10 days that make the difference - part four

I have been told three times to put them on. I keep refusing. I am told if I don't put them on, they will force them on me.

It's been a long week for me.

I didn't want to take the medication because they said it would make me break out and I was too good looking to let that happen. My vanity was superior to any mental health issues I might have had. I would hide the pills in my mouth and spit them out later. The nurse finally got wise to my deception after the dosage began increasing and there was no noticeable difference in either my behavior or my skin tone. She forced me to swallow the pill in front of her.

Ten minutes later I am lying on the floor, breathing heavily and without any way to communicate other than slamming a door against a wall to signal that I was in trouble. They found me twenty minutes later. An ambulance was called and I was rushed to an emergency room where they labeled me just another run-of-the-mill OD. Medical staff feels the best way to deal with an OD if it doesn't look like there is any danger of it becoming dangerous, is to leave the person alone and let them suffer through it as a lesson. The agony was incredible. There are periods that I can't see or hear. I can't stop dry heaving. The nurses are loving it.

Two hours later my blood screen came back clean of all narcotics and the staff freaked out. Further tests were inconclusive and I was put on "watch". Two hours later, my blood pressure surged to 220/120 (normal is 120/80) and I suffered a mild stroke which caused me to convulse and eventually my heart just stopped. It had had enough. I would like to say that I didn't want to die and I put up a good fight, but the amount of pain I was in, death was really the only way I could see that I was going to get any sleep that night.

I came to in a soft, quiet room. A black man entered the room and took off my respiratory and disconnected the life support unit. He was taking tubes out of my body and I thought he was an angel. I asked him if he was and he chuckled softly. Then he gave me a spinal tap and I knew he wasn't an angel.

I was in a MRI for hours before it was discovered that I had a tumor and it was the cause of all my problems. It was determined that it needed to come out or I could experience the same fate as before. The tumor lived in my adrenal gland and was pumping out outrageous amounts of adrenaline into my blood stream. The oncologist would say that it was the 100 times the dose it would take to bring a dead man back to life.

The main complication with removing the tumor was that it was active and there was some major concern that I wouldn't survive the surgery if the tumor got hostile in the middle of the procedure. I had five days to think about it. I can risk the surgery and hopefully live a full life, or I can skip it and accept fate as it comes. The negative of dying again was rarely brought up in words, instead it was left to gestures and uncomfortable facial expressions by the medical staff.

I spent the time before the surgery contemplating my death. The surgeon hadn't done the procedure since 1968, and that was in a field hospital in Vietnam. He wasn't really sure what was going to happen and didn't have a one word of hope for me other than, "hey, at least you won't be back in our ER again...". There was nothing in my favor except my youth and my vanity, which dictated my will to live.

For five days, I listened to U2's The Joshua Tree album and reflected back on my life. I was only 17.

In the bed next to me was a 52 year old man that was about to have a triple bypass. His family was constantly in the room with him. They cried together, they laughed together and he and his wife shared their fondest memories with each other. It was touching.

Three people came to visit me; A singing nun, A student from my high school that I barely knew and a hospital administrator that had to act as my legal guardian. He helped me fill out a will. I filled out a will at 17. It was pretty easy to do, I was pissed at everyone for not visiting me, so everyone was cut out of my will and what I could remember owning, I gave to my Sociology professor.

A nurse kept coming in to my room and telling me to put on support hose that was necessary to maintain my blood pressure during the surgery. I kept refusing as I didn't want to die in support hose.

The night before the surgery my roommate was taken out of the room for his surgery and he never came back. I was left in the room alone. So... I looked out the window and listened to my CD over and over. I never went to sleep.

At 5 o'clock in the morning, they arrived to take me downstairs. The student from my school was there and she held my hand as they rolled me down to the operating room. At the final door, she kissed my hand and waved.

They rolled me into a white room and stuck something in my IV and asked me to count down from five. I got to fi...

I was no longer scared.

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It was a long week. I just had a heart attack and survived it. I was in a lot of pain, but I was alive. I was alone, but I was alive. I was completely shocked, but I was alive.

The fear and pain that had filled my head for 8 hours had passed and I was at peace. Things felt like they were going to be okay. I was dead for about 15 minutes. Long enough for tubes to be shoved into my mouth and for people to pump my chest and bring me back to life. I don't any of their names. I don't even remember what any of them look like.

Doctor after doctor came in and looked over my chart and discussed with me the rare nature of my ailment. It turned out that I had a tumor in my adrenal gland and it was causing my adrenaline levels to spike causing me to experience drastic mood swings, long periods of hyper-activity, and long periods of inactivity. Each doctor wanted to know more about me. What kind of life I had lived. Was I smart? Was it hard for me to concentrate? Did I have a temper? Did I wet the bed? Was there a history of cancer in my family. I had to admit to them, I had no idea, I explained, My father was adopted and my mother's father died before she was born and I don't really talk to my mother to find out.

When the doctors weren't there, a nun with a guitar was. She had no idea what my problem was, but she was there to play and not to judge. She was shocked that I was thirty years younger than the rest of the patients in the Cardiac Care Unit. I'm sure she thought I had survived an OD, which is what everyone thought, but she never let on how she felt about it.

She played songs that I didn't know. They were sappy and Christian, but her voice was calm and sweet and she smiled all the time. I needed that.

I had five days of waiting before the surgery that would either kill me or save me. It was rough. I didn't have friends or family around to share with, but I could hear the words and sentiments of my roommate's family and I just pretended that their words were mine. It filled me up. When I needed to relax, I could listen to U2's The Joshua Tree and that was enough to make me feel like life was worth it, even if it was going to end soon.

Life redefined itself in those five days. I was being rolled down into the OR wearing support hose and holding the hand of a girl that I didn't know, and life was worth it. I had fun. I knew people. I had been places. I had lived. It was short, but it was worthy. Yes, no one was here with me, but that is how it goes sometimes. You can pick the wrong people.

I never thought about what I would do if I survived. I never made any claims to be a better person or to do this or that better if I lived. But I did. I did survive and I did make it better.

The day I died, was the day my temper died. It was the day that little things that mattered to me, ceased to matter. The day I died, was the first day that I was ever able to appreciate life for what it was. The day I died, something new was born. For no other reason, I survived just so I could insure that I was able to take off the support hose before anyone saw me in them.