While I’m hardly a Swiss-watch kind of person, I’d be hard pressed to come up with occasions where I was totally incapable of asserting myself. Oh, there are countless times when I
ought to have done something, but genuinely being powerless to affect an ongoing situation is kind of an odd thing.
The easy example was the time I ski’ed backwards over a snow jump. Flung up into the air as I tried to wrench myself rightwise - I had the distinct, ice-blue memory of falling downward at the mountain slope that was – itself – falling away from me at an alarmingly similar rate. I knew there would be impact – that it would hurt a great deal – and that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
The mountainside cometh.
I’m told that the mind retains more input in times of stress – and this is one of the reasons time seems to slow down. You are processing everything – a continuous stream of data rather than the usual staccato of base-level-stimuli surrounding bits your mind already threw away. If your brain is thinking it might die,
*anything* could be important, so you drink it all in.
And you keep it. I can picture this fall with total clarity, despite decades of inattention. What I wore. What the sky was like. The fact that my ski tips were going to hit first-
It’s funny. I remember trying to tip them away from the slope – to gain a few (micro) seconds more before impact. Think of that, perception of time so compressed that I’m planning my impact despite never being more than a few feet off the ground. The entire episode took probably less than two seconds from launch to bloody heap – and I vividly recall making the decision to bend my knee so my ski would be above me when I hit.
Not that this made the slightest difference.
With equal clarity, I remember my other ski tip hitting the ground and (to my mind) launching my leg into an arc that ended with the ski’s opposite end spearing into my lower back. I remember thinking how improbable that was –
-right before I went face first into the mountain slope.
I’ve since forgotten my injuries. They can’t have been terrible, I didn’t go to the hospital, but whatever part of the brain that manages crisis situations was clearly convinced.
Cut. Print it. Possible near-death #4.
Funny thing. I don’t even remember where it happened. I broke my leg at Breckenridge and I could tell you the year and location - but I have no idea how I fell.
Odd.
What made me think of this was the feeling of inevitability. Airborne and hurling earthward. The certainty of impact – and the complete inability to do a thing about it.
The mountain cometh. All determining inputs are complete. No further inputs will be accepted. This will happen.
Brace for impact.
So months ago, I’m in a hospital bed – waiting for impact. Three days prior I’d called my kids and told them that I wasn’t coming home because I was
going to have surgery. E’s overseas and my week of being Dad Solo is completely FUBAR. Friends and family have jumped on the logistics grenade and I’ve been left to lay in a room being useless for days.
Having never been operated on before, this was uncharted territory. I’d resolved to be the good patient. I smiled, I joked and generally tried to make the best of it. Whatever danger there was had passed, and now there was just the massive inconvenience of being hospitalized, hooked up to numerous machines and generally treated like a lab specimen.
Anybody enjoy being a lab specimen? Right.
Three days is enough time to nail down exactly what is wrong with
- the interface of your hospital bed: the tilt controls change location as you tilt from barely visible but accessible while reclining, to invisible and nigh impossible to reach while inclined. This is an interface designed for people with impaired motor and cognitive function.
- the CPAP machine: it comes on automatically when you put it over your nose, but no one knows this except a specialist who no one thinks to ask for days.
- the TV remote / Summon assistance button: It’s on a cord and always manages to fall between the bed rail and lodge there. This is only a big deal for people who have no abdominal strength like anyone who’s recently had surgery.
The bonus round is the Summon assistance button: I hate being a burden, but when you’re alone and essentially helpless, you need help. You push the button and wait for someone to respond. First few days this response is pretty quick, but on day three hitting the button it might take several minutes just to get someone to ask what you need.
One time, it took 12 minutes. Again, nothing was urgent - but I’d filed that away.
I’d been told I could be released the following day, so I’m trying my best to do all the things they want me to do so there will be no last minute snags. You want me to walk? Fine, I’ll walk around the floor.
Ugh. Getting up out of anything without using your stomach muscles is not fun. Walking in a hunch is even less fun. But I’m going to do this thing. For the millionth time, I snag my jammed-into-the-front-of-my-knuckle IV on the bedrail – twisting the needle and generally causing pain to blossom in my left hand. Every nurse apparently has their own style of doing these things, but pretty much everyone who’s looked at mine has sort of rolled their eyes like “I wouldn’t have done it that way.” Whatever the right way is, I’m thoroughly sick of mine.
Once up, I can’t help but tense up – which makes everything worse. I remember spending about five minutes just getting myself to slowly unclench everything until I achieve a bearable baseline of discomfort. But – I’m mobile.
Into the hall. Oh wait. First call the nurse. The antibiotics IV bag is beeping at me. It needs a refill.
Right here, I ponder a career in revamping the user interface in hospital equipment. I’m post-operative and on drugs, yet here is the workflow that makes sense to the designers of this machine.
Bag Near Empty? > Yes: Begin beeping at patient.
This will provoke the patient into calling a nurse, who will ask what the patient wants.
The patient will say “something’s beeping,” which will cause the nurse to walk the length of the hall to find out what, in fact, is beeping.
Once the nurse arrives she will determine what the issue is, switch off the beeping, then walk back to the nurses’ station to get whatever materials are needed.
I ask you, in a world of telecommunications – why the hell doesn’t the device send a wireless message to my assigned nurses’ PDA?
Patient in 422 needs more antibiotics.
Why does the device need to beep at a patient at all? Like they have any idea what the hell needs to be done.
Hell, the system could have a queue. My nurse is busy, they can slap a snooze button and bounce it to the central desk who WILL find someone to do this. Coverage and redundancy, and patients can (y’know) not be bothered with this sh!t.
Speaking of bothered:
I, the provoked patient, spring to action.
There’s beeping. What do I do now? I need to call the nurse. Where the hell is the call button?
Naturally, the call button is on the end of a device the size and shape of a multi-plug power stick, and it is wedged between the handrail and the mattress. Again.
Having achieved a vertical posture without using my stomach, I lumber over to the bed and gingerly try to pry the call button wand out and fail. I don’t want to flex, I don’t want to bend, and I will have to do both to get this out.
Arrrgh.
I opt to twist it just enough to press the damn button.
Blip! There. Now I wait… I guess.
Ten minutes go by. I think I know the button the nurse used to snooze this thing last time, but all the buttons are cryptically labeled and there are MANY buttons. I could guess, but guessing wrong could be (unlikely) hazardous or (more likely) something I’ll have to explain so the nurse can correct it.
I stand for awhile until I decide to sit. I was going to walk outside, but I don’t want to take a beeping machine into the hall. The nurse could arrive any minute, so taking direct action seems premature until I’m around minute twelve.
“What do you need?”
My machine is beeping
“We’ll be right there.”
Sigh. I wait.
Again. Not a huge deal, but I was all worked up to moving around, and now I sit. The nurse swings in, mutes the machine, and swaps out the antibiotics.
I’m off. By now I’m feeling a bit nauseous. Getting up, sitting down, getting up again. Bleah. I do a quick lap around the floor and flop back in bed.
Shift change and New Nurse takes over. She tells me my blood pressure is high. Like 140 over 90. Nothing bad, just something to keep an eye on. I tell her I was walking and she says I should keep that up.
Soon as she’s gone, I try to sleep. Sleep hadn’t generally been a problem – but since my schedule is shot to hell, I’m like a jet lagged traveler. Drowsy in mid-day, but unable to sleep.
Plus, I’m getting twinging pains that aren’t enough to really hurt, but annoying enough to keep me awake. Side, shoulder, arm, chest. Twang!
Bleah. Back to my iPhone. My lifeline and salvation. I’ve paid the phone bills, notified work and kept up with current events with this thing. Anytime I need to kill time – there’s RSS.
I’m eye deep in the Spanish financial crisis, when the twinging pain returns. Mostly across the chest, and not bad – but annoying.
My nurse pulled in to check a my vitals – No signs of infection, but my blood pressure is up 140/100 and she’s saying “that’s got to come down.”
Which is perhaps the least helpful thing you can tell a person with high blood pressure.
I consider asking her about the seemingly random pain – but that just feels wrong. It’s not a big deal. I don’t want to be the whining patient. “Uh, nurse? I have an owie.”
I’m not sure I could pick a precise event that got things rolling. But I started having this cold numbness in my upper arm – then it began hurting.
Now – I’m no hypochondriac, but I know almost nothing about medicine. What little I do know comes from TV, perhaps the worst source for solid information.
Ha ha. My left arm hurts. I get it. Funny.
I try to go to sleep, and fail.
I’m warm – and I want to get out of bed. I have this odd feeling that I’m going to throw up. Since I can’t move fast, I start to get up much sooner than I would have otherwise.
Don’t want to be late.
I grunt my way up and disconnect the various cords and tubes. Mobile. I’m headed to the bathroom. Light headed.
And now – without any doubt – my left hand is numb. Like I’d slept on it, only I haven’t slept. There’s a tingling pain along the upper arm and I’m coming off my wave of nausea.
Now, I’m as skeptical as the next guy. But I’m a father of two, my wife is on the other side of the planet, and the last time I thought something was going to get better on its own – I ended up having unplanned surgery.
Blood pressure’s up. Left arm hurts. Twinging pain in the chest.
This is complete horsesh!t. If I was at risk, they would have said something, put me in ICU-
-I’m remembering the story a coworker of mine told me. Of being at a dinner engagement where one of the guests had a coughing fit and excused themselves. They found her dead a half an hour later in the bathroom. She’d choked to death on a piece of food.
This is stupid.
I get back into bed and try to calm down. My heart’s going fast, I’m warm – my arm still hurts. Flexing my hand merely redistributes numbness with a splash of pain.
I ponder hitting the Call button – but what do you say? “Hey, I think I might be very ill, right now. Can you come see?”
And the last time it took them twelve minutes to even ask what I wanted.
I opt to compromise. I need to walk around, I’ll go walk around. If I’m fine, I’ll be fine. If not, I’ll at least be in the hallway where people can see.
Up again. Light headed again. Disconnected again. And out.
Trying to walk and relax at the same time isn’t doing much for me. My head’s pounding. I’m having that cold feeling. Heart’s hammering. And I’m about halfway to the nurse’s station.
This is stupid.
I can’t see my nurse anywhere, but there’s one nurse leaning on the counter – and I have this sudden feeling like I have to say something before-
“Uh-“ This was my opening bid.
“I… I don’t feel right.”
And like that - a line had been crossed.
I begin to babble. Counter nurse calls a colleague over and we’re headed back to my room.
I’m literally shaking. She’s asking me if I can walk, ripping through a series of questions.
My head’s spinning, I still can’t feel my hand.
And then I’m in the room with three nurses. Mine’s asking me to push on her hands, then pull. They’re checking my BP and staring into my eyes.
And I remember having this disembodied sense of
This is all so stupid, but I have kids. I can’t be found in a room.
My BP was at a level that I cannot remember precisely but when they read it out- I remember thinking
This is Bad. Really Bad. I knew throughout the process that my imagination was getting away with me, but my blood pressure was much higher than it had ever been.
And I’m sitting there watching it all play out – thinking It’s about to get worse, or I’m about to be proven a complete idiot.
All determining inputs are complete. No further inputs will be accepted. This will happen.
Brace for impact.
Nurses being nurses, they rapidly establish that I am not, in fact having some cardiac episode. I am having a panic attack.
My left hand is numb, because my IV keeps snagging on things and scraping around in my hand. My twinging pains are because the air they pumped me full of during surgery is bopping around my body and causing all manner of pain. Nausea, I would learn later, was due to the pain meds having less pain to fight. If they aren’t fighting pain, they screw with other neural inputs. Like balance, and your inner ear. Sometimes they make you feel warm.
All so stupid on so many levels. And the whole time I’m telling myself this is a load of crap – but unless you really understand what your likely trajectories are – you just can’t sit back and be stoic.
I remember telling one of my nurses afterwards. “You folks have a better picture of where I’m at, what paths I’m likely to move in to and how fast I’m likely to change course. Me? I have three frames of reference and they’re all on a line. First, there’s me in perfect health. Second, there’s me right now – high blood pressure, sweats, numbness, freaking out. And lastly, there’s the ending of an episode of ‘House.’ I have no idea how many other likely paths there are out there, all I see is I was good, now I’m feeling bad, and it seems like I’m moving towards a status I really don’t want to get to.”
The disparity of knowledge was how it was possible for my nursing staff to be totally comfortable with a paging system that alerted them in ten or more minutes. If I was likely to need immediate assistance, I wouldn’t have been in that room. But that’s an easy thing to rationalize when your BP is normal and you feel fine.
A saint of a nurse went out of her way to put me at ease after that. Got an ace colleague to swap my IV to a place where it wouldn’t grind against bone when I moved – and got me telemetry so that if anything bad did happen, they’d know immediately. I had the distinct impression that I was the laughingstock at the nurses station – but honestly, I could give a crap. It let me sleep. You get to a point where you’re afraid you won’t wake up – you are not going to be able to function.
Thinking back, it was an odd transformation. I was cutting up and goofing off only hours before, but the right buttons were pushed in the right sequence and I was completely off the deep end – and watching myself do it besides.
The night I lost my sh!t.
And, I’m betting – a similar set of circumstances presents itself. I could easily do that again.
