Take Me Down to Paradise City…
For
Chris, Haley and Scott
Monday
It had mostly been a mild
fall and early winter, but in the middle of December, it turned quite cold,
causing him shortness of breath and a feeling of heaviness in his chest when he
opened his car door and scampered to get inside his home or the other places he
visited. He’s a retired professor who has just finished a novel, and he’s
feeling the depression that comes from not knowing what to write next. He’s
lonely and he uses his Movie Pass, going mostly to matinees, seeking
conversation and inspiration, but he sees a lot of bad movies in mostly empty
theaters that he gets a kick out of leaving -- loud movies that everyone else
seems to love -- and sometimes when he leaves he boos the image growling and
reverberating from the screen.
It was after a Sunday
matinee, that ended just before it was fully dark, that the heaviness really
bothered him. He had seen the latest Star Wars sequel; had to park at the very back
of the movie’s lot because of the film’s popularity, and when he got to his car
the heaviness didn’t go away when he took a minute or so to rest.
That night he told his
son and his son told him to see a doctor.
“It’s almost Christmas.
I’ll do it if it doesn’t go away, but look at me,” he said, stringing lights around
the ceiling of his big room, then steadying the Christmas tree while his son
set and screwed it in the holder. “I feel fine. Never better.”
The next morning the
heaviness was back and stayed as he made and drank a mango smoothie. He opened
his laptop to check his email, but edgy now, he decided to call his
cardiologist; a doctor he had always liked since he helped him through an
angioplasty that had followed a mild heart attack he had when he was only
forty-nine years old. Dr. Krauss had helped him regain his strength, but
Charley hadn’t seen or talked to him for several years. No number in his phone;
he wasn’t really sure Krauss was his name, just that his name started with a K,
as his last name did, but pawing through the phone book under Cardiologists, he
saw the name Krauss and realized he was the one. He rested for a minute or two,
deciding whether to call or not, but the heaviness didn’t go away, and he
called.
After some of the usual rigmarole,
from a recorded voice, he was finally connected with Krauss’s nurse.
“Hi,” he said to her, “I’d
like to make an appointment to see the doctor.” He described the heavy feeling in
his chest. “There’s no pain,” he said to her.
“Just the sense that I’m carrying around something inside that shouldn’t
be there.”
“Are
you nauseous?”
“No, not at all.”
“Dizzy?”
“No more than usual,” he
joked.
“Where is the heaviness?”
“In the center of my
chest. You know that center spot where the ribs sorta’ come together”
“Do you drive?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Well, Charley here’s
what I want you to do. You need, right now -- right now -- to drive to the
emergency room at the IU/Arnett Hospital. There’s no one there, so go right
now. Do you know where the hospital is? Can you put it in your phone? Do you
know where the big Meijer’s is? Well, it’s just past that. Do you understand? I
want you to go to the emergency room right now, and we’ll worry about you
seeing the doctor after you do what I’m telling you to do. Right now. There’s
no one there.”
He didn’t know what to
say. He hung up the phone; fed his cat; closed his laptop; there was nothing to
save; took his time getting dressed and to the car, and he backed out of his
driveway and started his trip to the hospital. He felt no different than he had
before, but he realized that something big time was wrong. What am I doing
driving? he wondered halfway there, when he bounced through a pothole, tightening
up all his nerves.
When he got to the
hospital, he found a parking spot close to the emergency room entrance. Told
the nurse receptionist why he was there. Told her the story he’d gotten from
Krauss’s nurse. She smiled when he told her that she had said no one was there,
and there wasn’t in reception anyway. She took some information, told him to come
around her desk and she took him through the entryway behind her, sat him down
and administered an EKG. “A doctor will be right with you,” she said. “We need
to find you a room. It’ll just be a few minutes.”
This is where the holes
start, and from here on to the end of this story, there are holes in his memory
that appear like a big soap bubble, then pop to let his memories back in. He
was put in a small room, x-rayed, and he thinks, given a cat scan. Around 2:00,
he was put in a regular room on the second floor – a big room with a place
under the window that overlooked a long expanse of gravel roof for guests to
sit, or as he soon found out, to stay the night.
He was told to undress,
his clothes put in neat, large, clear plastic bags that were sealed and
labeled. He put on a hospital gown, open on the back, and he remembers telling
several nurses that a guy creating a hospital gown that was comfortable could make
a fortune. He even remembers some agreeing with him.
He had blood drawn from
both arms and from a fatty spot over his stomach, and he was given regular
reports which early on revealed no real symptoms of anything except
hypertension, but a couple hours later, he was told that the latest tests
showed that he had had a heart attack. Nevertheless, they had him up and
walking and they timed him walking a short distance to see what? He never knew.
His daughter, Haley,
appeared sometime during all this. She got sick, when nurses came in and
connected him to a couple machines, then told them that he was scheduled to
have an angiogram the next day.
Tuesday
Haley stayed overnight,
both awakened by nurses coming in several times to take his blood pressure or
draw blood. Early in the morning, a
younger doctor came in and explained the angiogram surgery, but having had one
years ago on his heart, and another fewer years ago on his left leg, he acted
almost smug. “Ok,” he said to the young doctor, “No big deal, let’s go.”
“We’re doing several
today, and you’re last minute, so you’ll go last.”
“How many before?” he
asked.
“Four before you. A nurse
will get you prepared a half hour or so before we take you up to third.”
There was nothing for
them to do but watch television. Haley found a channel he had never seen with
full movies streaming one after another, and they watched the movie, “Message
in a Bottle” that Haley said would cheer him up. It sorta’ did, but the endless
commercials drove him crazy and he explained, what Haley already knew, that he
recorded movies with commercials at home and only watched them fast forwarding
through the ads.
Around 4:30, a nurse told
him he was next. Several minutes later, he saw a patient a few doors down
brought back to her room and he was put on a gurney, or whatever it was called,
and taken up to a very small operating room where he was sedated. Later he was
brought back to his room and awakened by Haley and his son Scott.
He recalls eating supper
with an appetite. Soon after, the young doctor who had told him when he would
be taken for the angiogram came with an assistant or two (big holes here) to
tell him that he had too much blockage to do angioplasty: 100% in one artery,
95%, and 45%, in two others. “Your condition is serious, but our head surgeons,
Stone or Kalmbach, will see you tomorrow to discuss your options.” He shook his
hand. Didn’t ask for questions and left.
Later his daughter told him that the doctor
motioned her out of the room and asked her if he had a “living will.” She
thought he remembered him mentioning one to her, and the doctor told her to
find it. She asked a nurse to ask him if he had one: The nurse, probably used
to this request, said to him, “This is just routine for someone who will
probably have more surgery,” and he told Scott and Haley that he thought he had
his in a small metal box in his bedroom at home where he kept important papers.
Scott, when he left that
night, stopped and looked for the will there and in other places where his dad
kept papers and didn’t find one. Haley called his son Chris in Denver, who was
planning to come on the weekend, and told him to see if he couldn’t find an
earlier flight.
Wednesday
Scott, his girlfriend,
Brianna, and Haley spent most of the day with him. He had breakfast using the
call-in menu he’d been given -- a hospital menu that gave him lots of choices –
in a room with a place for visitors to sleep. Not like the old Saint Elizabeth
Hospital, with its cramped rooms, or the Jasper County Hospital in his
hometown, Rensselaer, that he’d moved from two years ago.
His cardiologist, Krauss,
visited him and told him he was in great hands; that his surgeon was Dr.
Kalmbach, who was a genius. The nurses in the room all smiled, said “oh, how
true” or words like that, as he bet they did to whatever a doctor said to relax
the patient. He thinks he had an echogram, then later in the morning both Dr’s
Stone and Kalmbach came in and examined him. Stone left, explaining that the
particular kind of surgery he was going to have was Kalmbach’s specialty.
And what was that? He
needed triple by-pass surgery, but because his aorta was thickened and brittle
where Kalmbach would need to make some kind of incision to connect a heart-lung
machine, he’d have to do the surgery without stopping his heart. He thinks
that’s what Kalmbach said anyway, and he further explained that the aorta might
shatter like glass if he tried to open it for the heart-lung machine and stop
his heart permanently. At least that’s what he thinks he also said.
To clarify, Kalmbach
grabbed the dry eraser pen in the room, and he drew a diagram showing all that
he had just told them on the plastic dry-board usually used to write the names
of the nurses and other stuff.
He remembers all this
clearly. Remembers Kalmbach describing an instrument called an “octopus” which
stabilizes parts of the heart during an operation, but when asked if he had any
questions he said nothing. Scott and Haley and his son Chris in Denver, who was
hooked up on a conference call, asked some, but he has no idea what they were.
Nothing was said for a time, then he said, “Well, Ok. I understand. When should
we do all this?”
Kalmbach, without a
pause, said, “How about tomorrow morning at 8:00? There was again a fairly long
pause. Kalmbach said they might wait until after Christmas, “but if we do, I’m
concerned that you might have another heart attack.” The house was polled.
Everyone said tomorrow at eight. When they looked at him for his response he
pretended some doubts, but he had made up his mind when Kalmbach said, “do it
tomorrow,” and he said, “Let’s do it tomorrow.”
That night after supper
he went through a most humbling and humiliating experience. Everyone was thrown
out of his room. He was given a battery operated, waterproof, electric razor, a
dozen towels, and a half-dozen plastic bottles of disinfectant soap, and told
to take a shower, use the razor to shave off all the hair on his chest and
groin and under his arms, and to use a new towel for each part of his body he
was supposed to wash and disinfect. The soap was yellow, a particularly
disgusting yellow, and it smelled like lye.
After shaving himself
with the sputtering razor, that sometimes pulled hair before cutting it, ouch,
he had to stand under the shower, to wash both arms and legs, his ass, his
chest, his head and neck with a separate towel; throw them on the floor; open a
new bottle of disinfectant and do it again. The shower was warm, of course, but
moving back and forth, grabbing new towels and disinfectant, chilled him, and
half-way through all this, he started crying, then he said out loud to himself,
“Fuck all that. Tomorrow can’t be worse than this. Nothing can except not
waking up.” And he dressed himself in a new, enormous hospital gown, called in
the nurses who cleaned up his mess without talking to him. They told Haley she
could come back in, and he and Haley went to sleep.
Thursday
He
slept well. Things were moving too fast to think much about them. The next
morning Scott and Brianna and Haley came in just as his nurses were getting
ready to start prepping him to go up to surgery. Everyone was somber, but some
comment got Haley laughing, and she started singing, then dancing, to the tune
of “Take me down to Paradise City/ Where the grass is green/ and the girls are
pretty.” Her brother and Brianna looked at her like she was crazy, and she is
usually a bit crazy, so she kept it up, dancing back and forth in front of his
bed.
“What’s
that?” he asked her.
“Guns
and Roses, Dad. You know Guns and Roses.” They all started laughing at him
because they knew that he had no idea who or what Guns and Roses were.
But
he said to them, “Sure I know Guns and Roses,” and he picked up the song along
with Haley until a nurse getting him off the bed told him he probably ought to
stop.
She
told Scott and Brianna and Haley they had to go to the Surgery Waiting Room on
the first floor, where Susie, an assistant of Kalmbach’s would come in every
hour and tell them the progress and any issues that they might encounter. They
all said their goodbyes, lots of hugs and “everything will be all rights,” and
they took him to the elevator and up to third floor. He was scared. He thinks
he said a prayer when they took him out of the elevator, but then he started
singing, “Take me down to Paradise City /Where the Grass Is Green/ And the
Girls Are Pretty/ and he finished it because, damn it, he realized he did know
the song. He sang, “Oh, Won’t You Please Take Me Home,” moving his arms like he
was dancing, and he sang it until they put a mask over his mouth.
He
woke up mad. He had no idea where he was, but he had a tube down his throat; it
hurt, and he wanted it out. He looked around; saw Scott and Haley, Brianna and
Wally, Haley’s boyfriend and saw no reason one of them couldn’t take the damned
tube out. He tried to tell them that, but all he could make was a gagging
sound, so he started to spell “Take this tube out” one letter at a time, above
him, like a teacher writing on a blackboard. When he finished the T in OUT, he
gestured with both hands at his mouth and the tube hanging out from it there.
They
weren’t supposed to get up and come to him, he guessed, because no one did, so
he shuffled his arms back and forth in a stop motion and tried again, and then
a third time, finally attracting a nurse they called over.
He’s
awake,” they all said to her.
‘Yes,
he seems to be.”
“Why’s
he so aggravated?”
"I
think because he wants the tube in his throat out."
This
was more than he could stand. He swallowed, coughed and managed to speak enough
for them to hear him around the tube: “Take this damn tube out.”
Then
a doctor or a nurse did, and his family came over and everything seemed to be
all right.
That
memory is so clear to him, but little else that day is except being
occasionally awakened by a nurse to do his vitals, and his gradual awareness of
being hooked up to three machines all with digital screens, and a stand holding
two bags dripping medicine into him. He remembers being alone. His family later
tells him that they were told to leave and come back tomorrow since he wouldn’t
be conscious enough to know them.
Before
we go there, here are some things he was told happened while he was in surgery.
The surgery took from 8:00 am until around 2:30 pm. Several friends from
Rensselaer came and stayed with his family through much of the waiting. He’s
not going to put names here, but he’s thanked them all for coming. Scott and
Brianna, who are sleepers, slept through much of the time, waking up every two
hours for the report from Susie, Dr. Kalmbach’s assistant. Haley was far too
nervous to sleep, so she talked her boyfriend, Wally, into taking her to
McDonald’s for two things she’s addicted to: At McDonald’s its French fries and
Cappuccino, with lots of caffeine. (Also, Gummy Bears, Mountain Dews, and
Skittles, not relevant here).
Kalmbach
came to describe the surgery, explaining that all went well, but Scott still
remembers how he talked so softly that no one could really hear him, so there
was a lot of optimistic, “I think he saids” after the meeting.
Around
4:00 pm, he was taken to what became his room in the Intensive Care Unit where
he was kept for seven days. Everyone was awfully relieved, but only his family
was allowed to go there, but they were told to leave.
Friday
They got him up to walk,
unhooked him from the machines, but he thinks they had him walk with the IV
pole for him to hold onto. A nurse came with him, holding onto a belt she put
around his waist to steady him. He thinks they walked down a full corridor to
the window that looked out over a long stone-covered roof to one of the parking
lots off several hundred yards away.
He was terribly proud of
himself, and his nurse (it was too early for him to associate anyone yet with
names) praised him for not needing to hold onto the belt around his waist. All
he can think about is that he is walking on his own 24 hours after the time
they took him to surgery.
His oldest son, Chris,
came from Denver and asked a lot of questions. He is the general worry-wart of
the family, and others came too, though he has especially big holes here. He
remembers people telling him how good he looked, but he doesn’t know who. He
does clearly remember that they had him walking again and being timed on a
short section of the corridor and getting praised for his time.
Haley came and slept
over.
Saturday
It’s Christmas Eve and a
young doctor’s aide came in to show him how he must behave to protect his
incision from being damaged. Sometime, the day before the surgery, he was given
a bright red, heart-shaped pillow with the IU Health Logo and Arnett Hospital
in bright white letters on it, that his kids had signed, like they sign casts,
telling him he was going to be all right. The aide told him he was to wrap his
arms around the pillow to stop him from using his hands or his arms to push or
pull himself up from anything. If he had to cough, he could lessen the pain by
also wrapping his arms around the pillow, something he found to be true. He was
also told that he absolutely can’t lift anything over five pounds, or he’ll rip
his guts out – his interpretation of their kinder instructions.
Next, he’s given a
strange looking plastic thing, called a Voldyne 5000 inhaler that he’s supposed
to use by sucking in his breath as strongly as he can to prevent him from
getting pneumonia. After he catches on, he gets the dial up to 2000 level, and
he’s praised some more. Do this ten times every hour, he’s told.
It’s Christmas Eve. He
feels great. He says to Chris and Scott and Haley and Brianna and Wally, “Let’s
have a party,” then he naps and later in the afternoon – after he walks – can’t
forget the walking, and the sucking up his breath into the plastic thing --
they come back with Brianna’s mom and dad and her brother, who’ve come down
from northern Illinois to celebrate Christmas in Lafayette. They share a bottle
of champagne (he gets diet Sprite) and they laugh and pretend that this is just
like any other Christmas Eve.
After they toast, he
says, “What a hell of a way to get the families together,” and they all laugh
self-consciously. His nurse, Joann, shoos them out.
“I’m not tired,” he says.
“That’s fine,” Joann
says. “You’ve done enough for today.”
Chris stays with him that
night. He tries to talk to Chris about him and his wife, Juliet’s, new house
that is being built for them, but he keeps falling asleep.
Sunday
The nights are troubling.
He can’t roll on his side to sleep, and even with the head of the bed raised,
his chest hurts when he tries to breathe deeply or when he coughs. Oh, the
coughing. He tries hard not to cough, and he clutches and squeezes his heart pillow
against his incision, but when he’s awakened to do his vitals, he almost always
has to cough, and it scares him. Dee and Stephanie, two of his night nurses
talk to him; call him hon, ask him questions about his family and what he did
before surgery. He needs to talk to someone and this helps relax him, and as
uncomfortable as it is to have to stay in only one position on his back, he
falls asleep, until he wakes up coughing.
But it’s Christmas, and
he walks without his nurse bringing a belt, and the whole gang comes back in
the afternoon with presents to open, pictures to take and some special
Christmassy Chicken Noodle soup, wonderfully full of cream and butter that
Brianna’s mom, Cheri, made for them. Here’s one of the pictures they took:
Look how happy he looks
clutching his red heart pillow, smiling like he’s just gotten out of bed at
home, waiting for all the presents to be opened and the mess cleaned up, so
they can get together in his big room, sit around his dining table with two
extra leaves in it, and folding chairs brought in from the garage, all
snuggling around the table together, holding hands and wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. They tease Scott
and Brianna about their maybe? coming engagement plans. Leave Wally and Haley
alone since they’re still just in their mid-twenties. Then the big feast.
But what they do in his
hospital room is quite enough, and after an hour or so, Joann again throws
everyone out, but Haley, who stays over, and they watch movies until they both
fall asleep early, after all the festivities they wanted or needed.
Monday thru Wednesday
He walks more and
farther, or he lays in bed and later sits in a chair that’s by the side of his
bed. He’d like to take a seat under the window where visitors sit or sleep, but
the wires and tubes connecting him to the machines aren’t long enough to reach
there. Boring.
His nurses are wonderful.
Joann seems to make a special effort to stay with him to relieve the boredom,
and she answers every question he asks her, sometimes just to keep her
there. Judy, an older white-haired
nurse, has the best response to one of his questions: She cleans and puts back
all the tubes and cables he’s attached to from the machines. When he asks her
how she keeps them all straight, she says, “It’s just plumbing,” and he
realizes how many drain out fluids and wastes from his body, and they have a
good laugh together.
Haley and Chris are his
most steady visitors. Haley’s a kindergarten teacher, but her principal, who’d
recently lost her mother, told Haley to stay with her father if he or she felt
the need. Scott and Brianna have to go to work and, Scott, who works the second
shift at a car assembly plant, comes and has lunch with him.
Slowly, they disconnect
him from one machine or another, but the most dramatic thing they do is remove
three seven-inch long blue tubes, spaced an inch apart just under his ribcage,
that drain fluids from his what? He’s not sure he wants to know. When the young woman doctor pulled them out,
he watched her, and he almost fainted. Three seven- inch blue tubes! On
Wednesday he’s liberated from the IV pole, and to celebrate when he walks, he swings
his arms like he’s an Olympic runner.
He’s told he might be
released as early as Thursday, one week from the day he had the surgery. He
needs a place to do rehabilitation that will be paid by Medicare. On Tuesday
and Wednesday, Chris, Haley, and Scott, when he can, go to inspect a number of
rehab facilities. Most are retirement centers with resources for rehabilitating
people with serious problems or people like him who have had major surgeries.
Many of the places that they visit are sterile or shabby, but they find a place
close to the university they think he will like.
He remembers another
place called Westminster Village where his favorite aunt and uncle went to live
after they retired. He remembers visiting them there, and so does Chris, but
that had been a long time ago.
He asked them to check
out Westminster. They did, and on Wednesday, Chris called him; said it was
fabulous, by far the best, and that they'd started the paperwork, so he could
move in on Thursday if he could get released from the hospital.
The next day, after
waiting around all morning to finish signing his release papers, an ambulance
finally came for him. The nurses on the floor that day came in and wished him
well, and he cried when they took him down in the elevator in a wheelchair to
the Emergency entrance, where he had to let them put him on a gurney to get him
aboard for the ride. It had snowed a
lot, and it was below zero. He didn’t care. They covered him with blankets and
took him to Westminster.
Thursday
Everyone just calls it the
Village. It has apartments, guesthouses and cottages and a rehabilitation
center where he was greeted by the Health Center administrator, the director of
nursing, a social worker, the day nurses and an aide on duty, who put a call
device on his wrist that looked like an old-fashioned watch with a button in
the center. After doing that, they wheeled him down to room B-17, a large,
attractive room with a hospital bed, a desk, wi-fi for his computer, two easy
chairs, end tables on both sides of the bed, a large flat screen television,
and a huge, ugly, dark bathroom with a shower. His room has a picture window
looking outside to a patio that was covered with what looked to be at least
five inches of snow. He signed a lot of paperwork, threw everybody out, and
took a nap in the chair next to his window. It was cold there, but he couldn’t
have been happier.
Later, around five, Chris
and Haley came and decided to show him around the place. Haley pushed him in
his wheelchair out of rehab into the main building to show him the library,
“You can maybe come here and write,” she told him. “This is one of the reasons
I picked this place.” They moved on to the large dining room where they watched
residents eating their dinner (they eat early here, he came to find out). Next,
they wheeled him into building B and into the Live Well Fitness Center with
rows and rows of exercise equipment, a fireplace, a pool table, then the most
impressive thing of all: a beautiful swimming center with two warm water
therapy pools, and a heated lap pool in a room with colorful arrangements of
lots of large plants. Finally, they took him to the art room where they told
him he might also like to come to write.
They had dinner after all
this at the Village Pub, where guests were welcomed and seven days after his
by-pass surgery he had a medium rare filet mignon for dinner. Chris had a
cocktail, and Haley had wine with dinner (he had another Sprite), and they
toasted him and each other for all the good things that had happened in just
one week. They said they couldn’t be happier with his progress. They pushed him
back to his room. (He wanted to walk, but they wouldn’t let him.) Haley helped
him get into bed, hugging his heart pillow and he quickly fell asleep.
Friday
and on
When he woke up on
Friday, he felt miserable. He was not supposed to push or pull himself up, so
holding on to his heart pillow, he found it, at first, almost impossible to get
up to go to the bathroom, or out of bed in the morning. He had to call an aide
to come help him and that took time when he either had to go, or he was just
tired of laying in one position on his back.
When he told Haley about
this, she smiled and said, “You’re not a very patient man, Dad. It’s going to
be different here.” It was, but his nurses and aides did as well as they could.
First thing every morning, after he learned to get himself out of bed and into
the recliner in front of his window, he pushed his call button and Susan, or
Shona would come in and ask him what he wanted for breakfast. He’d ask them to
bring him two decafs and a large orange juice. “I’ll order breakfast later,”
and shortly after, he was brought a copy of the local paper. He had his Alexa
with him. He asked her for the local weather, then had her tune to WFMT, his
favorite classical music station, and that completed his early morning routine.
That first day, he met
his occupational and physical therapists and had preliminary workouts with
each. Working out, he realized how shaky he felt, and all he did after
finishing a morning and afternoon session with one or the other, was fall asleep
or try to anyway, on his hospital bed with its hard mattress on which he had to
lay flat on his back. Even laying that way, his chest and back hurt more than they
had in the hospital, and he was given hydrocodone for the pain, which was
especially strong when he coughed and spit up mucus into the Kleenex he threw
on the floor. There was little else to
do. “You’re supposed to rest,” his day nurse told him. “You’re a cabbage.”
“What did you call me?”
“Oh,” she laughed you’re a CABG – a coronary
artery bypass graft patient. A cabbage.”
“Do you know what being
called a cabbage suggests to me? Chopped
up coleslaw” and he thought of his incision and the scarring that was turning dark
purple like the cabbage he always used for coleslaw. Yuck.
That first weekend there
was no therapy, and annoyed, he walked up and down all the corridors in rehab,
and eventually out of the rehab unit into the main building where the library
and the main dining room were. He also decided to eat breakfast at the Café, a
smaller serving area in the rehab unit. He found that depressing. Most who came
there to eat were in much worse shape than he was. Most had been in rehab for a
long time, and he went back to eating breakfast in his room.
It went like that through
New Year’s, but on Wednesday the 3rd, he had a temperature over 100. His nurse
tested him for the flu. He was positive, and they quarantined him.
He immediately requested
Tamiflu and later that morning he had his first pill. He was asked to sit in
the bathroom while they disinfected his room, covering his desk and the chair
he didn’t sit in with plastic sheeting. When an aide or a nurse came into the
room, they had their hair covered, and wore a gown and a mask.
He never had a high
temperature after the first day. He did have body aches and his chest hurt,
especially when he coughed, and as his coughing increased, he spit up more and
more greenish mucus into the Kleenex that he threw on the floor and picked up
when he got out of bed.
What did he do? He slept,
waited for an aide to bring him coffee and orange juice and his paper, that was
left outside his door, then breakfast. He listened to his Alexa and watched
television. He wanted to write about his by-pass surgery and what he was
experiencing. He wrote some notes on the back of the daily schedule they
brought to him with his newspaper, but when he sat down and opened his computer
he had no energy for it, closing it because his reflection in its screen seemed
to be mocking him. The last day in quarantine he was able to write and answer a
few emails but that was all he could do.
His family and a few
friends visited him, dutifully wearing masks, and he sucked and breathed,
sucked and breathed into his Voldyne and he slept.
At night, after he went
several days without a temperature, he snuck out of his room and walked the
corridors in rehab. His night nurses knew he was doing it, but since their
protections from him had been lifted, they thought, as he did, that he was over
the flu. One night, Scott and Brianna sneaked him into the Pub for dinner and he
got back with no one noticing. He’s not sure how long he was in quarantine. Was
it seven or was it eight days? He can’t
remember for sure. All he knows is that it was after he finished taking the
Tamiflu.
“Oh, Won’t You Please Take Me Home”
The first thing he did
after getting out of quarantine was get a haircut in the Village Salon. He thought his hair seemed grayer, of course,
but he felt he looked more like he had before the surgery. He did morning
occupational workouts with Andrea, often bouncing a balloon back and forth to
each other. In the afternoons he did hard walks with Siva, his physical
therapist who was from India, and he took him to the Wellness Center in
Building B where he rode a stationary bike and did some work to strengthen his
arms and shoulders. He found out from his day nurse that when he was released,
he had appointments scheduled with his surgeon and his family doctor, then he
was expected to go to a Cardiac Rehab facility in a hospital building closer to
home, and Westminster offered him the opportunity to come back there and use
their facilities for a very reasonable fee.
He started going to the regular dining room
for lunch and dinner, meeting an acquaintance from his hometown who he joined
for some meals. He had
his first shower; learned to wash and clean his incision, which surprisingly
did not bother him. He was ready to go home.
Andrea and Siva agreed, and on the following Saturday and
Sunday, he was driven home by Scott for trial visits where he watched a
basketball game on Saturday and went out to dinner on Sunday, coming back much
later than he was expected. Scott watched him like he was a child just learning
to walk, making sure that he was well enough to take care of himself,
especially worried getting him out of the car, and into his house because his
driveway was icy.
A meeting was set up for Tuesday with his therapists, nurses
and the administrators responsible for such things. The meeting went well, and
they agreed he’d leave in two days on Thursday, January 18th.
Lots of cleaning up. He filled two large clothes bags, he
had been given in the hospital, with lots of stuff he had brought to him, his
stereo and his Alexa, and lots of clothes on hangers. Again, he waited for the
paperwork to be properly signed – a whole folder full – then around noon Scott
loaded up his car; carefully helped him around some ice; got him home without
incident, over some more ice, and into his house.
He was greeted by his cat, Dexter. The weekend of his trial
home visit, Dexter had snuggled up with Haley, who had stayed in the house with
Chris before he flew back to Denver and she went back to work. “I’m back for
good,” he told Dexter, but after greeting him at the door, Dexter hid out
somewhere in the house until later that evening when he came out to be fed.
“I’m fine,” he told any who asked or called, but that first
night home, he let Scott, Brianna, and Haley bring carry-in pizza, and he
didn’t cook as he usually did when they were there with him. After they left,
he deleted many of the television programs that recorded while he was away, and
he watched the last CBS Sunday Morning show, fast-forwarding thru all its
commercials. Then, doing the same, he watched 60 Minutes.
He read over the paperwork showing the doctor’s appointments
he was to have starting on Monday of the next week then wrote them down on a
notepad he taped to the top of his coffee-maker. He was so tired, but things
were turning out all right. His chest was still numb on both sides; his right
groin also where they had gone up for his angiogram. He still hurt when he
coughed, but he was only using Tylenol for his pain. He wasn’t spitting up much
and his irregular heart rhythm, though more noticeable than before everything
that had happened, was tolerable. His family had done all anyone could have
ever expected. He needed to do more for and with them than he had.
He knew that he needed to Skype Allen in Canada and email Alan
in Florida, who had just lost his wife, and book club was coming up on Sunday
and he could see most of his Lafayette friends there. He knew it wouldn’t be
long before he could drive to Rensselaer.
He wanted, he needed, to write. He sure as hell had
something to write about. But he didn’t open his laptop and only did a quick
look at his email on his desktop. No Facebook. For God’s sake no Facebook.
He went into his bedroom and unpacked. He pushed back his
covers, grabbed his soft down pillow that he should have had at Westminster,
smelled it, and put it on top of his larger one so that it would be next to his
face. He put his heart pillow in the middle of his bed, next to him, and he
undressed. Later, after doing his bathroom stuff, he sat down on the bed and
slowly lay back, pulling his legs up and settling back against his soft pillow.
Then, even more slowly, he began to turn on to his right side. It hurt. He
heard his heart beating, feeling the occasional irregular beats. He moved even
more onto his side until his right arm was under him. “I can do this,” he said
out loud. “I can do this…” and he fell asleep.
