Playing Fair and Being Kind

DODGING BULLETS LEFT AND RIGHT

After my visit last week with my primary care physician on Thursday I began to feel like I had a plan for returning to my former energetic life style. Little did I know. On Friday and Saturday I was feeling just as tired and at times, after a brief physical effort, I’d experience a period when I just couldn’t catch my breath. I was so short of breath it would be necessary for me to stop or slow down in order to let my breathing moderate. On two occasions I bent over to pick something off the floor and when I straightened up I was all out of air and could not get oxygen enough to maintain clear thinking. I was really afraid of what might be happening and I just knew that I was in trouble.

Summer had slipped away. Since I returned to Maine in May from a cross country trip my best laid plans of doing home improvement projects were scattered and forgotten; abandoned and ignored as only the best laid plans can be. Simply, I haven’t felt like doing a damn thing. Good intentions are my favorite subject when speaking of very human behavior. I appreciate the old saw “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I did a few things around the house but I avoided those larger jobs with some amount of rationalizing. Now it’s the middle of September and the weather is announcing that beach days are behind us and that we’d better be preparing the furnaces, wood stoves, and other types of heaters for colder days. This distresses me. I’ll tell you why.

My morning routine is to arise, start the hot water kettle and also begin a pot of coffee in a small electric maker. I have a very large cup that I drink from. It measures exactly the same as a number 4 Melita cone filter. The small electric maker is just about the same amount. I boil water in the kettle and make one large cup with the number cone filter while the small maker chugs away dripping through the routine it performs to make the same quantity. While things are heating and perking I turn on the laptop computer I use to write my stuff, surf the net, and store text, photos, and keep bookmarks. I usually spend about two hours scanning the internet and looking up items that pop into my head. Meanwhile the many wisps of writing ideas float across the landscape of my mind like fluttering, flying bugs or falling flower petals. Some of the ideas are regulars, subjects that are interesting but at the same time a bit tired or too mainstream. My ideas that arrive to excite me are usually subjects that swing between a lightness with a dark twist; sort of like twins, one of which is light and one of which is dark. In my estimation the light and dark nature of things need to live together or else both will die of boredom. Both feed off the polarity and tension.

Which reminds me of my situation with the shortness of breath. I was living a condition that included a bright side and a dark side, a very dark side. My morning routine over the past several months had migrated from a two hour routine to a 3, 4, and even 5 hour routine. A slowly moving lethargic mind set had been creeping into my nature. Since May until now, September, my energy level had plummeted in slow motion until I was sitting in my recliner nearly all day long and I was able to thread and weave a tapestry of rationale that supported my behavior. The tapestry was beautifully woven from threads of honor, self importance, generosity, and so many other angel-spun threads that it could have been hung at the Vatican. I spent June, July, August, and two weeks of September sitting in my recliner watching my toes get swollen and stiff, my weight go up to 215 pounds from 198, and my belt become a last hole joke. I felt the desperation of my physical condition but I was powerless to correct it.

That was the dark side. The bright side of this situation included the amount of writing I was able to produce and the number of pages I read from books and good movies I watched on Netflix. Often I would find classical pieces of music on YouTube to listen to while I was drawing verbal sketches. My skills were improving, I was bringing fresh ideas to my work, and I was certainly becoming the fountain of words I’d dreamed of. All the while my body was diminishing, becoming decrepit, deteriorating and approaching corpse-like condition. “Not to worry”, thought I. “Next week I will begin walking again and return to marathon condition and all will be right.”

So here was the weekend after a visit to my doctor to voice my concerns about my general health and some minor problems with shortness of breath. Now on this day, Sunday the 14^th of September 2014, my mind was not on Mozart, Beethoven, Oscar Wilde, or any other genius composers or writers. My mind was on the situation that happened for the second time in the past 12 hours. I had just left my reclining easy chair to go after a drink of water and when I returned I was huffing and puffing as if I had just pushed furniture around my house for the past few hours. I was out of breath. I flopped into the recliner and held onto the arms for stability while I pushed back a bit into the cushions and breathed deeply. I caught up with my oxygen needs within a minute or so and began to relax. The Patriots football game was coming on in a few minutes so I checked the time. I didn’t want to miss the kickoff. I watched about ten minutes of the game. I saw a bottle cap on the floor and I bent to pick it up. When I straightened I felt terrible. I was unable to breath, or rather, I was unable to get any air into my lungs. I gasped and gasped but nothing was going into the lungs. I could feel the pressure across my chest and although I was pulling with my diaphragm there was no air. I held onto the foot of my bed and a post supporting the roof of my house. I held on and thought that this was not a good situation at all. What was happening? I was examining my situation carefully because I knew I was alone and this was up to me. I thought lungs, heart, airway, brain, hang on to bed and try to breath. Slowly my lungs began to catch some air and I made my way to my recliner and flopped into it again, and again I held onto the arms for stability and tried to breath deeply. My lungs caught up with the situation and I began to relax again until my breathing moderated, again.

I must say that I was quite concerned and I knew I had to get to a hospital so I called my doctor’s office and soon was speaking with the medical staff on duty. I explained my condition and when I revealed that I had not slept well the night before due to the tightness in my chest I was told to hang up, call an ambulance and go to the hospital right away. I did. I am glad that I did. Making the initial call was smart and being able to describe my symptoms was fortunate. When the ambulance arrived I was breathing fairly well. The EMT’s checked my vital signs and my oxygen level must have indicated all was not well. My spirits were raised by the fact that I was in company with people who could keep me alive and get me to the hospital. I got into the ambulance and we all left for Mid-Coast Hospital in Brunswick. We arrived at the emergency room about 40 minutes later and soon I was surrounded by doctors and nurses all concerned and measuring my vitals, providing me with oxygen and taking notes. A treatment plan was drawn up and the first thing to be accomplished was a CT scan of my lungs. The plan was to rule out blood clots in the lungs.

I was delivered into the belly of the hospital to where x-rays and scans are performed. It took just about 30 minutes to get the scan completed and I was taken back to the emergency room and to the side room where I was to wait for the results. One of the doctors returned t deliver the news to me and much to our surprise the results showed I had bilateral pulmonary embolism. Not a good thing but a good thing to know. I was totally floored. I didn’t know much about the condition but I knew I was lucky to be alive. The doctor underscored the seriousness of my condition with the information that I could have dropped dead or suffered a stroke if I hadn’t acted on my discomfort.

Immediate steps were taken to admit me to the hospital and I was delivered by gurney to the second floor where I shared a room with an older gentleman. Blood thinners were begun right away as well as monitoring of my oxygen levels. I feel so lucky to a. have been aware enough to seek help and b. have a medical program that would allow everything necessary to detect and treat all that was killing me.

During the next few days the doctors provided orders to check my lungs and my heart with various sophisticated procedures. I had the CT scan while in the emergency room, then I had a echo cardiogram, then a chemical stress test along with a treadmill stress test. All the while I was continued on blood thinners to begin cleansing my lungs of the clots that were preventing my body from getting oxygen. So I was in hospital Sunday night, Monday, Tuesday, and on Wednesday my improvement indicated a discharge that afternoon. All tests showed my heart is normal, my lungs are clearing, and my oxygen level was being sustained in the normal range without external assistance. Yay!

My doctor at the hospital would stop by daily to discuss progress and during one of her visits we tried to determine what would have caused the clots. Since I had no clotting in my legs and there was no swelling to indicate clotting the question remained. After several conversations I reported that I thought I had obstructive sleep apnea but I was never treated for it. I only knew because of my partners all reported to me that I would stop breathing during my sleep. This apnea condition, stated my doctor, could cause hypertension in my lung’s blood cells causing my heart to work harder. This condition would make the heart tougher and less able to pump blood efficiently and the lung’s blood cells might have become stiffened to add resistance to the blood flow from the heart. There were lots of possibilities. In addition, stated the doctor, the condition would have caused me to have low energy and particularly in recent months I would have a tremendous reduction in energy. That would explain the lack of drive to do anything toward working on my house or preparing for winter.

Since leaving the hospital and taking all of the medication that has been prescribed I have improved. My breathing is not labored, I have been sleeping better, and my mind is clearer and my thoughts are more positive. I have begun to seek help with my diet and I am more interested in improving my physical condition. I also know how very lucky I am to be here.

Next up is a sleep test to determine the extent of the obstructive sleep apnea. I may have to wear a mask when I go to bed at night but that will be a piece of cake. I also will need to be on blood thinners for ever so I must be aware of bleeding problems. No sweat. I can do this.