Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

Gid was to write me up a short bio last night (which I’ve not, yet anyway, received), but all you need to know about him is that his parents (who are both still alive) and my parents all grew up together in the little west Texas town we are from. Gid & his family live on the farm next to ours, so we were close neighbors.  Gid & I rode the same school bus and were in the same graduating class in school.  He played trumpet, I played clarinet.  His birthday is January 1, mine is March 2, same year.

He is retired and taking a writing class.  He shared this piece he wrote for that class with some of us classmates.  He kindly agreed to let me publish it for him here for you all.  I’m glad he did.  You will REALLY enjoy it, I’m telling you.  It’s a classic!

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My Day at the Emergency Room

This time they weren’t going away. I had been experiencing abdominal pains for several days and thought that I had a case of stomach flu. I awoke this Sunday morning in early October with a steady, dull pain. This was not the stomach flu. Something was seriously wrong.

By 8:30, my wife and I were at our local community hospital ER. I gave the young receptionist my Medicare card, driver’s license, and Blue Cross card (I am on my wife’s policy). She made copies and returned the cards. I could have sworn she was the same girl who served me at Carl’s Jr. two weeks before. Something about the attitude. I hoped this wasn’t a sign.

I was escorted back to the first of about eight cubicles, each partitioned off by sliding curtains that hung down from a rack where they offered a modicum of privacy. To my left and against the wall was a row of four beds. With my curtain partly open, I could see across a hallway to one bed in another section. It was early enough that not many beds were occupied.

I donned my hospital gown and within a few minutes there were three women at my bedside. One introduced herself as a supervisor and had a very professional and competent demeanor; one was my wife, and lastly, there was a sweet grandmotherly nurse who I was told would be taking care of me.

My wife, who is an RN, and the supervisor, a nurse practitioner named Betsy White, after comparing notes, realized that they had worked with each other years before in the local school system.

“Okay, lay back and let’s see what is going on here” said Betsy. She pressed on various areas of my abdomen and made note of my pained reaction.

“Let’s listen to your heart.”

“Wow, you have a pronounced heart murmur. I can hear blood rushing through a valve that is not closing completely. Do you feel tired a lot?”

“Uh, I don’t think so; probably not more that most sixty-five year old men.”

“You should have your primary care physician look at that.”

Betsy’s announcement about my heart bothered my wife more than me, but I am good at compartmentalizing. Some discussion ensued.

I have a friend who had that condition. They replaced his defective valve with a valve from a cow’s heart. It was so traumatic that he thought he was going to die after the surgery. This new line of discussion was doing little to lift my sagging spirits.

So, I thought, how about we get our focus back to my eight-on-a-ten-scale-double-over-in-pain stomach ache and do the heart thing later.

Betsy left to attend to other duties, and my wife retired to the waiting room, leaving me in the sole care of the sweet, grandmotherly lady who now turned her attention to me. She informed me that she was going to insert a needle in my arm to draw blood samples and leave a port available in case I needed an IV for pain.

Having been diagnosed with and treated for Hodgkins disease in 1985, I lost count years ago of how many needle sticks I have endured. There are good sticks and bad sticks and not much in between. I always have a surge of apprehension when someone I am not familiar with has a needle poised above the crook of my arm ready to plunge it into my delicate vein. Surely someone with a bedside manner this pleasant has a knack for painless needle sticks.

OUCH! PAIN! Someone stabbed me with a rusty nail and is trying to rip out my vein!

I look around for Grandma.

OH MY GOSH. IT’S HER! HOW CAN THIS BE?

“My goodness, you’re a bleeder” she said calmly.

I am not a bleeder. I have never been a bleeder. The only reason that I might be bleeding is if SOMEONE IS MAKING ME BLEED.

“But you clot pretty fast, so we’ll be alright.”

YOU may be alright, but what about me? This could well be the worst needle stick in the history of phlebotomy.

Keep looking at the ceiling, I tell myself . The pain in the crook of my arm will soon be supplanted by the pain in my abdomen and we’ll be back on track. Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea.

With a reassuring pat on the shoulder she departed, promising to return soon to check on me.

Thanks. I can hardly wait for my next dollop of care.

“My Gosh, what happened?”

It was my wife returning to my bedside.

“I don’t know. What happened?”

“There’s blood everywhere.”

I looked down for the first time since the needle stick from hell. Sure enough, there was a large bloodstain on the sheet under my right arm, continuing down the side of the bed and a pattern of splattered blood on the floor the size of a dinner plate.

Wow. No wonder I feel light-headed. Let’s see; Grandma, in the emergency room, with a rusty nail. I win.

My wife and I chatted for a few minutes and I laid back to try and relax a bit.

At about 9:30, I had a CT scan and was told that a doctor would be in within twenty to thirty minutes to review the results with me.

While we waited, my unseen neighbor to the right began to retch. It was very unpleasant. Every couple of minutes there would an unsuccessful effort to throw up. It sounded like a man, but turned out to be a young lady. A doctor eventually came into her cubicle and explained that she had gallstones and discussed options. I made a mental note to never have gallstones.

An attractive young lady named Katrina entered my space and announced that our insurance required a $100 copay. I inquired as to whether they took Medicare.

“Yes, we do.”

“Didn’t the girl show you the copy that she made of my Medicare card?”

Hesitation.

“No. I will go back and talk to her.”

Carl’s Jr. I never forget a face. We didn’t see any more of Katrina.

I encouraged my wife to go back to the waiting room and do something interesting like watch the Dallas Cowboys. When she left, the curtain was partly open, affording me a view of a rather large lady occupying the bed across the way. She began a conversation with an unseen person which became painfully audible to all around.

“Herman, you’ve never really known me for the 15 years that we have been married.”

(Inaudible response.)

“I’ve had to do the listening; I’ve had to do the talking; I’ve had to make the decisions. You just don’t understand me. You never have understood me.”

I don’t think we have heard the last of this lady, I thought to myself. I mentally dubbed her ‘Big Bertha’. I couldn’t help but feeling a little sorry for Herman. Maybe he tried to get to know Bertha but concluded she was just too complex for a mortal to understand. Probably a long and convoluted story.

Three hours into our twenty minute wait for CT scan results, my wife found her friend and asked if she could move things along a bit. Dr. Betram finally appeared, white lab coat open, clipboard in hand. I liked his demeanor.

“Mr. Adkisson, we have some interesting results from your scan.”

In true doctorly fashion, he held his clipboard in one hand, lifted the cover sheet with the other and began to recite the results of my test.

“Let’s see, you have two hernias, gallstones, (whoa, wait a minute…….did he say gallstones???) an inflammation in your small intestine and thrombosis of the arteries going to the portal vein of your liver and another thrombosis of the mesenteric artery.”

My brother played a thrombone in junior high band. When he was practicing I used to occasionally stuff my underwear into the bell to block the discordant sounds coming out of it. Did that convert it to a thrombosis? What do these people have against the King’s English?

“Blood clots, dear.” My wife’s voice snapped me out of my childish meanderings.

“You have blood clots blocking the flow of blood to your liver and intestines.”

“I’m going to call a surgeon and ask him if he can come in and determine if these are old or new and what can be done about them. I will be back in twenty or thirty minutes.”

Set the stopwatch and cancel supper plans, I thought to myself. This sounded like another three hour wait to me. At least we were making progress in finding out what was causing my pain. I personally liked the inflamed intestine option. It sounded logical. Let’s just de-flame this baby and I’ll be outa here. Whatever the cause, I just want to stop the pain.

Everyone left and I soon became aware of a new neighbor to my right, replacing the retching gallstone girl. An orderly came in with the requisite gown and instructions as to how to put it on, along with an assurance that the doctor would be along shortly.

“Do I need to take off my bra and panties?” she asked rather loudly as he was walking away.

“No, you can leave them on,” he replied.

Oh, please lady, let’s leave the sexual stuff in the gutter where it belongs. Look around; you’re in a freaking HOSPITAL, for crying out loud. For some reason I had the distinct feeling that this lady and Big Bertha had a few strands of DNA in common.

I don’t know how long I had been dozing when Big Bertha erupted.

“WET, WET, WET, WET”, she cried.

Omigosh. Don’t tell me she wet the bed. That lady’s bladder must be the size of a West Side watermelon. She seemed like the type that could put enough strain on the hospital staff to have the rest of us triaged to the broom closet.

“God help me……Somebody please help me. I need something to drink.”

What a relief. Somebody get that lady a stiff drink – STAT.

One thing I noticed about the staff. They didn’t seem to allow themselves to be sucked into the vortex of patients’ drama. I wondered if it was a learned skill, or whether they were all calm by nature. Maybe they kept all of their stress pent up until they got home and then beat the living daylights out of the dog or a punching bag or something. A hospital environment can prompt one to ponder things outside the stream of everyday thought.

I heard rustling in Big Bertha’s cousin’s cubicle. She walked past my partially opened curtain on the way to the bathroom. The back of her gown was undone. HELLO EVERYBODY!!! Thank God for the orderly’s underwear instructions. Being flashed without warning by that much female flesh, completely untethered, could well have jolted my system into a code blue condition.

Soon afterwards, I heard the doctor going through his twenty questions routine with her to discern the reason for her visit. She was undergoing treatment for post lumpectomy, and had diarrhea. Without going into the unsavory details, this lady was obsessive about giving a stool sample for analysis. She finally got her wish. All of my pondering abruptly ceased.

Grandma returned.

Don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me.

A quick scan revealed no evidence of sharp instruments. Same sweet smile.

“It’s almost 2:00; would you like a sandwich or something?”

Abdominal pains or not, I was hungry.

“As a matter of fact, that sounds really good.”

“I’ll be back in a few minutes with a ham sandwich.

While she was gone, I overheard voices to my left indicating a new patient had been admitted, with a friend in tow. They sounded like fairly young men and one, Ernesto, was moaning with pain.

Grandma returned with my sandwich. I unwrapped it and savored that special first bite. Just as I was about to clamp my teeth into the second bite, Ernesto began to loudly and grotesquely heave his guts out. This guy was a pro. He made Gallstone Girl sound like she was practicing for a school play. I am sure a good forensic person could have found traces of Oscar Meyer hotdogs from the Fourth of July picnic in there somewhere. That boy gave it all up.

I stared at my sandwich for a few seconds, decided I could mentally block out the carnage from next door, and finished my meager rations like a trooper.

This outpouring seemed to hasten the arrival of a doctor, who predictably went through his interview.

“Now, Ernesto, do you remember about when you started feeling sick?”

“After the coffee and doughnuts I ate this morning.”

“You were here about six weeks ago with the same problem, and a few other times before that. Do you think your condition might have anything to do the marijuana that you have been smoking?”

“No, man, it was the coffee and doughnuts.”

“How old are you, Ernesto?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Do you think the reason that you’re having these problems might have anything to do with your unhealthy lifestyle?”

“No, man, it’s the coffee and doughnuts.”

“I see. Well, I’ll be back in a little bit to talk some more.”

Not to judge my neighbor, so to speak, but I think Ernesto was missing some really important life signals here. I personally would be hard pressed to blame any difficult thing in my life on coffee and doughnuts.

At about 3:00 my doctor returned with a verdict from the surgeon.

“The surgeon cannot determine the age of the clots by any means. You need to report to the VA tomorrow or your primary care doctor to get some help with the thrombosis. We will give you some pain pills to take until you get further help from your other providers.”

The VA was very unresponsive, which was a disappointment. My primary care doctor, Dr. Miller, however, reacted quickly. After reviewing the results of my scan, he said I had blood clots that were life-threatening and put me on daily anti-coagulant shots immediately, with weekly follow-ups and subsequent blood thinners. The cause of my problem, after tests, was attributed to genetic makeup. He said that my body was developing new (collateral) pathways for blood to flow to my organs, but it would take time. I am doing much better as of this writing, but it appears I will live the rest of my life with blood a little thinner than most.

I’ve always had a fairly healthy diet, and a regular exercise routine. I am not sure what else I can do to alter my condition, besides medication.

Maybe I’ll give up coffee and doughnuts.

Ben Overby was a good blog friend of mine, until . . . he stopped blogging!  Twice!

But, he is still my friend on Facebook and wrote this “Note” there today.  I LOVE it!!  Read it and you will understand why.

Thanks, Ben, for sharing your thoughts and your life with us.

“Last evening, while home alone, I took on the challenge of decorating an outside tree with strands of lights. The tree stands about 15 feet high. I had no ladder and I’m barely 5 foot 8 inches tall.

My strategy was simple. Throw the lights as high as possible and then adjust as needed by yanking and pulling the chord from the ground. The first strand was simplest. I threw it once and it hung like a pearl necklace around the Princess of Wales. The rest of the work did not go so well.

It’s hard to actually throw a strand of 100 Christmas lights with precision. And once thrown in the top of a tree, pulling the lights out is about as easy as freeing a fishing line that’s been thrown onto a bushy bank. If you yank hard enough you will find 100 tiny lights flying at your face in the dark.

Eventually it dawned on me that I should tie a weight to the end of the strand so that I could toss it higher and with accuracy. I used a full water bottle. A miracle happened when I threw the bottle the first time. I aimed dead center of the tree, and the tree shifted 10 feet to the left while the bottle was in flight. I didn’t even graze a single limb. The bottle soared like a Bret Farve pass, long and deep, until it crashed on the concrete driveway. I spoke to the lights with words that should never be uttered. I cursed the bottle, the throw, and the tree.

Whatever Christmas cheer is, that moment was its polar opposite!

Assessing the damage, I plugged the lights into a socket and half the strand would not light up. 7 of the bulbs were broken. I took the time to replace the broken bulbs, however, the strand was still only half-lit. (Some might say that’s a metaphor of my life–a “half-lit strand.”)

But I soldiered on until I had manipulated most of the lights onto the tree. Kim arrived from a bit of shopping at which time I told her that the tree looked like something out of Charlie Brown’s Christmas. She insisted it was lovely. I disagreed too emphatically at which time she quite correctly informed me that I took all the joy out of Christmas. I thought about speaking to her as I had the bottle, the lights, and the tree, but came to my senses, remembering that unlike the bottle or the tree, she speaks back. I went back to my work.

Finally, I completed the task and was actually satisfied with the result. I stepped back to admire the creation. 600 lights (less half a strand) brightly shinning. Then I noticed the countless lights in the background, billions of stars hung throughout the cosmos, galaxies, strung on nothing, but each keeping it’s place with mathematical precision.

What sort of God is it that can speak the worlds into existence, needing neither a water bottle or electricity to get the job done? I was exhausted after 600 lights and my universe consisted of one tree. And I broke some stuff in the process.

Who is this God that dazzles us with stars just because He can?”

Ben O