me and Tricky Dick

After Richard Nixon left the presidency, maybe five years later, I happened to read that he had developed blood clots and had been hospitalized. The article explained the phenomenon of blood clots. As I read it, my inner voice told me I was going too have the same condition someday. This was, maybe, around 1980, 1981. Maybe a little later.

Then, in 2006, I did develop deep vein thrombosis, then pulmonary emboli.  I had been awakened in the middle of the night with pain in my left calf. It hurt like a fatherfucker, let me tell ya. Then I went back to sleep.  I ignore physical pain. I always have aches and pains. Doesn't everyone?

Then, several times, for no reason, I was unable to breath. Just for a few seconds. It didn't last long, just long enough for me to notice 'hey, I can't breath' and then my breath would resume and I forgot about it.

At the time, I had monthly visits with my doctor.  When I saw her the next time, her nurse skipped a question in her standard protocol. Every time I had seen that doc for every month for a year or so, the nurse had asked me "have there been any changes in your health in the past month". So I saw the doc, she checked whatever I was there to have checked and as Martha, the doc began to leave, my visit with her over, I said "Hey, the nurse did not ask me if anything is different since my last visit and something is different."  I was mostly kinda kidding.  When I had been unable to breath, I had flashed to my upcoming doctor visit, imagined the nurse asking her standard questions, so I had noticed she had not asked.

Martha closed the door, sat back down at the desk, ordered me to sit back down and questioned me closely. I had chuckled but she was very interested. I guess doctors care about patients not being able to breath. She pulled out her stethoscope, listened to me breath again, asking me to take those deep breaths they ask you to do. Mid-big-breath, I stopped breathing. She asked "Like that?  You stop breathing like that?"

She ordered a blood test. The next day, I was out all day. My doctor personally called me, not a nurse. She left several messages, each one more anxious-sounding. I finally got home around 4:30. The receptionist passed my call through to Martha, calling her out of a patient exam to talk to me, as Martha had instructed.

My blood test indicated I most likely had some clotting going on. Martha told me to take a cab to the a testing place that would check for clots. I said "It's Friday, by the time I get to the place,  they'll be closed. I'll go on Monday." She said "What kind of doctor would I be to let you go walking around with a potentially fatal condition over the weekend?" I said "I promise, if the breath thing happens again, I will go straight to the nearest ER. I'll tell them what you have said, and make sure they check for clotting."  She said "And what do you think I would look like if you walked into an ER and told them that your doctor had let you go around all weekend like this? Promise me you will take a cab."

I lied to her and promised to take a cab.  I took public transit. I had to transfer twice. And the final walk from the closest bus stop was a steep incline. The Seattle area is about as hilly at San Francisco but folks from other places don't really seem to register that Seattle is very hilly. With each step, I fought for air. When I got to the place that would do the test, which was across a parking lot from a hospital, the receptionist and the lab tech person were upset, waiting for me. My doc had called them and asked them to wait for me, told them I was coming in a cab. The bus ride delayed my arrival and my doc and the lab folks were sitting around imagining me dead somewhere.

I did have a gigantic cluster of clotting in my left thigh. And, as discovered that evening, clots (emboli) all over my lungs. Lots of blood in my lungs. It was actually amazing that I had been able to walk at all.

The next day, still in intensive care, a nurse told me that radiologist (or whatever title the person had who had read my chest screens to diagnose the pulmonary emboli) had actually called ICU to see if I had lived through the night. He had not met me -- he had looked at my scans on his home computer. And, by the way, I guess sometimes doctors in India practice medicine with US hospitals by computer, from India.  The nurse said it was unusual for the radiologist (or whatever) to call, but he had been amazed to learn that I had walked into the hospital, that I had been breathing at all.

It was serious.  They put me in ICU partly because I could have stopped breathing with each breath. They didn't even want me to stand up to pee. An ICU nurse cried when I objected to peeing in a bed pan. She said, in Filipino accented English, "You could die when you stand up. Do you think how I feel?"  I did not feel empathy for her tears.  At the time, I barely registered them. It was only later that I noticed that she had been more concerned about my wellbeing than I had been. I told her that I had been walking around for at least two weeks with pulmonary emboli, that I was unlikely to die if I stood up to pee in the adult-sized potty chair and I was not going to pee in a bed pan. Have you ever tried to do that?  I did once when pregnant:  it is very uncomfortable. You get pee all over yourself. Well, just a little over, but you feel that wetness, know it's pee. Yuck.

They put me on oxygen. When I got to the ER, my breath did not show enough oxygen. And they administer some kind of intense drug. The way the doctor explained it was that the drug would thin out all the blood in my body, make the blood so thin that my body was at great risk from the drug. I had to be very closely monitored. She said it was a bit like a very intense chemotherapy. It was chemical therapy, if you ask me, just not cancer-chemo. She explained that they hoped this chemical would make my blood so thin that the clots would begin to 'melt'. That's how she put it, melt.

And, just 24 hours later, they scanned my lungs again and saw much improvement.  I was going to live. I stayed in ICU a couple more days, very sick.

ICU is a bit like a spa experience. Everyone is very intensely focused on the patient's wellbeing. If I moved, someone came to my side.  I didn't move much. I didn't talk much. The drug didn't just thin out all my blood. It thinned out my consciousness.  It was somewhat pleasant, in a weirdly indirect way of being pleasant. I was so debilitated that I didn't have to do anything. I didn't try to do anything. I zonked out for two and a half days in that ICU.  No TV, no conversation. A friend came to visit. A few days later, when I was in a regular room, many friends called. As soon as I was not completely out of it, they removed me from the ICU.