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I was out cold in less than a minute. The gatekeeper. The
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path to heart surgery happened in a whirlwind, beginning with my physical
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in late twenty twenty five. Like every year I had one goal
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at the check up to get a referral to see a cardiologist,
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and this year I had a plan. The idea you need to
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prepare an argument like you're going to court, or as some call
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it, self advocating, can seem ridiculous, but sometimes you have to do
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it. Because my doctor was a serious gatekeeper, a star HMO employee,
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the kind of guy who might have a framed photo in the
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hallway of the accounting department. Even though I had had a cardiologist
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before joining this HMO, my doctor here would not refer me to
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one. I was never sure why. At our appointments I often felt
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like I was Yile E. Coyote and he was them brick wall.
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But recently I had had some worrying health signs. Only weeks before
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I was playing tennis at the local prison, as A volunteer, when
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after only one point I immediately bent over, gasping for air. Everyone,
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other volunteers, the inmates, was concerned, clearly wondering if I was just
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going to keel over, but I assured them it was just allergies.
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Not long after, I was hiking alone in Tilden Park near my
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East Bay home. Usually it's a brisk three mile loop. This time
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I was struggling to breathe, catastrophizing with every step. A man about
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my aged had just been found after suffering a fatal coronary on
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a trail in LA, so the worst was not hard to imagine.
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I wondered where a Medivac helicopter could land. Or would I just
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get found like the man in LA as I lay unresponsive near
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a bush of poison oak? By the time I got home I
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had decided to get checked out. Sitting in the exam room in
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the HMO's aged East Bay Hospital, I had my speech tall ready
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for the doctor, when I heard the customary Tulu light knocks on
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the door and in he came. After a brief hello, he sat
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down at a computer monitor and immediately started going through my blood
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test results. I stared at the back of his lab coat and
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waited. I'm not quite sure what he looks like, even after six
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years or so. I can tell you he wears blue sketchers, is
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neither tall nor short, and if I ran into him in Target,
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I would not recognize him After seven to nine minutes he rose
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from the chair and briefly acted like he was giving me an
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actual physical. Usually he does one doctorly thing. One time he listened
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to my lungs with a stethoscope. This time he knocked below my
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knees to check reflexes. All good, apparently. And then came the big
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moment. I got to discuss my health. I led with my request.
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Could I please see a cardiologist? Giving him no time to say
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no, I talked about my breathing getting worse. I didn't lay out
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all the details about gasping on the prison tennis court, because it
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wouldn't matter. He'd respond as he had in the past about my
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breath. Sounds like your allergies. There has never been curiosity that maybe
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it's not just a lung issue. He'd always just offer me a
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new steroid for my breathing, but I wasn't done. I followed the
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lung issue with my argument I've also used in past years. There
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is heart trouble in my genes going back generations. I go through
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my various family members, everything I say sounding like I'm pleading. Three
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grandparents had died of heart attacks. Mother died of a heart attack.
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Dad had open heart surgery in his early seventies, but he had
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all this in this notes or he should have. So I offered
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one more. Recently my sister, only a few years older, was hospitalized
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with an enlarged heart. I have no idea if This had any
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effect, but he did say yes, sort of. I didn't get to
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see a cardiologist, but he would let me take a test related
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to my heart. This kindness may have had zero to do with
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my persuasive talents and everything to do with some spreadsheet put out
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by Corporate saying that this person's health profile at this age made
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him entitled to this test. But only if I self advocated for
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it, I'm guessing. He wasn't exactly going to bring it up. This
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test was called a coronary calcium scan, and if I wanted to
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see a cardiologist, I knew I would have to fail with flying
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colors. The magic word On the day of the test, a technician
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led me into a room and I laid down on a platform.
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He then slid the platform back and forth for three to five
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minutes through a doughnut shaped device that apparently checks the calcium levels
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in your arteries. My result was in they 98th percentile. But, unlike
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an SAT, this is an atrocious score. An excellent score indicating clear
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arteries is zero. Anything over three hundred is a sign of moderate
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to severe heart attack risk. Mine was two thousand six hundred twenty-seven.
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My mother always wanted me to be an overachiever. If only she
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were alive to see this, but unfortunately, she, as mentioned earlier, had
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died of a heart attack. A week later I took a second
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test. I got hooked up to a bunch of electrodes and put
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on a treadmill where they make you walk faster and faster. I
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had taken one years ago with my last cardiologist, before I joined
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the HMO and got told I couldn't have a cardiologist.
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But in that one you got to run, and the nurse watches
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the beating of your heart as it pumps blood faster and faster.
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I went to the max and felt good. Maybe I was okay
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after all. I got dressed to go in a pretty good mood.
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Then, as I was in the hallway, the nurse who conducted the
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test pulled me aside. Her concern was palpable enough that just looking
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at her gave me the sweats. It turns out I had failed
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miserably. The test indicated that there was blockage. Enough that she said
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I would not exercise at all until I saw a cardiologist The
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no exercise part was terrible, but she did say the magic word
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cardiologist. We looked for a free slot and all the cardiologists were
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booked for weeks, except one who seemed to be wide open most
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of the next week. Why did this person have so many unfilled
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appointments? Was this the worst one? The Zero Stars on Yelp, cardiologist?
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Not that I was in any position to be choosy, but If
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all your choices are bad When the big day arrived, I journeyed
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to the hospital to meet my not in demand cardiologist. I was
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excited. I'd finally have a protector, someone who would carefully tend to
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my heart. She would be sympathetic and lean in with understanding, as
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I told her of my years of wishing for a cardiologist and
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being denied. Of course none of this happened. I may have wanted
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to vent, but she was now totally booked, and there were probably
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twenty minutes allotted to deal with me, so we got straight to
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the point. I had three choices, she explained. One, having some nuclear
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dye injected in me. I think this was the choice Taylor Swift's
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father made. But she didn't encourage this one. Choice number two was
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a more advanced version of the stress test that I had already
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taken. The good thing is that it wasn't very invasive. Not a
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bad choice, but apparently, the waiting times to get that were long.
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Plus, if you didn't do well on that test, you'd still have
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to go through the third options which was a catheterization. This was
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when they'd run a catheter through your blood vessels up to your
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heart, where dye would be injected into your arteries. The arteries would
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the be photographed to see to what degree there was blockage. This
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third one, the catheterization, made sense for a few reasons. First, I
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knew I'd do badly on the stress test option, and therefore would
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have to do this anyway. Also, the wait times for this procedure
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were much shorter. There was only one downside. With the catheterization, a
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piece of calcium inside the artery could get dislodged, move through my
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bloodstream, and cause a fatal stroke. This is apparently something that very
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rarely happens, but I, like any sane person, was convinced I was
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that rare person. All I
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could think about at work that day was the moment of being
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fatally stricken by a shard of floating calcium. I considered cancelling the
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procedure, but what other options were there? The were all bad. While
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the assembly line aspect of managed care can often be off putting,
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it can also offer its own kind of reassurance. This was how
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I felt the morning of the catheterization. As I showed up at
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the hospital, I was led into a huge pre op room with
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several beds and stations there people were getting prepped for their procedures.
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There is something comforting in knowing you're just another piece of meat.
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Just another person being rolled through like the many already there that
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day, and the many others who come after. I wasn't unique in
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any way. As a nurse shaved parts of my wrists and legs,
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she asked about my condition. Did you have chest pains she asked,
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number. Then how did you know there was a problem? I told
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the doctor I had a family history and wanted to see a
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cardiologist, and the I got tested. Good for you, she said, you
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self advocated. I suppose. But was that the choice? Self advocate or
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come in here on the verge of a coronary? Part of me,
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the part with a two thousand six hundred twenty seven calcium scan
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score, certainly hope not. The surgeon performing the catheterization popped in to
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say hello. She told me I looked healthy and I did well
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on the stress test. She didn't seem too concerned and said there
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was a chance she may have to do a stent. During the
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procedure, but the bar would be high considering how healthy I was.
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I suddenly felt like I was wasting people's time. Maybe I should
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apologize to all these folks having to shave my groin with this
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little electric razor and stick needles in me, even though I looked
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so healthy. If only I had had chest pains and looked more
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like a stee. After we entered the operating room, people kept asking
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me my name and why I was there. It seems they keep
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doing this, so The are sure then, have the right person and
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the right procedure. Apparently, the news stories about the people who have
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the wrong limb amputated are not fake news. The nice thing about
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this procedure is you only have one heart. Within seconds I was
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out. When I revived while still on the operating table, I told
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the doctor that the procedure seemed fast, and asked how it went.
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You're going to need a triple bypass, she said. And she didn't
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even act surprised. I suppose for her it's just another set of
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ket up arteries. But she had just told
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me I was healthy, and maybe at most I'd need a stint.
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I was stunned. While I wouldn't give this doctor A's for empathy,
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she did have a sense of customer service and offered to show
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me images of my arteries. So, on the big screen above the
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operating table, she brought up a slide. The really bad one was
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called the right main. Apparently it was one hundred percent blocked, I
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couldn't argue. Instead of looking like a nice street where my blood
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should travel freely, it just ended abruptly like a cul-de-sac. A road
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to nowhere. It was highway one after a landslide. The artery just
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vanished, and the a second artery was not one hundred percent blocked,
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but very close. It looked like a strip of dough with a
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big dimple, like a thumb had pressed down, like a hardened old
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hose almost completely closed off. The conveyor belt of care As we
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returned home, the seriousness of the situation began to hit me. A
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nurse called the second. I
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walked in the door to schedule the surgery. Right after the HMO
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told me the had already assigned me a surgeon, and he and
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I were supposed to speak the next day. The conveyor belt of
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care was kicking into high gear. It's actually a quadruple bypass. The
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heart surgeon told me the next morning, correcting the earlier doctor who
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had said it was a mere triple. He seemed friendly enough as
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we spoke by zoom. He looked about in his forties, which seemed
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like a sweet spot, old enough to have experience, young enough so
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his hands didn't shake in the key moments, like when he was
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sewing up my arteries. He was handsome in a bookish way, and
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acted very confident, a quality well suited for a person who opens
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up chests for a living. When we spoke he explained a vein
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would be taken from an extremity, and pieces of it would be
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used to bypass the blockages. He also mentioned the possibility of long
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term numbness where the vein was removed. So I told him I
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didn't want that in my left arm since I held a tennis
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racket in my left hand, and tennis was about the only hobby
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I had. He was eager to do it within a couple of
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weeks. Sooner the better sounded good to me. He asked if I
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had any questions. Yes, I said, why am I still alive? I
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didn't mean to sound over dramatic, but given the situation of one
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artery being one hundred percent blocked, I was a bit curious. He
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said that my taking statins for thirty years was a big help,
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and also that as my artery condition slowly worsened, some other vessels
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in my heart compensated by expanding and carrying more blood flow, which
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apparently is not uncommon. I was thankful for those collateral blood vessels,
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but what's up with the statins? I thought taking those would make
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you not even need a quadruple bypass. Clearly I, like most people,
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had zero idea how this heart failure business worked. The emotions surrounding
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all of this came in waves. There weren't many happy ones, to
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be sure, but there was relief at having caught this problem before
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it was fatal, as well as a certain amount of fear. Mostly
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the sense of mortality Was suddenly impossible to avoid. As we get
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older it happens anyway, but this sharpens it. There's a very real
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difference between oh I might have fifteen to twenty years left, and
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oh I might not make it until Sunday. Still, I could talk
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about what was going to happen without freaking out too much, but
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mostly as though it was this novel event happening to someone else.
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I'd tell the news to friends and they were incredulous, while also,
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almost to a person, quick to point out how my situation reminded
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them of the pit. Having never seen the pit, I would only
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hope the people on the show generally lived. From this point forward
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the HMO calls and appointments poured in. Technicians performed ultrasounds of various
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veins and took sonograms to check my chances of a stroke. But
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nailing down a date for surgery turned out to be a wild
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card. The problem was there was a huge strike. Thousands of nurses,
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midwives, physical therapists, And physician assistants were hitting the picket line, and
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it was affecting the HMO's system. Heart surgeries that were not profound
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emergencies may have to get moved and bumped, including mine. The scheduling
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nurse had me tentatively on the calendar for surgery in the San
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Francisco hospital on february ninth, only a couple of weeks away, but
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she was also glad to tell me I had a guaranteed spot
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for a month later in case the strike messed things up. Was
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I somehow supposed to be heartened? An extra month of waiting around
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sounded terrible. Thankfully, as the tests piled up, the surgery date became
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more and more certain, until everything was set for February ninth. This
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is all they do. The morning of the operation we stood in
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our East Bay driveway at seven thirty five, staring at Google maps.
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The roads were red in every direction. The Bay Area had its
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own case of clogged arteries, and we had to be there by
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eight thirty. This commute started to feel very personal. As congestion turned
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to total gridlock, I tried to breathe deeply, but calm was impossible.
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Clearly then would give my surgery slot away. I would show up
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ten minutes late, and they'd say, Sorry, too late like it was
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as a restaurant reservation. I had to call immediately. So I did.
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They didn't care in the slightest. Once inside the hospital we passed
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a hallway filled with posters saying how their heart surgery unit is
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among the nation's rest, It was like US News and World Report
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College rankings, except for bypasses, and it worked. I felt calmer, but
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I still couldn't help asking the nurse who prepped me for surgery
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if the doctors were any good. This is all they do every
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day, she told me. My blood pressure lowered immediately. Again it was
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confirmed that there is nothing more reassuring than just being part of
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the assembly line. There is no night and day, Waking up after
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they surgery I saw my wife sitting there. She was positioned at
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the foot of the bed, the only direction I could book I
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wanted to welcome her like a good host, but that couldn't happen
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because I was half gagging on a respirator, and it quickly became
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clear that a person cannot speak when a hard plastic tube is
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stuck halfway down their throat. Still it was incredibly nice to have
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her there, because otherwise I was entirely at a loss in this
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dimly lit ICU, lying there barely able to move, eyes half open,
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totally drugged, and for the first time I realized I had just
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had a quadruple bypass. It's about seven at night. My wife hangs
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out for a while but then leaves. Maybe it's a long while,
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who knows? I'm using an oxygen mask since breathing on my own
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would be a joke. I try to inhale, and my lungs feel
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encased in stone. People keep coming in. There is no night and
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day. There is just a schedule of pills and being poked and
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respiratory therapy. You rest and the light comes on, rest, light comes
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on. At some point someone will say you need sleep. No S
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T. But they only half mean it, because two seconds later they're
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turning on the light again, and poking you or handing you pills
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for blood pressure, atrial fibrillation, stroke, whatever, or they're checking your vitals
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or giving you a shot of heparin into your abdomen, then telling
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you again, that you need sleep. I want to turn one way
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or the other, because I am not a back sleeper, but after
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they slice your sternum open, you are only lying on your back
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for weeks. My eyes try to peek to the right because staring
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straight ahead gets boring, and there I see the book I had
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brought about a bunch of assassins hunting and killing each other on
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a train. It sounds so tiring. There are two very big tubes
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coming out just below my chest. Other lines hook up to a
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machine with various numbers for heart pressure, oxygen. I can't put weight
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on my arms, because they connect to my chest, which, as mentioned
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before, just got sawed in half. Moving in bed, not using your
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arms means scooching your butt this way and that. It better be
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something you really want to do, or it's really not worth it.
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At this point my lifeline is the nurse. The doctors in the
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ICU poke their heads in once in a while and check my
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vitals on the monitor, but the nurse is my primary human contact.
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Marcella. My first nurse was a blur. I vaguely remember him on
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Tuesday morning, telling me I needed to start eating, which I had
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zero interest in. To start, he brought some ice. He put a
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tiny shaving on a spoon and fed it to me. That was
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a struggle, but seemed to go okay. But then he immediately gave
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me for shavings together on a spoon, which, even to a non
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medical professional like myself, seemed excessive, and I immediately became nauseous and
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threw it up. Four shavings? What was he thinking? Then Marcella took
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over. She was someone you never forget. She was the dream nurse,
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no nonsense but kind, a thirty year veteran of the job who
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was one hundred percent engaged. She talked about her kids, who sounded
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extremely focused and directed. She didn't seem like she would tolerate slackers
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in the house, and showed me photos of her homeland of Granada.
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A tray of food came with oatmeal, an omelette, grapes, and pancakes.
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I'm surprised I ordered they omelette, which anyone could guess will be
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crummy hospital food, but drugs do strange things to you. Marcella showed
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me a trick of pouring maple syrup on the oatmeal to make
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it edible. She also had tips for swallowing my pills so they
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don't get stuck. I seem to be three years old again. Marcella
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showed me the little plastic device sitting next to my bed. It
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was to help regain lung function, since whenever I tried to take
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a deep breath, my lungs felt like they were made of wood.
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So this little device tried, in a fun way, to gradually get
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them to have some elasticity again. It had a little ball that
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rose as I inhaled, and the goal was to get it higher
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and keep it afloat as long as possible. At first I could
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barely get The ball off the bottom. This can be a problem,
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not just to function in life, but to get the hell out
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of the ICU. If your oxygen level doesn't reach a certain point,
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forget about it. As I realized I could be stuck there for
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days, I got obsessed with my little ball inhaler. My day was
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to sleep, stare into space, stare at the book about the assassins,
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get poked at and suck on the lung toy. Once the drugs
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wore off a bit, there was also time for thinking. At times,
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that meant just marvelling at the whole surgery the idea they hand
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over your heart and lung functions to a machine for several hours
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which is mind boggling. At other moments I
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considered the idea that maybe if I had gotten my heart tested
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three or four years ago, would this entire surgery not have been
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necessary? I was filled with uncertainty. Why did they not bring it
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up? Considering that the doctor knew my family history and my tendency
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to extremely high cholesterol, why not give me this simple test? It's
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a lot cheaper than having eight people opening up my effing chest.
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Then, at other times, I could only lie there in disbelief that
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this surgery actually happened, and that I didn't end up like so
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many others who don't have the problem detected, and instead are the
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reason heart disease is the world's number one killer. Time for a
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stroll Later, on my second day in the ICU, the big moment
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arrived standing up. The whole idea of rising and walking was dreadful,
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but apparently moving was essential. You can't leave the ICU if you
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can't even leave your bed. So Marcella was on one side and
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another nurse was on the other. The protocol was that two people
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were needed to assist on these walks, since patients arms were useless
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and their legs were probably not too stable either, and if the
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patient has fallen, the nurses must pull slash push, slash lift them,
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or whatever else is necessary, to get them up. It was no
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surprise that two of the nurses in the ICU told me they
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had broken their back on they job. To get this standing up
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business going, we first pushed The button to raise the top half
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of the hospital bed, and from there I used my stomach muscles
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to sit up vertically without using my arms. It was imperative not
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to look down. With any change of altitude, I'd get instantly dizzy,
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and looking down only made the experience worse. I rose onto The
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walker, not your typical one found in a senior centre dining hall.
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This one was about shoulder height, with a wide surface on top
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There I could lean for forearms so there was no weight going
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straight to my chest. Once up I got dizzy again, so I
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rested until it subsided. Then it was off to the races, so
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to speak. In truth you can almost add, so to speak, to
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just about every routine activity in the ICU, be it walking, eating,
23:20
breathing, or conversing. I do a whole lap around the ICU. It
23:25
was maybe fifty yards total. We'd go glacially slow for a bit,
23:28
but it was hard not to get a tad competitive, even in
23:31
such a ridiculous situation, and I'd try to speed up. I wanted
23:34
to be the impressive heart patient with a walker. How silly is
23:37
that? As we passed nurses or doctors. Some cheered me on like
23:40
I was at debate a breakers. It felt more like being a
23:43
child, where everyone is special, and you half expect a participation trophy.
23:48
But still it was nice. Any human interaction was welcome at this
23:52
point, except when they came in and poked me, which was often.
23:56
I didn't want Marcella to leave, but her shift was done on
23:59
Tuesday afternoon. My admiration and gratitude for her was huge, and this
24:03
unit was full of people like this, doing extraordinary work in this
24:07
drab building on Geary Boulevard that no one notices until they are
24:10
forced to visit when they need to have their life saved. The
24:14
next day Marcella was back, but she wasn't helping me. Instead she
24:18
was assigned to the man next door. He, too, was named David,
24:21
which made it easy to fear they would mix up our medicines
24:24
or something. He had a condition I had been warned could easily
24:27
happen. He had become delirious. The surgery drugs had made him very
24:32
loopy, and from the moment he arrived he kept repeating I am
24:35
David, and I am very funny. There was an endless procession of
24:39
people in his area for hours nurses, doctors, family members. We were
24:44
only separated by a curtain, so I saw everything going on in
24:47
there. At first I didn't get it. Why was this guy so
24:50
incredibly popular? Did people really think he was so funny? As it
24:54
turned to night I was so hungry that I wanted to eat
24:56
the inedible food. But the nurse was with the other David for
24:59
an eternity. I lay there shivering and famished. I wanted to eat.
25:03
I wanted a blanket. I wanted attention. Instead I heard them talking
25:07
about cars, and she laughed at his jokes. He kept saying how
25:10
funny he was. She said she wanted to buy a Subaru. What
25:13
the hell was going on? Finally she came in briefly, and I
25:17
asked, Can I please have a blanket? My pleas was dripping with
25:21
attitude. She rolled her eyes, which is as close to telling a
25:24
patient to F off as you are bound to experience here. She
25:27
got a blanket even as she hoped for me to rot in
25:29
hell. Immediately she returned to other David's room. I was pretty sure
25:34
I wasn't getting dinner. Another nurse entered his room. Now there were
25:38
two in there with him, and this nurse told other David how
25:41
he was still pretty confused. Oh I finally got it. Everyone was
25:46
in there keeping an eye on him because he was still messed
25:49
up from anesthesia. Oops. I prayed these people couldn't read all the
25:53
petty, bitter thoughts that had been swimming around in my mind for
25:56
the last several hours about this guy who was half out of
25:59
his mind. Please forgive me, I am just a heart patient. The
26:06
ICU felt endless at times, but it was actually just under forty
26:10
eight hours. The hours leading up to my exit were especially slow
26:14
because my oxygen intake was the only thing keeping me there, and
26:17
it refused to cooperate. I had to be over ninety percent or
26:20
no dice, so I just lay there huffing and puffing on the
26:23
device with the little ball, hoping to improve and get out. Finally,
26:27
at three thirty PM I got put in a wheelchair and waved
26:30
goodbye to my friends of two days as I left the ICU.
26:33
I recalled the time of day for one reason only. When I
26:36
went down to the first floor, my nurse gave me this greeting
26:39
Hi, you have to pee by five, or we'll have to put
26:42
in a catheter. Fortunately, it's amazing what a threat like that can
26:46
do for the urinary tract. I answered the challenge with several minutes
26:50
to spare. My new room was a double, which I guess is
26:54
not a common feature in new hospitals. Something about spreading germs and
26:58
accidentally giving people the wrong medicine. But, lucky for me, I got
27:02
the bed next to the window with a city view looking down
27:04
Geary Boulevard. I also got Alfred for a roommate. He goes by
27:09
Al. He's eighty seven, from Santa Rosa, and has no teeth. I
27:13
know the teeth part because he told the nurse's stuff about himself,
27:16
and he spoke so loudly that people down the hallway could probably
27:19
hear him. I assume he spoke so loudly because he had almost
27:22
as little hearing left as he had teeth. When I tried to
27:26
chit chat as roommates might, even when there's a curtain between the
27:31
there was no response, unless I yelled. He had been in the
27:34
hospital for three weeks after getting a new heart valve. Hospital staff
27:38
kept coming in as they tried to figure out how to get
27:40
him home to Santa Rosa. And, once he was home, they needed
27:44
to figure out how he was going to survive, since he lives
27:47
alone and is pretty immobile. Given these complications, and the fact he
27:51
could barely move, Al was pretty upbeat. I think he might attribute
27:55
his attitude to being a Jehovah's Witness, which seemed to give him
27:58
great comfort. I know this religious stuff as well, because he was
28:02
so loud. As I lay there I heard him praying to Jehovah
28:05
several times per day. At first I thought he was on the
28:09
phone, until I realized he was chatting with the man upstairs. It
28:13
was sort of an ongoing mumble, and then every so often I
28:16
heard Lord Jehovah or Blessed Jehovah. But on Thursday, someone from his
28:20
church in Santa Rosa showed up, and I found out what at
28:23
least some of the praying was about. It seemed like a pretty
28:27
practical matter. To bring up with a deity, but Al told his
28:30
church friend he had forgotten the password to his iPad. After several
28:33
failed attempts he started summoning Jehovah for some assistance. And then, after
28:38
a day or so of this, lo and behold, the password came
28:41
to him, which both Al and his buddy agreed was the work
28:44
of the Supreme Password Manager. In one of my very bored moments,
28:49
I was thinking that Al and The fellow members of
28:51
the flock could have extra success when knocking on doors if they
28:55
brought up this feature of their religion. Just sitting in a room
28:59
and healing can be tedious. This place wasn't dire like the ICU,
29:03
where people were constantly checking on you, but it was very uneventful.
29:06
I'd wake up before six, then get out of bed, now without
29:10
assistance, and go sit in the chair by the window to kill
29:13
a few hours, staring at the view down Gary Boulevard. Then it
29:16
was back to bed or maybe walk a lap around the floor.
29:19
Every couple of hours, someone came by to poke a needle in
29:23
me. His was never fun, but it was surprising how often there
29:26
was a search for a vein. This could be a little disheartening
29:29
as one nurse, then another, and sometimes even another, would futilely search
29:33
for a place to poke. It made me wonder what goes on
29:36
in nursing school these days. Have all standards gone to hell? Finally,
29:41
the vain whisperer, a woman named Natasha from Uzbekistan, came in. Her
29:45
skills were tops, and if she ever had trouble, she had a
29:48
little tool like a stud finder that carpenters might use. But instead
29:52
of studs it reliably locates a good place to stick in a
29:55
needle. Buckle up One afternoon I started to feel the end may
30:00
be near, of my hospital stay, that is, when a person came
30:04
in to take the tubes out of my stomach. She told me
30:06
she was a physician's assistant. This was curious. Aren't you on strike?
30:11
I asked her. She leaned in close so as not to be
30:14
heard. I crossed them picket line. Well, whatever my opinions on that,
30:19
I wasn't in a real position to discuss the matter. I laid
30:22
there, and she leaned in even closer and clutched one of the
30:25
lines with her hands. Three weeks salary is a lot, she said.
30:29
She got her hands right next to my chest, and it was
30:32
kind of intimate, but mostly gross. So I crossed over with a
30:35
lot of my team. She started pulling, and the tube slowly oozed
30:39
out like some creature from alien. I was shocked at how much
30:42
tube was inside me. And then she left. The union settled the
30:47
next week. On Friday, Al got out of the hospital, he was
30:50
heading back to Santa Rosa, where his neighbour had gone in and
30:53
cleaned his apartment, because, as I learned over the past few days,
30:57
he was a widower and also a recluse. Also, according to Al,
31:01
the place was so filthy you could barely see the floor. When
31:04
I said goodbye to Al he told me to buckle up. Whenever
31:07
Al said goodbye to anyone, he told them to buckle up. It
31:11
was one of his two signature lines. His other was If you
31:13
run into someone, tell them Al says they should take care, even
31:17
if I don't know them. It was hard to imagine Al's days
31:21
in his apartment in Santa Rosa. When I went home I had
31:24
company, someone to cook, help me bathe, and listen to me complain.
31:28
And this eighty seven year old might have some church members coming
31:31
over, his neighbor will look in on him, but not much else.
31:34
Mostly Al, who could barely walk as he left the hospital, would
31:37
be on his own. That night at one thirty AM a new
31:41
roommate arrived to take over Al's spot. All the lights in the
31:44
room flipped on and It
31:45
was suddenly super bright. The nurses never hesitate to throw on all
31:49
the lights and talk to you like it's mid morning, and everyone's
31:52
had a cup of coffee. There is no day or night around
31:55
here. There is just time to medicate you, and time between medicating
32:00
you. But at this moment I was incidental. All eyes were on
32:04
this new arrival, and he was hurting. The problem was no one
32:07
could figure out where. They asked him where it hurt, and while
32:10
he could barely speak English he could let They know that he
32:13
hurt in the knee, stomach, elbow, back and head, pretty much everywhere
32:17
except his right big toe, because he didn't have one. After about
32:22
an hour of figuring out almost nothing, they decided to sort it
32:25
out in the morning. They let him sleep, and he snored for
32:28
hours, It was like having an electric blower for a roommate. At
32:32
some point during all of this, my nurse came in and decided
32:35
my oxygen was too low. She wanted between ninety three and ninety
32:39
six percent, and it was around ninety. I resisted, but as far
32:42
as she was concerned, rules were rules. I tried to let her
32:45
know I was fine. My oxygen was fine. Couldn't she see I
32:48
was healthy? This was the problem. Sometimes you don't want people to
32:53
just look at you and assume you're healthy, but at this moment
32:56
I really would have liked that. She didn't listen and decided to
33:00
put an oxygen mask on me. A couple of hours later she
33:03
took it off, but the damage had already been done. The next
33:07
morning, a nurse brought me applesauce, fruit chunks, and diet peach yogurt,
33:11
and my little cup of pills. She injected me in the abdomen
33:14
with heparin. This was now a daily event that I hated. After
33:18
I told her my hopes to be released, she informed me that
33:21
since I had had oxygen the night, before, it was unlikely to
33:24
happen. The doctor, she explained, doesn't like to let people go home
33:29
unless they've been without any machine assistance for twenty four hours. I
33:32
almost lost it. I sat there stewing. There was barely any one
33:37
here on the weekend. I wasn't going to get better. There were
33:40
zero benefit to being here. I sat staring out the window, resenting
33:43
my view of Geary Boulevard and just about everything else. I can
33:47
sit and be resentful at home. Time to go. As I sat
33:52
there, a terrible stench took over. It was a nuclear bomb of
33:55
S T smell. I tried just breathing through my mouth, but could
33:59
I really do that all day? I sat there, bearing it like
34:02
some deserved punishment. For what? I'm not sure. Until realizing I could
34:06
flee the room. As I did, I passed my new roommate's bed
34:09
where I could see him snoring, totally unaware of what lay between
34:12
his legs. In the hallway I let the nurses know what had
34:16
happened and took a seat. Soon two nurses entered the room to
34:19
clean up my roommate's mess. They didn't complain or make gagging sounds
34:23
because for them this is nothing new. The cleaning of S T,
34:26
like that of blood or barf, is just part of a day's
34:29
work. I could not return, so I sat in the hallway, waiting
34:33
for the doctor. I was going to ambush him as he made
34:36
his rounds. Finally he appeared. This would be my only chance for
34:39
hours, since he was the only doctor on the floor this Saturday.
34:43
He may have had his rules, but I was determined. I waved
34:46
him over and made my case. He hung on to his rule
34:49
about oxygen levels and needing to be there twenty four hours after
34:53
any oxygen assistance. I told him the machine wasn't necessary, and the
34:57
nurse didn't have to do that, and that she was wrong. I
34:59
wasn't sure if anything I said was true, but staying there felt
35:03
clearly pointless. The place was a ghost town on the weekend. I
35:07
told him about all the laps I had walked that morning around
35:10
the floor, and even invited him to do one with me. He
35:13
declined. I would have gotten down and given him twenty push ups,
35:16
except for the Sterniffham situation. He didn't necessarily agree with my point
35:21
of view, but he also knew I wouldn't give up and leave
35:23
him alone, so he decided to let me go home. I was
35:27
thrilled, even more so when my wife showed up to pick me
35:30
up with a massive box of chocolates, because I had forgotten it
35:33
was Valentine's Day. At home that night, I slept in a chair.
35:38
We had borrowed a recliner, and having the feet raised was kind
35:41
of like the hospital bed. I was mostly wide awake through the
35:44
night, because I was worried I was going to die due to
35:46
a lack of oxygen, and that the doctor, the one who let
35:49
me leave the hospital, would get in trouble. I was also worried
35:53
about just dying, but at some point the sun rose, and I
35:56
was still alive.