Portraits from My Hospital Stay, Part Three

A young man comes in to check my electrodes. He has an accent and a large silver crucifix around his neck. He asks if I have children. I tell him that I have twins who are eight and a younger son that is six. He has twins, too. His are seven. We talk for a while as he deftly sweeps electrodes around under my breasts and all along my belly and chest. His family lives in another state and he only sees them on the weekends. He is hoping I can give him advice on how to get his children to respect their mother when he is away. He feels that he probably should "beat" them, because the bible says to do this. He says that was how he was raised in Africa. I tell him that is how I was raised, too. He asks if I beat my children. I tell him that I do not. He asks if my children are fresh. I tell him that they are more often than not. He does not want to beat his children, but he does want peace in his home, and his wife needs help, and he is very stressed and concerned.

I'm not able to tell this man not to beat his children even though I want to. I tell him that he has to listen to his own heart, and if it does not feel like the right thing to do, then he should not do it. I try not to argue with other people about what their gods tell them to do, but he is clearly so conflicted that I try to find a way to help him. He looks like he is going to cry. He asks how I get compliance in my home. I tell him that I take things away from my children when they are fresh, things that they find important, like video game or TV turns. He says he doesn't allow his children TV or video games. I tell him that I wouldn't either, but that it is helpful to have things to take away when you need to. All my years of mindfulness parenting boiled down to this rather weak, very capitalistic and ultimately disappointing little trick. He thanks me. I ask him when I can get the IV out of my arm. He asks if it is hurting. I tell him that it is. He says that I should have mentioned it and they would have found a better place to put it, but then I would have had to have gotten another needle stick. We decide to leave it where it is. He leaves but says he will be back when it is time for me to be released.

I take a nap. I can't remember when I have slept this much, sleeping mostly through the night except for the periodic visitors, sleeping late, taking naps. My chest hurts.

The nurse comes in and says they are hoping to have a read on my stress test soon. She leaves. I get up and look out the windows. They look across a small rooftop into other people's hospital rooms. The sky is crystal blue. The new shift of doctors and nurses have all commented on how cold it is outside and how lucky I am to be in here where it is warm.

I check my phone. Nothing. I check the TV. Nothing. I flip through the book Fred brought me earlier in the day. The first paragraph is beautiful. I want to read the book, but the words aren't sticking around in my head. I prop my sore arm up and drift back to sleep.

A small young doctor wakes me up. He says he's checked my stress test. He says it looks fine. He says they aren't sure what was causing the chest pains but that it probably isn't my heart. He says to follow up with my primary care doctor in a week or two. He says the nurse will be back in to help me get ready to leave. I look at my clock. It's a little past one.

Agitated and ready to go, I try to sit and wait. The nurse finally comes in. She has papers for me to sign. I don't know what they say. I sign them. She tells me to keep taking ibuprofen for the pain. She asks me if I have a ride home. I tell her no. She says I should get a cab and not take the bus. I say ok. She says someone will be in to take out my IV and then I can leave. She leaves.

I wait. Even more agitated. Finally, the man who doesn't want to beat his children comes back in. He thanks me for my earlier advice. He says the Italian woman down the hall told him he definitely should beat his children. He says he probably will when he sees them again. He is resigned to it. I tell him he doesn't have to, even if god and the Italian woman down the hall say so. I remind him that he should listen deeply to his own heart. He reminds me that he needs his wife to be happy. He shows me pictures of his children, and they are beautiful and precious. I tell him that I can see how much he loves them. While all of this is happening, he is removing electrodes from under my breasts and from my belly.

He asks why his wife is so hurt by his children's harsh words to her. He asks if my children are able to hurt me with their words. I say sometimes, but that I always know that they love me, just as I know that my harsh words can hurt them sometimes but I hope that my children always know that I love them. He asks if my husband is the disciplinarian and I laugh. He says that he could tell, and maybe that's why I'm in the hospital.

He removes the IV. My arm still aches, but the pain is sweet. I'm still bruised there weeks later. The man thanks me again. I wish I could help him more. He tells me to gather my things and wait for the nurse.

The nurse is there quickly. She says she will walk me to the cab waiting area. I grab my things and we head off together. She reminds me to take a cab and not the bus. She says goodbye.

I call a cab. They say it will be a while. I wait inside the hospital for a bit, but then feel strongly that I need fresh air, no matter how cold it is outside. I head outside to wait. It's cold, but not too bad, really, and the air is a lot better out here after being locked down in a hospital for 24 hours. Another guy comes outside to wait for a cab. We wait near each other.

A cab comes up. Two older people get out. The cab driver yells at me and the guy that he's not picking up any fares and that we are going to have a long wait because all the cabs are at the airport. He squeals off. The older couple says we didn't want to take that cab anyway, that that guy was crazy. They go into the hospital.

We wait and wait. About ten buses have gone by in the time that we have been waiting. I give up. I tell the guy he can have the next cab. I go to the bus stop across the street. I hope the nurse isn't watching. I feel very naughty. A bus is there to pick me up within minutes. The cab guy is still waiting.

I take the bus a couple of stops, but the sun is calling to me and I have nothing but time this afternoon, so I get off at the next stop and walk the couple miles to the kids' school. I get there right at pickup time. Fred is there waiting, too. We all walk home together. It's Friday night. Homemade pizza night. Game and movie night. Everything is all right.

Portraits from My Stay at the Hospital, Part Two

I wake up concerned about how I smell. I've been told not to bathe since I'm hooked up to all this equipment. I have no deodorant. I dig through the small basket of toiletries the first nurse gave to me the night before looking for anything that might help. I choose the lotion. It doesn't help much. I brush my teeth and try to drag the small comb the hospital provided through my hair. It's like those combs they used to give you for school picture day. It's hopeless.

I decide to practice civil disobedience. I put on my yoga pants from the day before. The heart monitor battery pack fits nicely in the pocket and gives me more mobility. I try to do yoga, but the floor seems kind of gross and the battery pack keeps falling out of my pocket. I sit back down and wait.

Fred comes on his way to work. He drops off a clean pair of underwear (Animal from the Muppets) and a book and a phone charger. I forgot to ask him for deodorant. He looks grim and tired. I tell him I'm supposed to be home before dinner, hopefully, but that it all depends on how quickly they can administer and read the stress test. He sits for a while and then heads off to work.

A doctor comes in and hands me her business card. She asks me a lot of questions about the chest pain and about yoga. She tells me everything looks benign but that I need to have the stress test anyway. She apologizes for the delay.

I'm hungry. I call the cute young nurse in and ask her if I should order breakfast so that I don't miss it completely. She says no. I ask her if there's anything that we can do about the fact that the IV in my arm is killing me. She says no. I tell her I'm not taking off my pants. She says ok. She says she'll be back in soon to update me on the status of my stress test. I tell her I'm going to go for a walk. She asks me not to leave the ward.

I walk around the ward, which is decorated with lovely textiles from around the world, all framed and labeled, as if this were a wing of an art museum. I stop and read each one. I try not to peek inside the other rooms. Some have doors open, others have doors closed. Some have pieces of paper taped to them with clip art stars. I wonder what that means. My door does not have stars. I see lots of people in white coats. They are all very young.

I'm getting a caffeine or morphine headache. My face is so puffy I can see the bags under my eyes in my field of vision. This must be from the morphine. I have to walk with my right arm bent and up to avoid the searing pain from the IV. I keep walking. Walking, walking, walking until I overhear a conversation between some of the staff about one of the patients needing a death certificate but they seem unsure of the time of death. I decide to retreat back to my room. My thoughts travel around the idea of death, the surprise at having been near to someone's dying without even noticing the passing. I get sad.

A man comes into my room with a wheelchair. He checks my bar code on my hospital id bracelet. He is wearing a giant silver motorcycle belt buckle and sneakers boldly colored like the Jamaican flag. He wheels me to the stress test waiting room. We talk about Florida. He lived there, too. He says he didn't like it because you had to have a car. He likes it here better. We agree that the cold isn't fun, though. Being wheeled feels like being disembodied. I feel the length of my escort's paces, it feels almost like I am walking, but I am half of my usual height. I think of my sons and how this must be their view as they walk - of people's midsections.

Jamaica motorcycle man backs me into a waiting area and hands me an architecture magazine with Patrick Dempsey on front. I flip through the pages without anything registering. There's a woman with a giant bandage covering half of her face in the bay next to me. The nurses at the nurse station have green three inch binders on all of us. They are flipping through the one about me.

A woman comes to take me to the stress test room. She is probably ten or so years older than me. We talk about yoga. She says she tried it once and didn't like it. Too much chanting and fairies, she says. I tell her she should come to my classes. Guaranteed fairy free (most of the time).

She hooks up the electrodes. Even more than before. I'm glad I have my pants for my run on the treadmill, but I didn't bring my shoes. They were snow boots, anyway. Probably wouldn't be the best for running in.

Another woman comes in. She introduces herself. These two will be administering the stress test. She asks me about yoga, too. They take my blood pressure a couple of times. And then they get me up on the treadmill.

I have a terrible episode of deja vu as I'm stepping onto the treadmill in my yoga pants and johnnie - I notice that my johnnie is still bloody from the night before. I've definitely done this before.

The stress test is stressful. The worst part is the belt that holds the heart monitor in place is restricting my breathing. I feel like I'm going to faint. They get my heart rate up to near-explode and then stop the treadmill and help me to the hospital bed. I feel like I'm going to faint. They tell me that's normal - that the heart doesn't like to slow down that quickly from so high. I still can't breathe because of the belt, and the pressure of me trying to get deep breaths with a tight belt is making my chest hurt. I pant out that I need them to loosen the belt. They do. I pant and gasp, thinking of that fish from the end of the Faith No More video. I can't catch my breath. I think about how a yoga teacher practiced in the arts of pranayama should be able to catch her damn breath.

The women take a few more blood pressures and measurements of this and that. They hand me a clean johnnie since the one I am in is blood-stained and sweaty, and it smells really bad, and then they walk me back to my architecture magazine and wheelchair. I sit there for a while looking at Patrick Dempsey in his luscious outdoor room and watching the other stress test victims walk or wheel past. There's a parade of us.

A much older man comes to wheel me back to my room. I sit on the bed and try to figure out how to order food. I call for the nurse and wait. And wait. I go for a walk. I walk to the nurse's station. I ask the person there how to order food. My nurse comes out to help. I tell her I want food and I want a shower. She says she'll come help me. We walk back to my room together. She rips open a biohazard bag and puts it on my arm over the IV and tapes it in place. She tells me to get my shower and then order my food. It's not the order of events I would have chosen, but I comply.

The shower is awkward. It's a hand-held shower head, and I can't use my right, dominant arm because of the pain from the IV. I do my best at smearing hospital liquid soap around with my left hand and then try to squirt it off, also with my left hand. I make a really sorry attempt at washing my hair. I fear I've done more damage than good, but at least I got rid of the stress-sweat smell emanating from my pits. I try to dry off with my left hand, give up, and get my pants and johnnie back on while still mostly damp. I rip the biohazard bag off, gently, and go wait for the nurse to explain how to get some grub. I drink down a bottle of water while I wait. I check my phone. Some folks have found out I'm in the hospital. I have a string of emails and texts to the extent of "JEEZUS! Aren't you worried????" and I'm not and I think that's odd.

I notice a sign hanging under my TV that I never noticed before that says "Food Service" and a four digit number. I take a chance and dial it on my phone. I order pasta and an apple and a coffee. I hang up. I fall asleep. The nurse comes in to hook me back up to my heart monitor and to explain how to order food. She leaves.

The food comes and it's the best in the world. I'm ravenous. I tear through it all, then I go hunting for more from the kitchen across the hall from my room. I find Sanka packets. I pour four of them into some hot water and hope for the best. I grab two single-serving boxes of raisin bran and power through those. The Sanka tastes like dirty water rather than coffee, but I drink it down. I turn on the TV and flip through the channels. There's nothing to watch. I flip through my phone and check the news. Not much there, either. I wait.

Portraits from My Stay at the Hospital, Part One

Crushing chest pain, shortness of breath, stabbing pain down my left arm, seeing spots. Trying not to die on the bus. Trying to make it to the hospital stop. I really don't want to die on the bus.

I wander around inside the hospital, looking for the ER. I realize that I must not be dying, not quickly, anyway, and some of the symptoms ease. I finally find my way to the reception area for the ER, in the basement. I think it is the basement. A woman is waiting for her child's shoulder to be fixed after a dislocation. She is not allowed to be with the child while this procedure is taking place. She looks pale and worried, like a caged tiger.

I wait patiently, chest screaming, while the woman at reception talks on the phone to someone about dinner arrangements. It is almost dinner time. I'm sad about this, because I know they won't let me eat even if I'm not dying. I've been in hospitals before.

The receptionist finally hangs up and looks expectantly at me. I lean in and whisper, "I'm having chest pains. I'm sorry." And I wonder why I feel like apologizing.

I'm swept away quickly from that point. I'm put in a bay in the ER proper. I'm out of my yoga clothes and into a johnny. I'm allowed to keep on my black batgirl panties with the pink batgirl symbol on front. I'm glad about this for a number of reasons, not least of which is that these panties are fierce.

A beautiful young nurse comes in in blue scrubs. She has thick brown hair in waves all around her face. She looks for a vein, finds one, and stabs it. I bleed everywhere, onto the sheets, onto my johnnie, onto the floor. She takes some vials of blood. She asks what it's like to be a yoga teacher. She asks me where she should go for classes because she's been told she shouldn't do yoga when she's trying to get pregnant. She leaves with the vials of blood and returns with Clorox bleach wipes to clean my blood off the floor.

The woman in the bay next to me is also having chest pains. She doesn't speak much English. She was in earlier in the day, but she escaped. They have a bored-looking guard posted outside her bay. I can see him through a small opening in the curtain that is supposed to offer me privacy. He stares at his cell phone.

An older black woman comes in. She's wearing a tribal print shirt and beads. Her hair is short. She wants to tell me they have a room ready for me. That I have to stay over night. She wants to ask me about a phone plan. The nurse is back, though, and she's about to give me morphine. I tell her I don't want morphine. She says it's standard procedure for chest pain. I tell her that I don't want it but that if I have to have it, I need a low dose. She says it's the standard dose, and it's pretty low. I push back. She says she'll give it to me slow and steady.

The phone plan woman continues on about the phone plan. The morphine makes me feel like my legs are on fire. I yell for the pretty yoga nurse to stop. The phone plan woman says she can come back later and leaves. I keep yelling for the morphine to stop. The nurse tells me that I'm the only person she's ever met that doesn't like morphine. She continues to administer it.

The morphine finally stops making my legs feel like they are on fire. My chest and arm still hurt. My head feels separate from my body. And periodically, for the rest of my stay, scenes play out twice. I'm guessing that's from the morphine, but maybe it's from the anxiety. Deja vu sounds so romantic when you read about it, but in reality, replaying scenes of watching yourself in a hospital is a poor use of a drug trip, I think.

Electrodes are hooked up to me. The pretty young nurses have to lift my bare breasts to put electrodes there. This is uncomfortable, and I look down at my chest, embarrassed at the heft and weight of these things.

A young male doctor with startlingly blue eyes comes in and says some things. A beautiful resident who looks like she should be in a movie about beautiful young doctors and their romantic lives says some things, too. They look at my heart with an ultrasound. They check my aorta, too. There's some concern. They say I have to stay overnight for observation. They ask me about yoga. They leave.

A man comes in and unhooks the electrodes and wheels me to x-ray. Everyone watches as I'm wheeled past. A funeral procession or a coronation for royalty. A parade of some sort. I'm taken back into the ER bay to wait for my room. The woman in the bay next to me is being admonished for bolting earlier. She promises she won't leave this time, but she's feisty, and I love her. A man comes in to check on me. I ask him when I can eat. I've been doing yoga all day and I'm hungry and thirsty. He offers ice chips. They are the best ice chips in the world. I remember them from when I was birthing children. Like heavenly wine.

I get taken to my room, after some time. I'm told on the way that it's in the new building. It looks like a posh hotel room, with unexpected equipment hooked up on the walls. The man who wheels me in shows me how to control things. He dims the lights. I turn the TV on. It's hockey. I watch the players gliding back and forth, back and forth.

A nurse comes in to introduce herself and I love her immediately. She checks my vital signs. She brings me a sandwich. She asks me about my kids. She tells me to never take the bus to the ER again. Next time, take an ambulance, OK? She has twins, too. Hers are grown. She tells me she'll be keeping an eye on me until midnight. I feel safe and warm. I tell her not to let anyone give me any more morphine. In fact, I tell every person who walks in my room not to give me morphine for the rest of my stay. They all think it's hilarious.

I fall asleep watching hockey. I wake up and change the channel to CNN. They are making wild speculation about the missing Malaysian plane. Aliens. Tiny black holes. The Bermuda Triangle. I wonder if they are for real or if this is the morphine. I turn off the TV and go to sleep.

I have several visitors in the night. The first is a middle-aged man who says something about me being a yoga teacher. I tell him not to give me morphine. He says he loves yoga. He goes there for the chicks. I tell him he's not the only one. He gives me albuterol. I ask him why. He says he doesn't know. He stands there while I breathe and tells me more about chicks and girlfriends and I think he might be hitting on me but that can't possibly be. He leaves. I go back to sleep.

The next visitor looks like Steve-O. He says he's going to take blood. He's super nice and has the thickest Boston accent in the world. He has a giant, deep scar from his elbow to his wrist on his left arm. He's gentle. He says he'll try to let me sleep as long as he can but that he has to take more blood in a few hours. He leaves. I go back to sleep.

I wake up when a nurse shines a flashlight in my face. She apologizes and leaves.

I'm woken again by Steve-O. He's interested in yoga, too. I say something about it helping to heal the lingering effects of trauma. I guess I'm looking at his scar. He tells me the scar is a "gift from the Jamaicaway." I tell him I hate that road. He says after his accident, he came to in the ER and heard the docs saying that they were going to try to save the arm. I'm tired. I say, "Well, chicks love scars." I feel stupid. I think I might have been hitting on him. He laughs and leaves. I go back to sleep.

A very perky young blonde nurse wakes me next. Sunlight is coming in through the windows. She says we're waiting for my stress test. I tell her I'm going back to sleep, then. I've never slept this late before, not since the kids were born. I look at a clock. It's 7:30.