So, this past Tuesday I woke up with a minor irritation in
the left side of my chest. I didn’t like it, so I ignored the persistent ache.
What else is one supposed to do?
I went on
about my days, working as best as I could and telling myself that I just had a
bad case of indigestion. To be truthful, I knew something was wrong, the
machinations of my daily routine were limited by the chronic, constant pain
that radiated from the center of my chest to under my left arm. Picking things
up and putting them down, part of my daily routine, caused me to pause each
time the need arose and to derive a new and unique solution to the task at
hand.
By the time
Thursday arrived, a day I don’t have to work two jobs, I was glad I would be
able to basically sit in my office, work on small motors and mechanics or just
sit at my computer and do curatorial work. The day went by pretty smoothly, I
listened to some great music on my record player as I went about my duties. The
pain, still constant, was not irritated at all. When I got home that night, all
I wanted to do was lie on my couch in a semi-comfortable position and try to
breathe.
Oh, did I
forget to mention the pain with every breath? Ya, there was that too. If I took
a too deep breath my body would be wracked with a series of sharp pains. I
found a position, partially sitting up, partially on my side, a blanket to keep
me warm and the television clicker in my hand I quickly found myself dozing off
into the land of nod.
Friday marked
the arrival of snowstorm Jonas. Everything in my area closed early, I was
summoned by my offspring to pick her up from school. I drove there, in pain and
against my better judgement. When my child asked to go to a fast food place for
lunch, I asked her if it was okay if we went straight home. I didn’t feel good.
She accepted this and to home we went.
By five pm,
the pain was worse, my daughter, my wife and my mother all pestered me to the
hospital. I did.
Within
thirty minutes of being in the emergency room I had received an EKG a chest
x-ray and the privilege of expedited service. It wasn’t long before I was
escorted to a small room, hooked up to a bunch of machines, poked, prodded,
ultra-sounded and visited by doctors, nurses and several assistants. Eventually,
one nurse, I’ll call him “Blondie” came in and administered me a shot of
morphine. It took the edge of pain away with a dizzying head rush that shook
the foundation of my reality. This feeling only lasted a moment, then my body
acclimated to the toxin and allowed it to do the job it had been injected for.
My pain
subsided, but not by much. I still couldn’t get comfortable. The lights in the
room were too bright, the painting on the wall, a watercolor of a beach scene,
had streaks of paint on it where some type of fluid had been splattered all
over it. I tried to not think what fluids had caused the streaks. However,
looking up from where I lay I could see where the small, colorful, dried drips
had ended their journey on the bottom of the frame. The paint had mixed
together when it was wet, and when it dried, they formed round, black spots
with a pale blue corona around them. They looked like a dozen little eyeballs
staring at me, mocking me in their smug dried fashion. As if they knew my
future and I didn’t. Black eyes with blue coronas withholding the knowledge I
needed to make it through the night. I flipped off the disembodied eyes in my
mind and tried to ignore them. What the hell did they know? They were born in a
mass market paint shop where the artists are given only one color to smear
across a never ending conveyor of canvases. Yeah, what the hell does a ruined
painting know?
Not long
later Blondie comes back in, injects me with another shot, tells me what the
drug is and walks away.
I send my
wife and child out for food. I sit in the room and hope for the best. In almost
no time I began to feel better. By the time my family came back from getting
food, I was sitting up and moving parts of my body did not cause me undue pain.
After an hour or two the doc cut me loose and I was on my way home.
Seven hours
had passed.
I arrived
home with a prescription, a note to rest and not exert myself and the so called
storm of the year bearing down on us. So I did the only thing I could do. I
went to bed and slept for twelve hours.
Throughout
this whole ordeal I tried to be as cordial as I could. I even thought long and
hard on whether or not to post what was going on in my life on social media. I
eventually decided it couldn’t hurt, so I did. The outpouring of concern, care
and interest was overwhelming to me. I thank everyone who reached out and
expressed concern and are still expressing concern.
That is it
for now, I hope you all had a good week and that the storm Jonas did not affect
you too badly.
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