(or How St. Lukes and Dr. Maxwell almost killed me)
In the beginning…
It was November 5th 1998, three days before my thirty-third birthday. I was pretty excited, because my mom and dad were in town and we were going to go to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse to celebrate with my wonderful wife significant other of 10 years Carla. Ruth’s Chris had just opened a few months ago, and I had heard about it over the years in other towns. I couldn’t wait to try one of those sizzling juicy steaks.
Being a programmer, it is rare that I get out of bed before 10:00 am. As this was a typical day, I got up about 10 and had my morning coffee. I said goodbye to my Carla as she sped off to her job at Vistakon. She had been working desktop support there for almost 5 years, and unlike me she actually had to be somewhere at a reasonable time. I finished my coffee, read a little paper and decided to go and get my shower. At this point, it all gets a little fuzzy, because the next thing I remember is waking up beside my bed with uncontrollable shudders and shakes. I’ve been cold before; this was not cold. This was a full-blown seizure; shake and rattle, what the hell is wrong. Suddenly, I lost control of my bladder, stomach and bowels. “I can’t believe this”, I thought to myself. I just crapped and pissed all over the floor and I can’t stop throwing up. “Carla’s going to kill me”, was the predominate thought on my mind. What the hell is wrong with me?
I had a few drinks the night before, could this be some kind of weird reaction between my diabetes and the alcohol? Was I in the middle of some kind of severe low blood sugar reaction? I tried to stand up and instantly fell to my knees. The room was spinning, and I was getting more confused by the second. In addition, I had the added discomfort of heaving the contents of my stomach all over myself while still leaking urine and feces. It’s funny, the thoughts that go through your head when you don’t know who you are or what you are doing. I was most worried that Carla was going to come home and find me naked, sitting in my own piss, shit and vomit. Or, that I was going to die and that the paramedics were going to find me like this and haul me out for all of the neighbors to see. These were stupid thoughts, but I was really in a stupid place about this time.
The paramount thing in my mind became the desire to get into the shower and clean myself off. I didn’t know if I was dying or what, but I damn sure was not going to let anyone see my propped up against a waterbed with shit on me or lying in a pool of vomit. I again tried to stand, but fell and caused a new bout of projectiles to launch from my mouth. I resolved to crawl, which seemed the only palatable mode of locomotion to my head and stomach.
I crawled to the bathroom, and reached up and started the shower on really cold. Since our house is on artesian well water, cold is really-really cold. It felt like ice as I crawled on my hands and knees into the shower. Stinging needles of water washed over my head and seemed to make me feel a little better. I used the shower wall to prop myself up, and began to clean up. Again I wondered, “Am I dying?”
I stayed in the shower an eternity, probably about 15 minutes. I had slumped back down to my knees and just let the water wash over my body. I was having trouble thinking clearly, all thoughts seemed to muddle together and stupid things became oh so important. I remembered errands that I was supposed to do, the fact that I did not say I love you often enough to my wife and daughter Rebecca, that I should spend more time with the dogs and cats, on and on. Finally, I felt able to loco mote again, shut off the shower and began to walk to the kitchen. The first few steps seemed ok, and then the massive drunk set in. Not the kind of drunk you get from a 12 pack of Old Milwaukee. Not the kind of drunk you get from a liter of fine Scotch whiskey. A weird drunkenness that is like you’re floating along and have very little motor control, you also cannot think straight and you’re hobbling like a sailor with advanced rickets. Gravity seemed to be pushing me up, down and sideways all at the same time. Time seemed stretched out and compressed at the same time. Photons seemed to leap off objects and bounce from my retinas in slow motion. I finally made it to the kitchen, and I noticed that the dogs were afraid of me. Good for them, as I was beginning to be very afraid of me also.
I picked up the phone, and then felt sick again. I attempted to call Carla, but I could not get her. I knew that they had to page her, like I had done one thousand times before, I would have to call the security desk; but I couldn’t remember the number. I kept calling her cell and it would just ring and ring and ring. Finally, after making my way to another bathroom for another round of the heaves from hell, I called Susan at my job. It was the only number I could remember at the time. She picked up the phone, and I just started crying and begging her to please get Carla and have her come home right away. “I’m sick”, I said. I told her I didn’t know what was wrong but please tell her to hurry.
Susan called Carla, and then called me right back. She wanted to know if I wanted an ambulance. Funny thing, the thought in my head was as long as Carla was coming home I was going to be OK. However, if an ambulance came I was sitting here naked laying next to a toilet in the bathroom. That thought was unacceptable. I had fallen and I couldn’t get up. I damn sure didn’t want to be naked next to a toilet in front of EMT’s, so an ambulance was out of the question. “No”, I told Susan, “just get Carla and everything will be all right”.
See, one thing that is really disturbing is that all of your life, your body pretty much does what you tell it. “Body”, you intone, “drink this Ouzo.” Body does. “Body, walk to the refrigerator and get me a beer”, and body complies. Hell, the body likes beer too. The loyal body servant obeys the command of its master. I was in a twilight zone situation that I had never been in before. My body would not do what it was told. Damn-it all to hell, this was not supposed to be the ways things worked. All your life, things just worked the way they worked. Now, my life was upside down. Left was right, up was down and I couldn’t even stand up or think through what was going on. This was the scariest shit I have ever been through.
Weeks, months, years passed and then finally Carla made it home. I started crying again. Hell, I don’t know if I ever stopped. I couldn’t control anything, because everything was so traumatic and confusing. She asked if we should go to the hospital, but I was actually starting to feel a little better. So I said “No, just take me to the doctor, I’m quite better now.”
So, she got me dressed and we went up the street to the clinic. The reason for the clinic is that we did not want to go all the way downtown to the ER and wait forever. Besides, you know I was actually really starting to feel better. In fact, down right euphoric. Hell, I wasn’t dead even after the world turned screwtape.
At the clinic, they asked what happened and I told them but I started to tone it down a little. You know, you don’t want to make a big deal and all. Besides, was it really as bad as I thought it was? The Doctor took my blood sugar, did an x-ray and then took a whole lot of blood. He asked about family histories of epilepsy and all of that. Finally, he said he thought that it might be something viral, as I did not have a fever and I seemed to be much better. Many minutes were spent on what I last ate and where I had been. All the time, I am starting to feel downright giddy. I don’t know if that is a side effect or what, but I really did feel good and toasty. Maybe I was just happy that those paramedics weren’t going to find me naked and dead sitting in my own poop. Maybe I felt like I had come close to dying but didn’t because I’m special or something. I have no clue, but by the time we left the doctor, I was flying a Dr Feel-good.
The Doc said he wanted to see me on Saturday, (this was a Thursday by the way), as he would have some of the results back and maybe have a clearer indication of what treatment he should prescribe. In the meantime, go home and take it easy. Shove some suppositories up your rear so you don’t throw up and take aspirin if your head hurts. So, Carla took me home.
The next few days…
I don’t remember much of that day. Carla went back to work and I think that I played on the computer and tried to do some of the stuff that I was supposed to be doing at my job. All in all, I know it wasn’t anything earth shattering, world peace solving or what not. Just a regular-old blurry day; one of many like before but somehow slightly fuzzier. I did try to eat, but every time that I ate something, it would come back up so I just quit trying to eat. In fact, I really wasn’t really very hungry at all.
The next day, my mom and dad came over. I decided to skip out of work because I was still feeling a little funny. As long as I sat or lay down, everything was OK. However, if I walked around after a few minutes I would start to have a really funny feeling in my back. Then, it would hurt to take regular steps so I would start to take really small steps. Remember Tim Conway on the Carol Burnett show when he played the really old man? He would shuffle forward and it would take him three minutes to get from the hotel desk to the phone whilst he called for Mrs AWhiggins. This is how I started walking. Why, because otherwise I felt too funny. My back would cramp and I would get dizzy.
We went driving around looking at houses, as my parents were thinking about moving back here from Iowa. That was when I started getting this twinge of a headache. We decided to nix Ruth’s Chris and we would just get some takeout barbecue for dinner. Oh well, when I was feeling better we would go everyone kept promising me.
Everyone seemed to notice my mood changes, but no one was commenting about it. Suddenly, I would just fly off the handle at the stupidest little thing. The problem was that I was getting this massive headache. It felt like someone put a special vise on my head. This vise wasn’t like the vise you seen on a workbench. No, this vice had special properties. It could press from all sides of my brain at once. Not just on the front and back. Not just on the top and bottom. Not just on the left and right. Pressure, top to bottom, left and right, front and back all at once and increasing as I moved. In fact, this special vice could press from the outside and press to the outside at the same time. My head was exploding and imploding all at once. The only thing that felt better was if I put my hands on my forehead and pressed my head back into the couch. I told everyone I was just tired and I went to bed.
About 5:00 am Saturday morning I couldn’t stand it any longer. My head was being crushed from every direction and all I could do was scream. My head was also pushing out from every direction and try as I might I could not press my brain back in. Carla had been awake for a while and finally asked what was wrong. I begged her to take me to the hospital, so she helped me to the car. I remember looking back at the front door, my parents standing there with concern on their faces. Carla in the drivers seat looking like she was scared to death, and all I could think about was how fucking horrible my head hurt. Ever had a sinus infection? Well, that is candy-coated kid stuff to what I was going through. Had a migraine? So have I and it is NOTHING compared to this. My head felt like three hundred atmospheres were pressing on my brain and nothing I could do would stop it.
Carla put the Toyota in move mode and asked where I wanted to go. At first, I wanted to go to Baptist, but then I thought about it and said, “I don’t give a damn just get me to the closest hospital.” Now, the closest hospital happens to be St. Luke’s, which at the time was affiliated with the prestigious Mayo Clinic. I figure hey, if three hundred atmospheres are pressing on your brain and you just had a seizure two days ago, Mayo is probably a good idea. God was I wrong.
Carla pulled up to St Luke’s Emergency and I did my Tim Conway shuffle into the ER holding my head like it was about to blow open from the internal pressure. Remember that movie scanners where the people’s heads blew up, I felt like the victim of scannerization.
Mad Max…
Of course, once you are at the hospital you get to answer twenty questions, but thankfully Carla answered most so I was able to just lay there and groan. The nurse sympathized with me, and said “Don’t you worry mister; Mad Max is going to take good care o you.”
“Mad Max”, I enquired. To which she replied, “Dr Maxwell, we be call him Mad Max.”
Folks, let me make something entirely clear. At first, I thought it was really cool that my doctor was called Mad Max, but now I realize that this should have been an early warning sign. Think about it. You’re going out to light the grill and you smell that funky LP leaky-gas smell. What do you do? Well you don’t light a match. You also don’t blow dry you hair in the shower, you don’t walk into a spinning airplane propeller and YOU DO NOT WANT A DOCTOR NAMED MAD MAX.
Mad Max came to see me and took a cursory glance at my chart. He then looked at my blood sugar reading. He asked me to explain what had happened. I went through the whole seizure, pissing, feces, projectile vomiting thing and then how it had gotten worse and now I had this headache that felt like 10,000 gorillas pressing on all sides of my brain at one time and that I had never ever felt pain this bad in my life. He said in his best GOMER condescending bedside manner, “Well, your blood sugar is fine. So why, medically, are you here?”
Folks, I was medically there because my brain had been put in a pressure cooker set on frag and I was seeing in dark tunnels. I tried to explain that I was there because my head hurt so fucking bad that I wanted someone to put a fucking bullet in my brain just to end the pain. Mad Max was having none of it. I think that it had something to do with the fact that I had long hair and looked like some kind of demented biker from hell at the time. I mean, I can see old simian Dr. Max’s point of view. The monkey reasoning must have played something like this: “Him have long hair”, Max thinks. “Him complain of bad headache” Max continues in his unique inner dialog. “Ergo, him must want drugs…”, sayeth the reptile hindbrain of the undereducated Max. Hmmm, that’s why you went to medical school Mad Max, so you could ignore the obvious textbook signs of an aneurysm or maybe viral encephalitis and think the patient just wants drugs.
Mad Max said there was no medical reason to see me, and since I already had an appointment with my regular doctor he was going to release me from the ER. I will never forget how this one nurse watched me shuffle from the ER waiting room to the car. I could tell that she thought I should be admitted, but she couldn’t say anything. I did my best Tim Conway to the car and Carla took me straight to the Clinic for my appointment. It was now 9:00, just in time to see a real doctor.
My kind doctor…
My doctor was really concerned. He kept asking me to describe the pain. Several times when I was younger, I had really severe sinus infections. One was so bad and lasted for so long that they wanted to perform surgery. You know, peel-open your face and swab out your sinuses kind of surgery. Not pretty or fun, but the worst headache that I had every had up to this point was then I was dealing with that. So, I finally told my doctor that maybe that this was the worst sinus infection in the history of the universe. It felt like I had developed a black hole in my brain which was causing gravimetric waves to compress my skull. Unlike sinus infections before, this was from all sides and not just the front pushing ruthlessly to the back. He gave me a prescription for some REALLY KICKASS PAIN PILLS and some antibiotics just in case it was sinus. Also, since I was projectile-vomiting like Linda Blair in the Exorcist he gave me some suppositories to help me keep food down. Carla drove me home.
The next few days are a blur…
I will only say this about the next three days. I was supposed to go back to the doctor on Tuesday. From Saturday afternoon till Tuesday I lived in a drug induced haze. I would take a pill and then go to sleep. I would only sleep about an hour as then the pill would wear off and the headache would return. I would then beg and scream at Carla until I got another pill. In the meantime, I think she was able to force some soup down my throat once, but that was all of the nourishment besides water. This time was a nightmare that I do not want to dwell on, nor remember. Carla says I was a complete ass, and I probably was. I can’t remember it all, but I remember enough to wish for memory erasure procedures like in that movie Men in Black.
Tuesday with John the Baptist…
Tuesday crawled forward and we finally went back to the clinic. At this point, all of the additional tests were back and the doc was really-really worried; they showed nothing. He said, “I know that you are really in pain because your blood pressure is so high, but I do not know what is wrong with you. Did you go to the hospital?” I recapped to him my adventures at St. Lukes. He said, “You need a Cat Scan and maybe an MRI. I want to you to go to Baptist Hospital; I will call ahead, and do not leave until you have had a full neuro and a Cat Scan. If they don’t want to give it to you, call me and I will make noise. Do not leave there without a scan. At this point, you must have something neurological wrong with you.” I got to say this about the clinic Doc: he is Asian, he is smart and actually give a rats behind about his patients.
So, with the admonition from the doctor firmly in place the lovely Carla drove me downtown to Baptist Hospital. We did the waiting room thing, my pain pills were wearing off and the elephants were back to squeezing my brain into mush. I was starting to moan and groan and generally piss off the other occupants of the ER. Finally, they let an intern see me and took me to the cast room. The cast room has a sound proof door. I have a theory: the cast room is for problem patients that moan like 12-dollar whores whereas real ER space for patients that have copious bleeding or protruding shards of white bone.
Thus stared the parade of amateurs. It was about 11:00 am at this point and the intern began poking and prodding me before another doctor came in. He poked and peeked until relieved by a neurologist who poked me and then passed me to a nurse who prepped me for a cat scan. They took me up and then scanned the cat out of me. All this time, I hurt more and more and no one was giving me any drugs and I was moaning and groaning like a two-dollar whore, (the twelve dollar whore having left the building). No one cared. They all thought the longhaired, hippy freak-looking guy just must want some drugs, and gee doesn’t he have a really good act sounding like a 2 dollar whore and all?
The really big syringe…
So, four o’clock in the pm rolls around and the results from the CAT scan are back. The doctor says that he can’t see anything wrong, so he wants to do a spinal tap because he things that I might have Meningitis. I tell him ok, do it or kill me because I can’t take this any more. My head feels like I am diving in the Mariana’s trench, 100,000 feet underwater with the pressure at 200 atmospheres. At this point I just want to die. Really, I did want to die. It hurt that bad.
So, the doctor tells me how much this spinal tap thing is going to hurt and how still I have to be. I just keep hoping that he will mess it up and I’ll die so that this pain will stop. He pulls out this obscenely big syringe with a HUGE needle. Remember when Thurgood Marshal said that everyone knows that the definition of obscenity is a size 42 tube top? I beg to differ, the definition of obscenity if the size of the syringe and needle that that man was going to put in my spine. He tells me to be really, really still and them pokes my spine between my vertebras. He then says, “OK, I am removing a sample of the fluid now”, to no one in particular as the nurse is really bored looking at something or other in my chart. It is at this point the epiphany strikes.
Epiphany kicks the doctor in the ass…
Oh my GOD! Blue skies, green fields and Glen Fiddich! My headache is GONE! The INSTANT that the Doctor applied backpressure to that syringe, the INSTANT he started removing the fluid from my spine the elephants fled my head. I floated up from the trench. I felt fucking great! Life was AWESOME. I was so freaking HUNGRY.
I told the doctor, “You cured my headache! It’s gone! I feel great! Thanks doc!”. However, I noticed that the doctor and nurse were all of the sudden really excited, which was a marked change from the insular boredom that they had been displaying all day long. “Mr. Arner, please lie back very carefully and do not move. Stay completely still.” Notice he called me Mr. Arner. Wow, all of the sudden I rate a little respect from these guys! No more long haired hippy, I am important now.
Well, needless to say I was an instant celebrity. I asked the doctor what was wrong and he gleefully, almost giddily, told me, “You have blood in your spinal fluid.” The way he said it, you would think that it was the holy grail of doctors to find this. He said it with all hushed tones and excited whispers like he was asking for a blowjob in church or something.
“That’s nice”, I said. “Thanks for curing my headache. Can I go home now?”
“You don’t understand”, he stated. “Blood in the spinal fluid means that you have had an aneurysm or some kind of brain bleed”, he quickly intoned.
Again, he used this peculiar reverent tone whereas it made me think I was the second coming of Jesus or something. Dudes, I cannot do justice to the excitement that this blood in the spinal fluid thing produced in the doctor. Me, I’m just happy because I’m not seeing in tunnels anymore. This doctor acts like I’m Keanu Reeves from the Matrix or something coming into his ER with Ebola and he is the only doctor not only to have the only vaccine but has an autograph book and a camera to boot. Then, he leaves the room so he can tell all of the other doctors and nurses about me. I’m not making this up. He exuberantly proclaimed, “We’ve got a bleeder!” like it was winning the pick-four lotto or something. Suddenly, all of these ER nurses, interns and housekeepers are coming by my room so they can “look in on the bleeder.”
At this point, I really don’t care. I am just so freaking happy that the pain is gone. I ask them to get Carla and I ask her to get me a cheeseburger. I am starved and pain free. Hallelujah! Meanwhile, the circus of interns keeps coming by to ask “how the bleeder feels” or just look at me like I’m six day old pancake possum road kill. I tell them, “fine” and let them know that the ultimate headache cure seems to be a spinal tap…
You should be dead… Haha, haha haha.
So, they keep making a big deal and finally I realize that I am not going to be going home anytime soon. They don’t know it, but you can hear them talking all the way across the ER. They say things like, “See that guy? He’s a bleeeeeeedddeeerrrrr. He should be dead, but he’s not. Course, might be any second, you know?” I keep waiting for Beavis and Butthead to start doing that laugh thing they do. Are these people stupid? Don’t they know that patients can HEAR?
For a moment, let me digress to explain what is actually wrong with me. I know a little more about my condition now than I did then. I have something called an aneurysm. Almost fifty percent of the population is born with one of these things, and they could go off or they could not. It depends on you and how the aneurysm is formed. Mine was in a place called the anterior communicating artery. This is the artery that connects the right half of your brain to the left half. Apparently, this aneurysm had popped, (just a little or it would have been immediate lights out for yours truly), and released blood into my brain. The increased pressure is what caused the whole headache thingy. See, you normally have fluid sloshing up and down your spine and around your brain. This fluid is like a shock absorber for your nervous system. Your body continually looses this fluid by absorption into the bloodstream, so your body keeps making more so that you have a constant pressure of fluid in your spine and around your brain. Now, say you develop an aneurysm that puts blood in with the fluid. The blood raises the pressure of your cerebral-spinal fluid, which causes a massive headache. Also, since blood is a foreign body in the cerebral-spinal fluid it causes irritation of the brain and nervous system, which in turn increases the severity of the headache. In fact, when I was out of it my Dad asked the doctor how bad this thing felt. The Doc said, “think of the worst migraine in the world and then multiply it by 10.” In my humble opinion, the doctor was making light of the situation as I can attest that the pain is much worse than that.
Well, suddenly the celebrity bleeder has tubes up is ass and wires attached to his chest and is heading off for an MRI. The MRI was fun, but then they took me to intensive care and they still haven’t feed me. I’m hungry, but they say it is now too late to eat… Oh well, I guess I’ll try to sleep without drugs for the first time in almost a week.
More to come…
