My second shot at life at age fifteen

[xela]

Fifteen years ago Saturday I woke up with a terrible headache. I took four or so aspirin, lay down with my eyes closed for an hour, took more aspirin, rested another hour, and took yet more again. The headache did not abate in the least, and I decided (probably because of what the aspirin was doing to my stomach, though I was too out of it to realize that) that maybe what I really needed was food. Moving like I was walking through mud, trying not to make my head pound any worse, I got dressed, and put on my shoes. And sat, bent over, the laces of one shoe in my hands.

I couldn't remember how to tie my shoes.

I sat there a while, breathing deeply, trying to hold panic at bay. I remember trying to remember what my sister Marliene had told me, twenty-odd years earlier, when she taught me to tie my shoes. And I couldn't.

I was terrified.

Finally, I got up, with my shoes untied, feeling very unsteady on my feet. I didn't have insurance, and was living a very hand-to-mouth existence, and was afraid of being stuck with the bill for an ambulance, so I didn't call 911. Instead, I went down the three flights of stairs to the building lobby, clinging to the rail with both hands all the way. I remember sitting on the front steps of the building, catching my breath, trying once more to tie my shoes. I don't remember anything between that and the hospital, except that I remember wincing from the brightness of reflected sunlight off of cars as I was walking along. I remember walking into the Cambridge City Hospital Emergency Room, and I remember saying to a tall woman in a white lab coat: "I'm very disoriented and I can't tie my shoes." And I remember her asking me something, and me not being able to speak.

I woke up in a dark room, tied to a bed with a tube up my nose. I shouted "nurse!" until one came in. (Those of you who are squeamish may want to skip the rest of this paragraph. It's a part of the story I have only ever told a very few people before.) I asked her to please untie me so I could use the bathroom, which I needed to do desperately. She said she couldn't do that. I said "What am I supposed to do?"; she said she would get an orderly and a bedpan, and left. I didn't last until she got back. Only then, in this entire experience, did I cry. The nurse and orderly cleaned up, but still wouldn't untie me. I only later found out that what essentially amounted to induced diarrhea was part of their standard treatment for a suspected drug overdose.

An hour later the test results came in, and they decided I was not some kind of drug overdose case, and took the restraints off and helped me to clean up and put me in a clean bed. They explained, eventually, that I had been treated as a drug overdose case because I had had a seizure in the ER, during which I had knocked members of the hospital staff to the floor, and dislocated my shoulder. So the restraints were for my own protection and the staff's.

I don't remember how long I stayed in the hospital; I may have only stayed overnight. I remember that getting home was interesting, because they had cut my clothes off. I owe my life to the young doctor — whose name, to my shame, I have forgotten — a recent Harvard Medical School graduate, in the final year of his residency, who, even though I was a charity case, was as determined as I was to find out what had caused my seizure. Who oversaw two weeks of poking and prodding and assorted scans that ultimately led to my diagnosis of cancer.

That moment, fifteen years ago, when I couldn't remember how to tie my shoes, was a watershed moment in my life. I think now is a good time to reflect on what it has meant, and continues to mean, in my life. I hope some of you will care enough to bear with me, ask questions, challenge my views, as I muse on this over the next few days, or perhaps weeks. Having some company on this exploration would mean a lot to me.

Comments

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

Good grief! Reading this actually makes me very angry, it's not the first time I've read posts from people in the US along the same lines...

I didn't have insurance, and was living a very hand-to-mouth existence, and was afraid of being stuck with the bill for an ambulance, so I didn't call 911.
Sorry, but the American health system sucks, I've known people with symptoms very similar to yours to die very quickly. Getting to hospital in such circumstances, in an ambulance as quickly as possible can make the difference between living or dying.
That you were too scared and too poor to risk an ambulance and had to walk to emergency in the state you were in is terrible. That people might be in a confused state but too worried about crashing bills when their life is in the balance is horrifying.

In the UK, no matter how poor you are, how young, how old, whatever... you can ring for an ambulance for free, get treated for free. If you see someone, even a complete stranger, obviously sick and in need of help you can ring an ambulance for them.

How does that work in America? If someone rings for an ambulance for a stranger doe they get billed for it? Is this why you had to walk all the way to hospital yourself with no good samaritan to step in and help you?

I'm probably missing the point of your post, flying off in a rage, but dammit you could easily have died!

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

The state of health care in America is certainly one of the things I want to essay* as I take this opportunity for reflection. It both sucks and is without peer. I hadn't had insurance for several years at the time, and for nearly three years had had some minor chronic problems, the examination of which would almost certainly have led to a much earlier diagnosis of my cancer. On the other hand, the team that treated me for cancer was run by one of the world's leading experts in that particular type of cancer — and in fact his protege, who took care of me, was a Brit who came to the US because of the greater opportunities to do leading-edge work here. What little serious debate there is about health care policy in the US focuses on how to fix the suck without risking the leading edge.

If someone rings for an ambulance for a stranger doe they get billed for it? Is this why you had to walk all the way to hospital yourself with no good samaritan to step in and help you?

No, it's not quite that bad. I don't think I looked like I was in desperate need of help. Harvard Square, where I lived at the time, has a large population of homeless people, and a larger population of distracted-looking shabby intellectuals; a close observer would probably have filed me in the latter category that day. As for how services for the poor are paid for, that's the most absurd part of it: ultimately the taxpayers end up footing the bill. We just put everyone through a bunch of wasted bureaucratic motion first.

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* essay, transitive verb:  1: to put to a test. 2: to make an often tentative or experimental effort; to try. I was recently reminded of the word's origins as a verb when I read Paul Graham's excellent essay on the essay, in particular the section entitled "Trying," which speaks very lucidly to what I'm trying to do in my more serious writing here.