I am determined to live my final quarter soaking in new experiences and relishing my abundant life and the wisdom I have acquired. It was working until I found myself in the emergency room of our local hospital at 3:45 am, pleading for relief from the searing pain under my ribcage. This isn’t what happens to me. I am fit. I am strong. I eat healthy food. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I’m not overweight. I don’t have high blood pressure, diabetes, a chronic disease or an immune disorder. Stop asking me those questions.
Attempting to explain my rare and somewhat complex medical history while panting through spasms wasn’t working. I’m thinking we should transfer you down to Toronto, but I’ll talk to your doctor first, from the tall gentle young man in hospital garb. Through broken sentences, blanks filled in by my husband, and my own experience as a patient, we decide to do blood work. It’s an inflammation in your pancreas. We can treat you with painkillers and iv fluids. Nothing to eat or drink for a few days. I’m admitting you. Meanwhile, I’m floating in and out of a haze that might be reality. Or it might be a movie I am watching. This isn’t my life. This happens to old and feeble people.
I find a thread of consciousness – what about the dogs? You need to go home and let them out, give them breakfast. I’m fine now, the pain meds are working. I’ll get some sleep. Come back later, I might be in a room by then. Fifteen hours later, already bedded down in a small faded yellow cement block examination room, they find a bed upstairs, and I am moved. The walls and privacy curtain are a putrid mix my mother would call goose turd green. I am rewarded with a pillow instead of my rolled-up clothes. I continue to ebb and flow between heavy drug oblivion and episodes of wrap-around pain.
I am fortunate. I know that now. A short acute phase, and after three days, my pain has subsided. I lose my iv pole, and I am allowed to go home and try to eat soft mush and drink litres of bland fluids. Take it easy, lots of rest, and here’s a prescription for the nausea. With no measurement, no visual, and a follow-up appointment in a week, I am left to figure out how my insides are healing. I have to listen to my body, attend to my fluid intake and food experimentation, and manage days of low energy. The fear that it could come back lurks.
I am healing from the medical assault. The processing and recovery from the surprise attack of vulnerability is complex and deeper. Listening to my elderly parents describe their latest health concerns, doctor’s appointments, and medication needs, there was often a sigh of pathetic patience as I promised never to get “like that.” Instead, they die,d so I didn’t have to hear about it anymore. Now I am them?
Reminding myself to be open and curious, I pivot to what this experience taught me, what it continues to whisper in my ear.
In no particular order:
- Aging guarantees added vulnerability to health derailers.
- Emergency room (ER) nurses hide their angel wings inside their scrubs so they can hand out warm blankets, soothe pain and anxiety and find the doctor immediately.
- ER doctors ask a lot of questions to compromised and distraught people, doing the best they can to piece together the puzzle of pain and trauma.
- When you are tucked away in a hall or side room because there are no beds on the ward, they haven’t really forgotten about you. At least not for long.
- There are nurses who instead of oversized hearts and haloes, have spreadsheets and stop watches. I feel distrustful and unsafe with them.
- The hierarchy and patriarchy within medical teams have not gone away. It still lurks. Being told that the nurse was not allowed to share my lab results with me, only the doctor could, was demeaning and antiquated. I couldn’t summon the energy to demand my patient rights.
- I need to ask more questions and take more time when I have the opportunity for a face-to-face with a physician. Their time is limited, precious, and all mine. Be selfish.
- Being in a room without natural light does the opposite of healing for me.
- Attention from family and concerned friends heals through the constancy of love and connection.
- Once you no longer need machines and needles for treatment, the only place to heal is at home.