The Day The Music Almost Stopped

    I recently spent four days in the intensive care unit at Columbia Saint Mary's Hospital. I know a lot of friends and coworkers will want to know about it and will ask what happened. Some of it is difficult for me to talk about. I have already related most of it a half of dozen times and I certainly don't want to keep telling this sad tale over and over again. So here it is...
    On Monday night (Sept. 27) I watched The Packers vs. Bears game at home. During the game I engaged in extensive phone conversations and texting with friends. I was animated, excited and drinking. I had something to eat and went to bed about an hour and a half after the game. 
    I woke up in the morning feeling just fine, made a grilled cheese and egg sandwich for breakfast and drank my usual three glasses of orange juice. That would be my last normal consumption of food for the week. 
   As per normal, I got to work quite early and drank my morning cup of tea. I had a 10am editing session with a client so I began to prepare for that. While doing so I began to experience nausea. The amount that I drank the night before would not usually elicit that reaction but that is what I felt. I went to the men's room and vomited. That was not fun and I was not happy about it but I immediately felt better. My only concern was successfully executing the editing session and pleasing my client. That did happen and the rest of the day proceeded without incident. We worked right through lunch and everything went well.
    After work I went home and skipped dinner. That is extremely uncharacteristic for me, especially after skipping lunch. For some reason, I just wasn't hungry. I had a very quiet night and went to bed around 9 or 9:30.
    Aided by my own stubbornness and stupidity all hell was about to break loose. I must caution you that this story is now about to include some blood and gore. 
    Around 1:00am I woke up feeling extreme nausea. I immediately went to the bathroom and vomited a large amount of blood. Shortly thereafter I had a bowel movement which also contained a large amount of blood.
    This is when I got really stupid. I should have immediately gone to the hospital. Not doing so almost cost me my life. Why didn't I? I am 58 years old, have enjoyed nearly perfect health for every one of those years and had never been to the hospital. I didn't know what horrible procedures they would want to torture me with but I was imagining the worst. I assumed that my problem was temporary and would go away naturally. Then to make it worse, I vomited and defecated again and with increasing quantities of blood two or three times more during the night. Around 4am it seemed to stop and I began to feel just a bit better. I managed to sleep a couple of hours and I woke up at the normal time, got dressed and went to work. I skipped breakfast and that is something I never do. I had now skipped three straight meals.
    When I got to work I had my normal morning cup of tea. As soon as Paul (my boss and professional mentor) arrived I told him what had happened during the night. That much seemed sensible because I was feeling quite weak and didn't know if I would be able to work all day. He immediately told me to go to the hospital. I told him that I had felt better for a couple of hours and would be alright. He again stressed that I should go the hospital immediately. Paul was 100% correct and I was being a total idiot.
    Over the next hour I began to feel increasingly weak and around 9am I told Paul that I was going home. He once again told me to go to the hospital. I should have listened. I stopped in Bev's (Human Resources) office on the way out of the building to ask what the procedure was regarding our insurance in case I needed to go to the emergency room. I did not tell her what was happening. She told me that I just needed to show my insurance card and mentioned that I was looking very pale. Indeed I was.
    I drove home never exceeding 30mph. I knew I was weak and not capable of handling much of anything. Once again I was being extremely stupid, I should not have been driving. I should have been on the way to the hospital, probably in an ambulance.
    I got home and made a cup of tea and honey to try and settle my stomach. I then went to bed and fell asleep for a couple of hours. Of all the stupid things I did this may have been the worst because I might never have woken up.
    I did wake up around noon and once again vomited and had a bowel movement and the amount of blood was now massive. Blood was splattering the bathroom. Okay, I finally thought, time to go to the hospital. Brilliant, aren't I? I had lost a lot of blood at this point and I was getting very dizzy and very weak.              
    Walking back to my bedroom to get dressed I passed out and fell. I came to and discovered that I had broken my glasses and pulled a muscle in my back. I got up, put on my clothes and looked for a bag to pack. By this time my mind was definitely not functioning properly. It was like being extremely drunk. The poor decision making I had been exhibiting for about 12 hours was now getting much worse. I tried to pack a bag. I do not recall my exact thought process but that would seem to indicate that I knew I wasn't coming home soon. I was so out of it that as I was trying to get stuff out of my closet, I was pulling it off the shelves and it was falling down all around me. Somehow I managed to get a bag packed and I actually did a decent job.
     Columbia Saint Mary's is only a block and a half from my house. I thought about driving but didn't know where I would park. I thought I might call a cab but, having once been a cab driver, knew that a two block fare would only piss off the driver. Calling 911 never occurred to me and that is what I should have done. I decided to walk. 
    I could barely stand in the elevator on the way down. When I got to the front door and looked at that block and a half it looked like a very long way. I decided to try it anyway. I made it across the street and about three or four houses down the next block. To make it even that far I had to sit down and rest a couple of times. At that point I realized that I couldn't make it all the way and I started looking for a car to wave down. A guy came out of the building I was sitting in front of and I asked him to give me a ride to the emergency room. He took one look at me and immediately rushed me to the hospital in his car.
    I stumbled up to the main desk in the lobby and told the lady there that I was "regurgitating and defecating large amounts of blood". I was barely finished telling her this before they had me in a wheel chair and on the way to the ER. I remember pulling the insurance card out of my wallet on the way but when we got there they told me to put it away and that we could take care of that later. They rushed me in and immediately hooked me up to an IV. The ER doctor indicated that they needed to transfer me to ICU immediately. Upon my arrival there the doctors started working on me and asking me questions. A team from the Gastrointestinal Department soon arrived and set up their equipment.
    After I answered a few more basic questions, the GI doctor explained to me that I had either burst a blood vessel in my stomach or that I had a bleeding ulcer. He told me that they were going to put me to sleep and "scope" it by inserting a tube down my esophagus. This was exactly the type of procedure that I had feared and that had kept me from coming to the hospital in the first place. By this point I was in such bad shape that I was a more than willing patient. He told me that if they found a bleeding ulcer that they would have to immediately take me into emergency surgery. I signed the papers allowing them to do so if necessary. When he questioned me I had told him about the Monday night drinking and the original vomiting on Tuesday morning. He told me that could have caused a tear and if that was the case they would be able to fix it right there. The scoping equipment had the capability of allowing him to clip it shut. They injected drugs into my IV line and I was out.
     When I awoke they told me that they had indeed been able to clip it shut and stop the bleeding. I asked the GI doctor what would have happened if I had slept a bit longer. He just shook his head and said that I wouldn't have been asking any more questions.
    Soon after that, another doctor, told me that I needed a transfusion. I was worried about the danger of HIV or other contamination but he assured me that the odds of that were absolutely astronomical. Not to mention the fact that I very badly needed it. For the next 8 or 12 hours they were pumping blood back into me. Everything that was occurring at this point is a distant haze to me.
    I was unable to even get out of bed for the next few days. I had IVs in both arms and was being pumped full of enough life sustaining fluids and drugs to float a boat.
    I want to give thanks to the many incredible doctors and nurses that I would come to know quite well over the next four days. Like Dr. Steck, a fellow Droid user with whom I would have conversations that ranged far beyond any of my health issues and Denise, a young nurse halfway through medical school who travels to poverty stricken third world countries to participate in free clinics.
    I eventually found out the shocking fact that by the time I got to the hospital I had lost 50% of my blood. Even after receiving two units of blood - about 3/4 of a liter - I still only have, as of this writing, about two thirds of my normal amount. I am going to be weak and anemic for a month or two or three depending on how fast my system reconstitutes itself. I am on prescription drugs and a limited diet. I have to be careful with physical activity and try not to strain my stomach for awhile so that I don't rip out the clips and start bleeding again. Before I left the hospital Dr. Steck showed me beautiful and brightly lit photos of the inside of my stomach taken with the scope. I was able to see the exact point at which the tear occurred. I am thinking about asking him to e-mail them to me so that I can use one as my Facebook photo. If you are one of my Facebook friends you are probably hoping I won't.
    When I got back home days later I saw the box of tea and jar of honey on my kitchen counter and just shook my head. I thought I was going to solve my problem with tea and honey and I was bleeding to death. I also weighed myself. It was Saturday afternoon, I was still on a liquid diet and had not eaten a single bite of solid food since breakfast on Tuesday morning. I lost about twelve pounds in five days. I do not recommend this as a smart weight loss plan although a I did discover that a liquid diet will allow you to save money on toilet paper because you will never need it.
    There is one more moment of this experience that I would like to share. My home computer screensaver cycles through images in a folder where I have downloaded hundreds of incredibly beautiful widescreen photos of scenes from all over the world (most of which come from this site). I often look over at these images as they appear and express awe and appreciation to myself about all of the wonderment that surrounds us on this planet and in this life. But this time I looked over and saw the images that I have seen countless times and something was very different about them. They all looked far more beautiful to me than they had ever looked before. And then it all hit me. I began to bawl like a baby for the first time in decades. I had almost blown it, I had almost blown everything. I had almost died and left this life that I love so very much - all because I was so damn stupid and stubborn. I cried and sobbed because I knew that I had endured and survived a much too close brush with the final chapter of my life and that it should never have occurred. I swore to myself at that moment that I would never again make the mistake of disrespecting or endangering my life or anybody's life. There is no greater gift than life itself and the fact that I almost blew it for no good reason is something that I will never be able to forget.
    And then I suddenly realized I was doing exactly what the doctors had warned me not to do. As I sobbed, my abdominal and stomach muscles were tensed and convulsing. I was in danger of ripping out the clips and starting the whole problem over again. I had to immediately stop this incredible emotional catharsis or I would once again endanger the very miracle of life that I was crying over. So I stopped crying in a a virtual millisecond, shook my head at the absurdity of it all and went to clean up the blood in my bathroom.
    Life is grand isn't it?