It’s much too early in the morning to be driving 90 miles an hour on a moonless, empty mountain highway. I take the curve at an even 70, my tires clump-clumping against the inner median as the car struggles to reassert its momentum over physics. A part of me notes the risk; dismisses it. My ex-wife and lover checked into the emergency room. And not even a city hospital, but a backwoods mountain hospital. Her friend on the phone just told me she had her fourth seizure, and stopped breathing. She’s stable, but did she take brain damage? Is she going to die? I am about to lose my closest friend, again?
I know what to do if she’s incapcitated– I’ll have Joe fax me a copy of her paperwork from my file cabinet. I still have rights. I’ll have to call Michelle, to verify. I’ll have to call her family… do I have Phil’s number? I’ll have to call Lauren… CLUMP CLUMP CLUMP. Tires hitting the center median. I sigh. I try to clear the thoughts out of my head, which I do. But it still leaves a sinking, sick, feeling in the pit of my stomach. I am getting a stress headache too. Thank god I am still on New Zealand time and running on pure adrenaline, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to drive at all at 2am in the morning. As it is I’m likely to crash and burn at the speed I’m going.
I get to the hospital Emergency Room in record time. They ask me my relation. I debate saying “ex” before the husband – would they keep me from seeing her? – but I can order the paperwork and it’s the truth so I stick to it. The nurse lets me in through the door with a buzzer.
The ER has such a familiar smell… the strong, ubiquitous disinfectant of hospitals. I know this smell too well, from picking up my mom from her near death experiences, and I always associate it with anxiety. I wonder what sort of psychic stain all the worried family members leave in an emergency room, over time. I wonder how the people manage working here, in this womb of blood, pain, and sometimes death.
She is on her side, with an IV and various heart meters. I can’t read the heart meter myself, I mentally make a note of this gap in my knowledge and file it away for later. I want to know the rhythm of my loved ones when they are in danger. She looks ok. Skin tone is okay, breathing okay. I sit down next to her and call her name. She opens her eyes and looks at me – she can’t talk yet – she is still on the sedative, but I think on some reptilian brain level she recognizes it’s me, her lips move in the barest hint of a smile, and she relaxes visibly a bit. I give her my hand and she holds it close to her chest, and back she goes into her drugged sleep.
I wait for the nurse and doctor to address me. I know they have a job to do, I am the intruder, the extra body in the way. Eventually the nurse tells me she’s doing okay, she should be alright, but she did have a fourth seizure in the ER, that she stopped breathing, that she turned blue, and they had to give her Dylantin and Atavan, which knocked her out. There are not saying prognosis until they get results back but we know the drill. It’s unspoken. No breathing means no oxygen. No oxygen to the brain means possible brain damage. Won’t know until she’s awake and the drugs are off the system. ….if she wakes up, screams a tiny voice in the back of my head. I clamp that one down mercilessly.
When I get up to use the restroom she wakes up, and she falls asleep again when I hold her hand. On some level I suppose it’s romantic, the shining knight with the sleeping princess, except, of course the horrid reality of it. When I’m sure she’s asleep I check her head for bumps and her body for bruises – she’s okay. She was complaining of a cyst, and when we were on the phone earlier she was worried about hitting her head after the first seizure – there was blood on the floor afterwards.
Her first call to me missed me by 20 minutes, I was in the wrong room, playing Magic, when the phone rang. (phone is not leaving my side again for the next month or so, now). She got me on the third try, and she had enough time to tell me she had a seizure, that she left blood on the floor, that she thinks it’s from her head (her head hurts), and that she’s scared. She says the last two like a mantra. Her head hurts. She’s scared. Any question that would lead to another answer leads to numb silence. She can’t complete a sentence with me on the phone. I don’t know how to comfort her. Then she starts seizing again. I still haven’t seen her in person when she does it, she’s only done it over the phone with me now, but it’s still intense.
Epilepsy experienced by the observer is frightening, any way you look at it. One is very conscious of one’s complete inability to affect the outcome in any way. All you can do it make sure the person seizing doesn’t hurt themselves fatally. She is having a tonic-clonic, the famed “grand mal” seizure you see on television. Except they’re acting. Badly. The sound she makes – it sounds like a large, angry man has grabbed her by the throat is just throttling her, hard, quickly. She’s gasping for air. She’s probably convulsing now. The phone hangs up.
JD, her roommate calls me back almost immediately on her phone. She is convulsing. I calmly walk him through this. No, don’t call the ER, she’s doesn’t want to go. Sit her down against the wall or have her lay down. Blood out of the mouth is normal, it’s her biting her tongue (blood on floor explained) Let her seize until she can talk again. If she seizes over 5 minutes we call 911… – this goes on for about 4 minutes until – for reasons no medical text can explain why – she’s done. But she’s still recovering. It takes her about 10 minutes to say anything coherent other than “Wait a minute”… I tell her I love her (I do), I tell her to hang in there.
I’ve had two seizures myself. The first, I tripped over a chair when I was drunk and landed eye-first into a solid wooden chair. I got up, dazed, told everyone I was fine, sat down in the chair, and went into convulsions. An army medical vet was on the scene and checked me out – I barely remember it happening. I had my second in a car. The experience was excruitiatingly painful and I thought I was dying. I don’t feel like these experiences bridge the gap between us – but I like to feel like somehow, I’ve gotten a window into what her life is like, what her daily fear is of… and it scares the shit out of me.
She is able to talk now – We are figuring out what to do – she tells me she doesn’t want to go back on the meds, she was dialing off her “herbal tonic” and this happened. I tell her she’s had two seizures (she’s didn’t know) and I want to know if I can have JD take her to the hospital. She tells me no meds. Call the number on the medical bracelet. Then she start seizing again. JD calls the number on the bracelet. Fuckers tell him to call 911. Or maybe they’re not, what expectation did I holding for a med bracelet company anyway? I tell him to drive her to the ER. Then I pack, get in the car, drive 150 miles from SF to Ukiah. Google says it’s 2 hours to drive. I make it in one and a half, minus tire rubber from the median. The universal laws of physics bend to my will and the cops are all looking the other way.
In the ER, I try to pass the time. I draw, badly. I try to read a book, but I am too tired to comprehend. I sit and stare at her for a long time. It would be really easy to start analyzing, poring over our relationship, finding places where maybe, somehow, I could have changed the outcome and she would never wound up here. But I’ve learned (from experience) that’s a futile exercise. My mind, remains, thankfully, blank, and I’m only left to deal with vague anxiety.
The docs have pumped about 2 liters of water into her and eventually she wakes up, asking to pee. We have to get her out of all the wires – she’s looking really uncomfortable. I man handle her over to the toilet and sit her down, pull down her underwear for her, and sit with her as she pees. We were never shy about that sort of thing, it’s even less of an issue now. She stands up and, using me as a prop, she leans into me and gets her underwear back on. I look in the bowl and see the bloody culprit of the seizure – she’s on her period. This happened the last time she went into her period, too.
I help her back to bed and she’s complaining of her wet underwear – I guess in the run she pissed herself, so I get her out of the underwear and help the nurse get her into new clothes. She is shivering a bit and I ask her if she wants a furry blanket. I brought one, cat hair and all, but I know it will keep her warm. She smiles. Her eyes crinkle a bit, and she says “yeah” like one would a drawn out sigh. I get the blanket, get her snug in it, and she passes out again. She will remember none of this conversation.
It’s 6am. She sleeps through a loud boisterious hospital shift change. I get a new nurse (male) that she won’t remember either named Skip and we talk about her situation. She’s on this herbal tonic. She’s trying to see if she get can get off meds completely. The nurse, while being empathic, lays outs his feelings on the subject. Herbs can be great. But herbs also have differing doses depending on time of year picked, quantity, quality, essence, location etc. This is benefit of manufactured drugs is that you know how a dose will work, generally. He says he sees epiletics on herbal medications all the time in his emergency room. He’s also seen them seize into vegetable state. Thanks, like I didn’t already know.
When she wakes up, nurse and the doctor try to explain this her. She cries. She doesn’t want to be on Dylantin, it causes oestoporis. Atavan sucks, she wants Lamictal if anything. But the local health insurance won’t cover Lamitcal. When the doctor goes away she turns to me and says, fiercely. “I am not going on fucking medication.” I tell she can do whatever she wants. But I tell her she scared the living shit out of me, and I thought she was going to die. She does not remember any of this, does not remember Skip, doesn’t remember me getting her home, sleeping in her bed.
She doesn’t remember waking up, her asking me to watch her while she showers in case she seizes again. She doesn’t remember me filling the tub, sitting her in it, and scrubbing the sticky pieces of tape from the IV and electrodes off of her body. She doesn’t remember as I rubbed the washcloth over her toes and fingers, and rung the warm water off down her back. She doesn’t remember getting up to use the computer. She does remember laying downstairs with me, thankfully, on the carpet, in the warm afternoon. I keep repeating the same conversations with her, about how many seizures she had, how she almost died, about how the docs said she needs to be on meds. She keeps telling me she doesn’t want to. But after I leave, when she has to sleep on her own, she will call and tell me that she’s scared to fall asleep and possibly seize. We agree she should get back on the meds then.
I think the blessing, and the curse, of this whole scenario is that she can’t remember how bad it actually was. Yes, her body feels like she ran a triathalon and her tongue is a slab of ground beef… but her head doesn’t hurt. She doesn’t remember, she doesn’t remember calling me on the phone in a panic.
“I’m scared…. My head hurts…”
“It’s okay baby, it’s okay…”
“I’m scared…. I’m scared…”
“It’s okay, I’m scared too….”
