In the first 76 years of my life I’ve placed exactly zero total calls to 9-1-1 because of any medical distress. I have been blessed with good health, good fortune, and an attitude that whatever potential medical experience I was currently experiencing I would survive without the need of an ambulance ride! I also don’t like being the center of attention and nothing screams attention more than an ambulance ride with a dozen flashing lights, sirens, and medical personnel dressed in day-glow tape from head to toe acting extremely… emergency-ish.
Yet, despite my previously clean track record of never having had an ambulance ride, I found myself ambulance-ing to the Norwalk CT Hospital emergency room in the middle of the night recently. What happened was simple… while in the suspended animation of pure panic, I abandoned the concept of rational thought, and asked my wife Susan to call 9-1-1.
The detail of what happened was that while attempting to get out of bed at around midnight to pee, I inexplicably lost my balance and fell heavily to the floor with an inability to right myself or get-up! Although It was clear that I hadn’t suffered a bodily injury I was entirely disoriented with no frame of reference from any other previous experience, and, I essentially freaked out. I was completely disoriented, and unable to sit-up or get off the floor. Of course my panic went viral, instantly infecting Susan, who had absolutely no idea what was happening and was suddenly thrust headlong from her slumber into my hysteria. Her hyper-instant tasks were instinctive but daunting as follows:
Assess: Husband’s body on floor, unable to get up, with an expression of panic on his face. Determine what the F is happening and is body able to get off the floor?
Action: With absolutely no idea what has happened, and no one in the room is a doctor and body on the floor is about 175 pounds, resistant, and providing little information other than he cannot sit-up.
As calmly as possible, ask, what is wrong?
My mumbled response… something’s not right, please call 9-1-1
The 9-1-1 launch sequence is initiated and Susan takes over command central as though it is her everyday gig. She places the 9-1-1 call, sometime after midnight. It is immediately determined that an ambulance is to be dispatched, and all of the participants in the unfolding drama are now on 9-1-1 auto-pilot. For a man my age, the symptoms assessed with the EMT on the phone was possible heart attack or stroke.
Surprisingly, within five minutes it is the local police who arrive first. Our rental residence, where I collapsed, is 100 yards down a private drive. It feels a bit like a parade with a dozen blue and red flashing lights in the middle of the night leading directly to our front door. Sue shows the two officers into the house and began answering the rapid fire questions while being assured that the ambulance would soon arrive.
First, however, there was a surprising appearance by our landlord (him wearing a miner’s flashlight on his head and carrying a larger flashlight to illuminate his walk down the long, dark driveway (so Susan relayed later, he startled he heck out of her). He let himself into the cottage while requesting his own private briefing from whomever was available to bring him up to speed about all the commotion. It is all starting to get very intimate in our tiny little rental house, and VERY BRIGHT because everyone has a flashlight on. By now I am lying on the bed unable and unwilling to move, which is good, because about now is when the ambulance, with three additional personnel, a driver and 2 EMTs arrive.
The small house is beginning to get very crowded. It feels almost like there should be a pot of tea for the guests.
Susan is telling the sequence of events. I cannot stand up, and my heart is racing. I do not want to move. Fortunately, I have no apparent chest pain. Cops are on their radios reporting whatever they report to HQ. It feels like they have gotten answers to all the obvious questions from Susan. Who are you? Do you live here, how old are you, what happened, history of medical issues, how do you feel, is this your wife, is this your husband, what year were you born...?
Finally the ambulance arrives. Loading me onto the ambulance gurney in the small house was like an episode of Dancing with the Stars with me being the woefully uncoordinated amateur dancer, unable to coordinate my feet. The gurney is actually an entire operating table, complete with hydraulics, hand-rails, IVs, and enough monitors and equipment to perform surgery in the ambulance. Having never been in an ambulance, this was fascinating to me had I felt better. My rough guess is that the gurney probably weighs at least 150 pounds without a body on board.
Eventually, with far too many helping hands I was strapped in to the gurney and headed out the door to the parked ambulance. At which moment I recognized a challenge that lay between me on the stretcher and the only route to the awaiting ambulance. An uneven three foot rise of natural stone steps over very rocky terrain.
EMT #1 was on the low side, squatting to lift virtually the entire weight of the gurney with me in it… while EMT #2 was on the top step providing virtually no lift or leverage. They were about to attempt a 300 pound lift, which including me and the gurney up the first of the three steps and I panicked, certain that we would all soon be in a pile at the bottom of the stairway rocks. My panic was, of course, self-fulfilling. It completely freaked out EMT #1 and sure enough he lost his grip and the gurney slid back down the first step nearly tipping over with me strapped in! He re-gripped, got a rush of adrenaline, and in one mighty lift got me to the top of the rock pile and on level ground. Phew. Hydraulics did the rest, elevating me into the ambulance and strapped down for the ride.
At about 1:30 AM I was rolled into EMERGENCY admitting room with very bright overhead lighting, given a smock, some covers, socks, and a lengthy on-call, 100-question Doctor visit, during which it seemed like 50 tubes of my blood were withdrawn and sent off for testing.
After the rush of initial excitement….pretty much NOTHING happened! Thirty minutes after the blood draw the on-call Doctor peeked his head in to say “everything looks pretty normal…but…. we’re still looking.”
I began to realize that after 1:30 in the morning you can pretty much languish in an emergency room cubicle for an entire overnight without much attention. Unless there is some type of mass casualty event no one, patient or staff, really wants to be there. As a patient in a cubicle at that time of night your life consists pretty much of hearing random continuous beeping that felt like water torture, while wearing paper open backed pajamas, aching from the IV in your wrist and wishing you were home.
At about 2:30 AM an orderly named Bobo (truth) came to wheel me down the hall for an MRI CAT scan. Apparently, this was to see if my brain had somehow fried at home and caused all of this. In the CAT scan process your head is put in a tube and scanned kind of like a 3-D printer that sounds and feels like you’re in the Holland Tunnel.
Returned to my room after the excitement of spending time with Bobo and the CAT scan machine I felt abandoned without even an occasional drop-in visit from the staff. The only noise being the continuous beeping of some monitor that is now torturing me. Finally, at about 4:30 AM the on-call Doctor stops in to announce that it looks like I had a case of VERTIGO!!! Nothing more, nothing less….with a small prescription in hand he was going to have me released.
Although vertigo can be incredibly disorienting if you have never experienced it, it is rarely life threatening, and the symptoms can usually be relieved with a specific known exercise, known as the “epley maneuver”. I think that what I more accurately experienced that evening, at the age of 75, which scared the heck out of me, was my first real-time look at my own mortality! I don’t ever recall a previous physical experience that even remotely suggested I might be actively dying. I believe that in fear that evening, I may have been processing what has always simply been an abstract concept…death and dying.
Is dying the end or the beginning? Is it fear or hope? Is it a concept or a reality? Was the moment of panic that I felt simply uber consciousness generated by the thought that….I MAY ACTUALLY BE DYING. If this was the true revelation of my 9-1-1 experience, my even greater revelation may be the urgency of the preparatory work I need to do for the inevitable arrival of my transition. I do not want to be addressing that moment thinking that another call to 9-1-1 may be a way to buy just a little more time!
There is not one single hospital employee in an emergency room complex that is motivated to help you get checked out at 5:00 AM. I verbally called out, I pressed as many buzzers as were available, but nothing. Finally, I removed my hospital gown, got dressed in my civilian clothes, picked up my overnight bag and pushed my IV stand nearly into the lobby until a mortified NP unhooked me to be released.
God Bless my wife. Although the medical emergency was mine…the burden of the emergency was also Susan’s. While I had professional attention through the night, Susan was advised to stay home and wait for a call, so she remained completely in the dark. She was tasked with notifying all the family members in the middle of the night of what was happening without having anything definitive to say about what was actually happening. My healer and life giver and mother of our children who bears it all! I LOVE HER BEYOND IMAGINATION FOR HER CAPACITY TO LOVE, HEAL, FORGIVE and MANAGE.
God Bless the EMTs and ambulance drivers who do the most amazing things selflessly without ever hearing how many grateful stories are told of their escapades by thankful and indebted patients. I will remember their attention fondly, and will be making a donation to the local EMTs in my town. Happy and healthy New Year to all!!