At the hospital I felt weaker and weaker. I just wanted to sleep and have my headache go away. I was sent down to the labs for test. For a very long time I lay in a tunnel like tube, for a CAT scan of my brain. The doctors thought I had viral encephalitis. The little noise from the machine ripped at my head. The I was taken out to be given an I.V. The technican was unable to find my vein for the IV. A second tech tried to put in the I.V. Then they called their supervisor to put the I.V. into my arm. I felt so sick yet they tried over and over again to find my vein, put in the needle, and not have the vein collape. After a very long time of trying the supervisor said: "If I can't get it in this last time, I'll have a doctor put something in." The last time took. Then I was returned to the "tunnel" for more tests.
Finally I was taken to my room. I hoped I could be allowed to rest. No sooner was I laying in bed, with the cool cloth pressed to my fevered brow, than my doctor walked in. He had another doctor with him, a specialist, to look at me. I had to answer question after question for them. A nurse was at my side taking my blood pressure. Another nurse was nearby fixing my I.V. The new doctor started to lecture me because I had no insurance. Inside I wanted to just be left alone. The specialist said he was going to do a spinal tap. I pleaded with them to not do this until my headache went away. The nurse at my side took my temperature. I felt her kind of startle when she read it. I asked her what my temperature was? She said very high. I asked how high, she just repeated herself. I asked her again and I thought I heard her say 104.6, then everyone in the room just left.
In a few minutes, the now gowned and masked doctors with at least five to six nurses re-entered my room. As others came into my room they were told to wear masks also. I could tell things were not going very well, to say the least. Quickly the nurses worked, and the doctors talked rapidly. I seemed to lose sense of it all. I was put on a water mattress and packed in ice.
The specialist bent over me and said, "I have to have you turn over so I can do the spinal tap." I cried, "No, not till my headache leaves me." They gave me a shot of something for the pain and for a brief period of time, my headache seemed to be lifted. The doctor tried to do the spinal. After a few attempts it was decided to move me elsewhere to do it. This was done and with much discomfort my spinal was completed. I was told to rest, which I greatly desired to do.
My nurse came in often to check on me. She told me to tell her when I needed to go to the bathroom, she would help me up. It was about an hour after my spinal that I told her I needed to go to the bathroom. She came to my side and helped me up. Once I sat up and was about to get off the bed I felt like the force of an axe cracked my skull and ripped open my brain, my knees buckled. My nurse called for help and I felt like I was passing out. The nurses left and then returned and told me I couldn't leave the bed.
The pain was so great, my already aching head felt so full of fire. My numbness seemed to cover my whole body, even my teeth would go numb. I was given pain killers which, each time they were administered, made my heart feel like it would stop beating. As the pain killers wore off I felt great terror, as if waking from a bad dream. Theis terrible hospital routine was continued every 15 minutes. The nurse came in and held a light to each eye and asked me questions like, "What is your name?" "Do you know where you are?" "What day is it?" Oh, how I just wanted to sleep. Around midnight my nurse said, "I'm going on my break now. I'll see you in a half an hour." She never returned. The head nurse stayed by my bedside that night.
Morning came. How I hated the sunlight coming through the cracks in the window and door. I held the cool cloth to my eyes, an ice pack surrounded my head and body. My temperature was still very high. I asked my doctor if they could give me another type of medicine for the pain. I said I was afraid my heart would stop when it entered my body. I was placed on morphine. I didn't feel that it did much for my pain, but I realized it was helping when the drug begain to wear off. I was so very sick now I started to vomit and have diarrhea. I knew my liver was inflamed, I was told I had blood and puss in my stools. My husband was told that morning my temperature went to 106; something I didn't learn until much later. I was so weak, I wanted no visitors or phone calls. I was to tired to even speak, and at times I felt like I would forget how to breath.
All I desired was to sleep, but I was too tired to sleep. Whenever I would try to sleep, after the nurse would leave the room, I would be awaken by people coming into my room. Groups of families would come in, I could tell they were talking to each other but no one was speaking outloud. Of course, the whole time I saw these people I had a cold wash cloth covering my shut eyes. I was greatly distrubed by these people. I almost wished to tell the nurse to get them out of here. But, I knew she would think me crazy because no one was there. Surely she would have seen them by now.
For almost a week I laid in the hospital. Suffering one test after another. On the sixth day, after finding out, finally, what my problem was, I was sent home to slowly recover. But up until that time I truely had not known if I would live or die. I knew I was really bad off. I could see it in people's eyes as they visited me; a look of shocked horror at my wasted condition. I was asked about a living will and my feelings on death. I could hear it in my parents concerned voices as they spoke to me every day on
the phone. I saw it in my husband's very tired red eyes. And knew it in my children's fear to come next
to my bedside.
But, what I wish to describe to you is the other people who visited me in the hospital. For eight months after my illness I wondered if I had just hallucinated this - after all I was on morphine at the time. I would walk around the house and continually say to myself: "I almost died, I almost died." In writing a letter to my brother Jim one day, I knew for once, what I had experienced was real. Probably more real than most of us realize.
As I mentioned before, when the nurses would leave the room a group of people would come into the room. They would walk through the door, their feet didn't quite touch the floor. They never really looked at me but yet they knew that I was there. They didn't speak to me, yet I knew exactly their relationship to each other. They were in family units. The youngest were in their teen's or early twenties, parents were in their late twenties or thirties, a grandmother would look only a few years older than her daughter and so on. I could understand why Adam was called the Ancient of Days. Sometimes, I did see those that looked as old as their forties. There was a soft quiet peace about them. I never could stop spanning their faces to see if my grandmother was among them. I felt if I saw Grandma then it was my time to die. She was never there.