Don't Leave Me This Way: Or When I Get Back on My Feet You'll Be Sorry (2 page)

CARYN’S CAR
evaporates.

She’s in the hospital parking lot and for some lunatic reason she announces that it’s going to be too expensive to go into the emergency room. With her head steadily intensifying to Chernobyl status, she makes Caryn take her all the way up to the fourth floor, where the walk-in room for outpatients is located. Space is rippling visibly before her in the waiting room. When people talk, their words get heavy and thud to the floor before reaching her. The nurse says something to her but not enough words make it through the wall. The nurse seems Slow. Deliberate. Intense. And there’s no logic, at least none that she can make out.

Caryn translates. It turns out she’s supposed to go to the emergency room after all.

Time shudders again and the triage nurse is taking her blood pressure and it’s a little low but (according to Caryn, translating the nurse) “not an alarming range.” And she does feel calm for some reason, even with waves of pain that make the room flash and disappear. She realizes she’s in the emergency room’s corridor. An elderly man and woman, bleeding, are wheeled past her on two gurneys. She hears the words “auto accident.” The room goes white with pain again.

Now
she’s
on a gurney, a narrow corridor that smells of alcohol is consuming her, and Caryn is receding into the edges of her peripheral vision. She shouts out, “Call Jim. He’s my husband. Have him paged and tell him to get my entire family over here because I’m not going to make it.” Caryn knows Jim is her husband but for some reason she wants to make this point absolutely clear to her.

The corridor throws Caryn away and she listens to the wheels rattle and stares at the ceiling as it hurtles past above her. Time shudders and then Caryn is back again next to her and she’s still staring at the ceiling but she’s not moving anymore. The only thing that’s moving is the wave of white pain in her skull.

She says, “Caryn, hold my hand.” She does and she squeezes her hand hard because the pain is right on top of her skull and she thinks she is going to die then and there. She doesn’t know it at the time, but every time her heart beats, every time her pulse throbs, it releases blood into her brain. On the count of two. Every time she counts to two, she hits a wave of pain. It bursts and explodes. She can’t catch her breath.

Time quivers and the room goes bright with the pain and when it lightens up again she is throwing up, just like Randy had suggested back at work, only it doesn’t seem to be helping much. As she vomits, people are taking off her jewelry and shouting and she hears scissors cutting her blouse and bra away and a tube goes down her throat and the gurney is moving again and Jim flashes by and they lead him away and she feels bad that he has to see her this way and the tube in her throat comes out again and a male nurse is running next to her as she plunges down the corridor on her gurney and he’s telling her to grab his fingers hard.

She tries, but she can’t see his fingers.

They’re a blur, moving slowly in the air. It’s like some trippy sixties film, moving frame by frame. She can’t manage to get a fix on them. She orders her hand to reach out to where his fingers ought to be, but her hand refuses to respond.

Is he doing magic tricks with his hands to make his fingers fade in and out?

She’s having a stroke.

Instantly she feels a calm place in the middle of the pain and she says to the guy pushing her down the hallway, “Am I having a stroke?” And the ceiling is getting lighter and lighter because another wave of pain is coming.

He doesn’t look at her, though, he keeps staring straight ahead, but he smiles on purpose and says, “What did you say? You want a smoke?”

She realizes he’s making a joke for her and she thinks it would probably be polite if she laughed, but then the ceiling vanishes, white.

She is gone.

Don’t worry.

Life will go on.

You’re a fighter.

You have purpose.

You have a mission.

SOMEONE IS TELLING
you to wake up.

You open your eyes, feeling empty in a white room that won’t tell you anything about how it met you. Your head is throbbing and you are staring at the ceiling and your peripheral vision says you are surrounded by your family and you can hear some of them saying you should wake up and they sound dangerously, oddly happy, purposefully happy for your benefit, and it is obvious to you now that Something Has Happened.

You try to turn over to look at your family. But the left side of your body refuses to obey any command from you.

It’s not really you. Your left side lies frozen. You wonder,
Why are they using straps on me?

You try to turn again. No doubt about it now. Not only will your body not obey you—it is also totally numb on the left side. It doesn’t exist.

This is what you found out later: Your mom had been saying the rosary while you were having emergency brain surgery. Your other family members had been mostly pacing. One of the neuro-surgeons from the operating team appeared in the room where your family was sequestered. “Who are all these people?” he asked, stepping into the room where sixteen people waited. “We’re her family,” your brother Jeff replied.

“She is in critical condition. She appears to have had a seizure and she had heart failure. Her hemorrhage is massive. We’re doing life-saving measures to evacuate the blood. If she makes it, she’ll most likely need further reparative surgery once she’s been stabilized.”

“What do you mean ‘if she makes it’? She’s healthy, young, and strong,” Jim said incredulously.

“What I’m saying is that she may not survive the operation. This procedure has a high mortality rate,” the surgeon said solemnly. He turned and left as abruptly as he’d entered.

Silence.

As if to break the tension, your brother Joe blurted out, “Let’s all send her some positive energy.” To which your father instantly responded, “Shut the hell up, Joe.”

YOU HAVE TUBES COMING OUT
of everywhere. You move your hand to your face to feel where the tubes go, but time shudders and you’re gone again.

You will definitely be someplace after this part.

You will occupy space again and time will pass for you again.

When you get there you will see people who love you.

SOMEONE IS TELLING
you to wake up.

“How did she know she was having a stroke? Is she in a risk group?”

“No, not from what’s here.”

“Are you sure that’s what she said? ‘Am I having a stroke?’”

“He’s got it on the report.”

“Is she waking up?”

Silence.

“Are you waking up, Julia?”

WAIT A MINUTE MAYBE
that was about the other time there
was
another time when people who love you
were
saying wake up Julia wake up there
was
a time when…

“Hi. We’re going to be your radiology team. I’m Doctor Doogie and this is Doctor Radio. We think you may have an AVM.”

“Arterial vascular malformation.”

“That’s an inherent weakness in the blood vessels.”

“It’s usually congenital.”

“You’re going to have an angiogram.”

Two doctors. Two assistants. They wheel you into the white, brightly lit, sterile room for an angiogram. Whatever that is. There’s music playing in the background, James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain.”

“Not a great song, guys,” you mutter.

“Why’s that?” says Dr. Doogie.

“Why’s that? Suzanne doesn’t make it! That’s why’s that.”

The nurse assistant smiles and leans in so she’s next to your face and asks if you’d rather hear a Carpenters CD.

This gives you pause.

It occurs to you that Karen Carpenter croaked, too.

“Don’t bother.”

They hoist your (foreign) body onto a narrow slab and give you painkillers and strip you naked and shave off your pubic hair and swab you with antiseptics and put a white disk about two inches from your nose. You say, “Before you get started, let’s get one thing straight. I don’t want to hear any ‘oops’ shit from you guys.”

Nobody laughs.

James Taylor sings on: “Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you…”

“Lie
completely
still and stay alert. No movement whatsoever.”

“Hey,” you say, “on the left side, that’s going to be no problem, but my right side may misbehave…”

No laughter. They tell you at least five times that you have to be awake and stay completely still. Any mistake could cause internal bleeding and possibly death.

You think,
This is a pretty serious group of people I’m dealing with.

They talk among themselves about how tall you are and how long a rod they’re going to need: Dr. Radio says, “Get the eight-footer.”

“Hey,” you call out, “I’m only five foot six! Where’s the extra going to go, through the hole in my head?”

Little pause, then they continue discussing among themselves.

Then they cut a hole in your groin area and start inserting a long, flexible steel rod through the hole into an artery. They snake the rod all the way through, up to your brain. They can see where the rod goes on a display screen in front of them.

They bounce the rod off your femur to make sure the placement is correct. It hurts like hell. You groan.

The assistant asks, “Are you comfortable?”

“Well,” you say, “I’d be
more
comfortable in a Barcalounger.”

“Better pump up the painkillers.”

They snake the rod all the way up to your brain and talk in little whispers about what they see.

“Hey,” you say, “how’s the fishing? Catch anything yet?”

Then they snake it back out again and the nurse applies pressure to the entry site. She tells you it’s a deep puncture wound and she puts heavy pressure on your groin for at least five minutes so the blood can clot.

You make a mental note to remind your family members not to get an angiogram if they can possibly avoid it.

After all that effort to stay awake, you can’t really sleep when they send you back to the intensive care unit (ICU). Which is actually fortunate since you have to be completely still for eight hours. They sandbag your right leg to prevent movement.

Eventually they unsandbag you and you sleep a deep, black sleep. You have a weird dream about how to become a better person by letting someone staple your head.

When you wake up you need to remain completely still and perpendicular for eight hours. It’s quite a feat drinking from a straw without lifting your head.

After the surgery, you feel as though you’ll explode from the pressure to urinate. After having a rod in your groin, you can’t go on your own. Put a fountainhead on your stomach and you’d rival any Disney display.

Your mother tells you that Edie is having a hard time. Edie was in a bridge club with your mother for thirty years, and your mother mentions that Edie is having a hard time. You think to yourself, I should really stop in and see Edie.

MORNING SNAPS INTO PLACE
and someone tells you to wake up and the doctors are gathered in front of your bed and they congratulate you. You were very perceptive: You have in fact had a stroke. Then they tell you the angio shows no evidence of an AVM. They feel “perplexed” as to what your condition might be.

One of the doctors—your dad says later that he’s very famous—tells you that you should think of your brain’s large and small blood vessels as having berries on them. Then he says he has no idea what that means, since an AVM is no longer a possibility. He promises the team will keep you posted when they know what’s going to happen next.

“Unless my brain beats you to it!” you warn them.

Somber faces on Jim, your brother John, and your dad. Here is one of the leading radiologists in the country shrugging, saying he doesn’t know what you have. Everyone’s quiet. Lots of questions. No answers.

You stare at the doctors. They leave. One of the nurses stays behind.

You tell your husband you’re a little disappointed that you don’t have an AVM, because you wanted a definite diagnosis and you could use some hard information. You must be starting to cry because the nurse wipes the left side of your face. The nurse says you should be relieved that you didn’t have an AVM, since treatment is difficult and can be fatal.

You’re going to be a better person.

SO. YOU DON’T HAVE AN AVM.
What
do
you have? Whatever it is, it apparently involves having berries on the brain.
Unless you’re in a strawberry patch
, you think to yourself,
berries on the brain does not sound like what you want.

The next morning another doctor describes your brain vessels as “sausagelike.”

“If we’re not talking about the morning menu,” you say, “sausage doesn’t sound good.”

You begin to wonder whether the doctors are hungry and looking forward to breakfast. Next, they’ll be cracking an egg in a basin and saying, “This is your brain, and this is your brain hemorrhaging,” as they scramble the contents.

YOU HAVE BEEN IN INTENSIVE CARE
for approximately a week. People come and go and you keep getting medication and time shudders and shimmers and twists as it sees fit.

Morning snaps into place and your family is now visiting you. Flies are swarming around your mom and dad. You keep swatting them with your right hand, the only hand that will move for you. You keep saying, “Don’t you see them? They’re all over Dad’s head.” Waving that right hand, trying to swat the flies.

“No flies on me…but they are sure loving Mom and Dad, aren’t they?”

Silence. Quizzical faces.

“You don’t see them, do you?”

Your parents shake their heads.

Your mind is capable of manufacturing flies. But it cannot manufacture sensation on the left side of your body.

Morning wobbles and collapses and it’s dark outside and Jim is watching as they change your bandages. You don’t know what you look like because no one will give you a mirror, not even Jim. Dr. Neuro has told Jim not to give you a mirror.

It occurs to you that this is not good.

You try to catch a glimpse of yourself in the window across the room.

It’s only a second, the picture you see in the dark night window, but it makes your heart feel hollow and cold. The right side of your head is void of any hair and there is a huge S-shaped incision starting at the top of your scalp and extending below your right ear. The incision is stamped shut with staples.

Was that another illusion your mind conjured up? Or was that really you?

You look away and ask the nurse to pull the curtain on the window so the reflection doesn’t show. She starts to do this but twists into nothingness before her hand touches the curtain.

“TAKE THIS PEN.
Draw a clock showing the time ten-fifty. Ten five oh. Draw the clock right here on this sheet.”

One of the neurology residents is speaking to you. Apparently you’re in the middle of some kind of test. Bright daylight again.

Jim says, “Come on, honey. You know how to do this.”

“What time am I drawing on the clock?”

“Ten-fifty. Ten five oh.”

You take the pen and draw this:

Jim frowns and urges you to do it again. The neurology guy takes notes. You don’t want to disappoint Jim. You ask to try again. The neurology guy says, “Okay.”

It comes out the same.

“Now draw a clock with all the numbers, one to twelve.”

You draw this:

Half a clock. It looks utterly wrong. But you can’t think what will fix it.

Nothing exists on the left side of your world. You glance up at Jim. His face is completely crestfallen. You can sense he’s beginning to get an idea of the magnitude of your injury. It’s not just the left side of your body. It’s your brain. It’s your command center.

The neurology guy sniffs and nods and writes something down.

“Okay, let’s try something different. Count backward by sevens from one hundred.”

You take a deep breath.

“Okay. One hundred…”

Silence.

“Go ahead.” He is so damn smug.

“One hundred…”

“Yes.”

“Nothing’s coming.”

The neurology guy smirks and sniffs again and takes more notes.

“Don’t write that down.”

It’s Jim. He’s mad.

“Why not?” the neurology guy asks.

“Because she couldn’t have counted backward from one hundred by sevens
before
the stroke.”

The resident stares at Jim, then looks down at his clipboard and keeps writing.

You shout out:
“Stop writing!”

He stops and stares at you.

“How the hell do
you
know,” you demand, “that I wasn’t stupid before my stroke?”

“You are suffering,” the resident says flatly, “from left-side neglect. It’s a common symptom of a right-hemisphere stroke. It may or may not go away.”

“Does that mean,” you ask, “that if I don’t like listening to you, I can have you stand on my left side, and you’ll go away?”

He stares at you both like you have just escaped from a lunatic asylum. But he stops writing. He puts the clipboard on the wall and leaves.