In Paris with my dear friend B, 01/02/12
After a long and winding delay, I have reemerged from the ether. My 2011 was defined by medical issues, the likes of which I hadn't yet experienced. Surgeries, ERs and grafts, oh my. Stitches, iv's, and so, so much Percocet. Apple juice and graham crackers upon coming out of anesthesia. Lost days, weeks, most of a season.
Yesterday was my first day out of a cast since April, when I discovered that, six weeks or so earlier, I had fractured my scaphoid. This is also when I discovered that I had a scaphoid, and I have since said this word enough to compensate for two decades of negligence. I have had three surgeries on this tiny bone, a bone so vexing to the medical community that it has its own book. Surgery one involved putting a screw in to hold it together. Surgery two, three months later, was a bone graft from my radial. As icky as that was, it absolutely pales in comparison to surgery three, a bone graft from my hip in October. Should anyone offer to remove your iliac crest and graft it onto your scaphoid, politely decline. It's not as much fun as it sounds.
In the middle of it all, on June 7, 2011, I took the first (and last) of a six-week class, Intro to Personal Finance, as prescribed by my father for reasons too obvious to fight. It was an unseasonably hot and humid day, and after lunch in the park (Bryant), I decided to walk to my appointment with the wrist surgeon on 88th Street. I was not really supposed to exercise during this stretch, but a 45 block walk seemed reasonable. At the corner of 52nd and 5th, I started to feel lightheaded and nauseated, which is a relatively normal state for me. The subway was across the street, and I decided to abandon my walk. Thank God I never got there. I started seeing dizzying splotches of bright sunlight, the same patterns repeating everywhere I turned. Behind me was a Juicy Couture - yep - and the last thing I remember is deciding to go and sit down in the air conditioning. Some four (according to the witnesses) minutes later I came to surrounded by Juicy employees. Someone handed me a cup of water and someone else told me that I'd fainted and it was very hot out and that they'd called the paramedics. I told them I had to go to my appointment and had to get up, but they kept me there. I remember looking to my right where my bag and papers were and seeing a big pool of Hawaiian Punch. I asked what it was and the fellow behind me, holding a compress to my head, who would turn out to be the one with the CPR and First Aid training, said, "We spilled something there. Don't worry about it."
It took the paramedics about 15 minutes to arrive, and on the way to the hospital I asked repeatedly if I was going to die. I fear things like this happening to people I love on a regular basis, and the results are usually far-reaching in my malevolent fantasies. I think they said no, as I imagine they always do. The female paramedic asked my name address date of birth, which she read on the driver's license she'd extracted from my splattered purse. I was semi-triaged at Bellevue ER and spent a lot of time on a gurney in the hallway being hip checked by passers by. The man having tests in the room I was parked near died an exciting death, fifteen doctors and nurses responding to shouts of "Code Blue!", frantic instructions to repeat whatever was being done, and, finally, the flat line. The denouement. When I finally got to a room, seven staples and many conversations with a cocky resident who so wanted me to have a drug problem he practically begged later, one of my roommates was a Mr. Singh, who shouted insults at the nurse in Hindi (they found a translator) throughout the night. They turned my valium drip up as high as they could so that I could sleep.
Turns out I had a concussion, and a not super-minor one. Short term memory loss and something resembling aphasia took away most of the summer, with that first bone graft thrown in for reinforcement. People came to visit me throughout and I forgot who, and when. My memories came from photos and conversations I found myself in. None of this is good for the mood, which is further squandered by lack of mental and physical exercise. In two weeks I go to an appointment suggested by my neurologist, four hours of neuro-psychological testing, to ensure that I've no longterm damages from the event.
I've since learned what happened between my deciding to enter the store and my coming to. I was leaning in the doorway of what turned out to be the employees' office when a few of them came back from lunch. I grabbed someone's arm and told him that I didn't feel well. He told me to come into the air-conditioning, turned his key in the lock, and I fell straight back and landed on the floor. They got their manager and the guy, Chris, who knows first aid and CPR which we should all know, and at first I was just passed out. Then blood, with the decency to resemble Hawaiian Punch, started to pool around my head. Apparently this made them uncomfortable. I was out for four minutes, and waited another eleven for the ambulance.
I have been profoundly lucky in the health department until now, and these harrowing experiences mark the end of taking it all for granted and the beginning of trying -failing- and trying again to do things well and to stay as from from danger as I can comfortably manage.
And how was your summer?
