chance in life; I was a friend, a sister, a daughter, a wannabe comedian; and now I was a cardiac care patient.
And I was trapped; pinned to the machines that beeped and shooshed all night long, checking blood pressure, respiration, oxygen level, and heart rate. I was tethered to a urine bag and an IV pole, and a heart monitor that seemed to go off every ten minutes, sending a nurse rushing into the room to flick on the fluorescent light, check my IV, and yell, “Deann, you need to keep the cannula in your nose,” as she rearranged the plastic tube across my face, behind my ears, and in my nose.
A few days later, I was moved to another room (a sign that I was on the mend), where I could get up to go to the bathroom and order my own meals. I found that the hospital menu confused me with its “heart wise” meals that included coffee and a noodle dish with chipped beef, and then there was the sheer willpower that it took to sit up, organize the various wires, tubes, and electronic gadgets that made reaching for the phone a mystery. It was easier to have them bring whatever food they thought I might like: pudding or red Jell-O cubes, decaffeinated coffee, saltine crackers, meat loaf and mashed potatoes. It was the food they served my grandma at her old folks’ home.
Everything was confusing, especially the number of medical people who would walk in and thumb through my chart, then ask me to sit up so they could examine me like a plasticdummy who wouldn’t mind a cold stethoscope on her back and under her left breast, then the right; then back to the left, but this time above the areola, squarely over the heart, where the scope would sit for a long time while I listened to the doctor’s breath whistle into my ear. There were doctors and interns, two shifts of nurses, phlebotomists, X-ray technicians, a cardiologist, and an electrophysiologist, who seemed to talk right past me.
“You have ventricular tachycardia with torsades,” he said, staring at me like I should have a reaction; like I was born with an encyclopedia in my ear and at any moment would reach up, flip to page 864, and know exactly what was going on. “You’ll need to make some changes. You won’t be able to drive a car for a while, and we’ll have to run more tests.” I blinked and cocked my head like a spaniel, trying to understand how their commentary fit with what I knew of myself. They continued the discussion, making
wa-wa-wa
talking sounds while I nodded my head in the affirmative. I was lost and assumed that whatever the problem was, the best solution was to leave the hospital as soon as possible. When I asked one of the nurses about that, she said, “Oh, well, we’ll see what the doctor thinks.”
I was trapped, left conjuring which was the best way to escape—thinking that if I could fine some nurse scrubs in the hallway closet, or perhaps convert the IV stand into an axe for tunneling through the floor . . . If I could somehow become someone I’m not then everything would be okay.
My roommate was a lady in her fifties or sixties (actually, I wasn’t at all sure of her age, only that she was old enough to have grandkids, and she was sad she couldn’t smoke in bed). She was a large lady with a kind, no-nonsense face, reminding me of the cafeteria ladies in grade school—strong women who we all bet could beat up the principal but who would also give you a little wink when you said “Thank you.” My roommate would holler over the noise of the television, over the loudness that she had programmed into the TV, to ask me if I was okay. She was maternal. I wasn’t. I’d yell back, “Yes. YOU?” secretly praying she wouldn’t take the opportunity to talk.
After a few days, when I was feeling more like myself (weak and thin, but me) and like I just wanted to go home, I wandered to her side of the room and asked why she was in the hospital. She went into a long story about cancer and her heart, and then she started crying, sobbing
And I was trapped; pinned to the machines that beeped and shooshed all night long, checking blood pressure, respiration, oxygen level, and heart rate. I was tethered to a urine bag and an IV pole, and a heart monitor that seemed to go off every ten minutes, sending a nurse rushing into the room to flick on the fluorescent light, check my IV, and yell, “Deann, you need to keep the cannula in your nose,” as she rearranged the plastic tube across my face, behind my ears, and in my nose.
A few days later, I was moved to another room (a sign that I was on the mend), where I could get up to go to the bathroom and order my own meals. I found that the hospital menu confused me with its “heart wise” meals that included coffee and a noodle dish with chipped beef, and then there was the sheer willpower that it took to sit up, organize the various wires, tubes, and electronic gadgets that made reaching for the phone a mystery. It was easier to have them bring whatever food they thought I might like: pudding or red Jell-O cubes, decaffeinated coffee, saltine crackers, meat loaf and mashed potatoes. It was the food they served my grandma at her old folks’ home.
Everything was confusing, especially the number of medical people who would walk in and thumb through my chart, then ask me to sit up so they could examine me like a plasticdummy who wouldn’t mind a cold stethoscope on her back and under her left breast, then the right; then back to the left, but this time above the areola, squarely over the heart, where the scope would sit for a long time while I listened to the doctor’s breath whistle into my ear. There were doctors and interns, two shifts of nurses, phlebotomists, X-ray technicians, a cardiologist, and an electrophysiologist, who seemed to talk right past me.
“You have ventricular tachycardia with torsades,” he said, staring at me like I should have a reaction; like I was born with an encyclopedia in my ear and at any moment would reach up, flip to page 864, and know exactly what was going on. “You’ll need to make some changes. You won’t be able to drive a car for a while, and we’ll have to run more tests.” I blinked and cocked my head like a spaniel, trying to understand how their commentary fit with what I knew of myself. They continued the discussion, making
wa-wa-wa
talking sounds while I nodded my head in the affirmative. I was lost and assumed that whatever the problem was, the best solution was to leave the hospital as soon as possible. When I asked one of the nurses about that, she said, “Oh, well, we’ll see what the doctor thinks.”
I was trapped, left conjuring which was the best way to escape—thinking that if I could fine some nurse scrubs in the hallway closet, or perhaps convert the IV stand into an axe for tunneling through the floor . . . If I could somehow become someone I’m not then everything would be okay.
My roommate was a lady in her fifties or sixties (actually, I wasn’t at all sure of her age, only that she was old enough to have grandkids, and she was sad she couldn’t smoke in bed). She was a large lady with a kind, no-nonsense face, reminding me of the cafeteria ladies in grade school—strong women who we all bet could beat up the principal but who would also give you a little wink when you said “Thank you.” My roommate would holler over the noise of the television, over the loudness that she had programmed into the TV, to ask me if I was okay. She was maternal. I wasn’t. I’d yell back, “Yes. YOU?” secretly praying she wouldn’t take the opportunity to talk.
After a few days, when I was feeling more like myself (weak and thin, but me) and like I just wanted to go home, I wandered to her side of the room and asked why she was in the hospital. She went into a long story about cancer and her heart, and then she started crying, sobbing
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