It had been really cold in Walden, 35 or 40 below, on Wednesday, February 2nd, when I was supposed to go to Taos to pick up Jojo and Sol to drive them to Albuquerque, ready to leave for Amanda's brother's wedding in Palm Springs, CA on Friday. I was worried about the effect the cold would have on my car, which I had plugged in overnight, so I waited until about 10 AM to leave for Taos. It was still 20 below but I left anyway. I had several cups of espresso while I waited, and with one thing and another, no breakfast. In Dillon I stopped at Starbucks and got my usual 5 shot Americano then got back in my car and continued driving. I was worried that if I stopped someplace for a break it would be too cold for my car to start, so I kept on driving. By the time I reached Taos, I still had a quarter tank left and I had filled up in Walden. that little car gets really good gas mileage!
I planned to spend the night at Janelle's, and she had a pizza ready and James and the Giant Peach to watch for the evening entertainment. We were in the middle of the movie when my palms started to itch. I switched chairs because I thought maybe (Tho I have never been) I was allergic to something in that chair. Then I started to feel a little woozy, my eyesight started to get fuzzy around the edges with sort of sparkle things and I couldn't figure out what was going on. When I began to notice my heart beat, it seemed louder... or harder... I put my hand on it and I thought I could feel it beating through my shirt! That didn't seem right!
I sat there for a few minutes, distracted from James and his giant peach, wondering if I was having a heart attack! I went over the rest of myself, seeing if my arms were numb or if there was a problem with my throat, all the things I could remember from what I had heard went on in heart attacks, but I wasn't able to think. Not only was my eyesight getting fuzzier by the minute my thought processes were getting foggy too. It wasn't going away, which I couldn't imagine that it wouldn't. I kept thinking it was a temporary thing, that it was happening for some obscure reason that I would never know but I'd be OK in a minute. I went to ask Janelle for an aspirin and I found I couldn't walk right, so I stopped in the middle of the room and told her I needed to go to the hospital because I thought I was having a heart attack. That really freaked the boys out, but something was wrong with me and it wasn't going away.
Janelle and I got in her car and went the 3 or 4 blocks she lived from the hospital. By the time we got there, it must have been 7:30 PM, I couldn't see and my legs felt numb. Janelle said I was talking but nothing I said made sense. She parked in the lot beside the ER and came around to open my door but I couldn't move my legs to get out. She pulled my legs out one at a time, but when I stood up, I passed out and fell down in the snow, totally unconscious. Janelle ran into the ER asking for help. The woman at the desk said I didn't need help. I'd been in there before and she wasn't going to do any more for me. Janelle told her I hadn't been there, I had just gotten to town and was lying on the ground out in the parking lot, unconscious. The woman said, "well, doesn't she have a coat?"
Another patient in the ER asked if Janelle needed help and came out with her to try to get me in to the hospital. Then an employee finally came out with a wheel chair and they got me into the hospital. It sounds like I was throwing up almost non stop by then. I remember coming to at one point in the ER admitting room and apologizing and telling them, "This is embarrassing."
After that, I only remember snatches of things. Having all my clothes yanked off me crazily, it seemed like by a lot of people. (It was like in that movie "Galaxy Quest", with Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver, where those little cute alien babies go to the crippled alien baby like they're going to help it and then start tearing madly away at it. Like that.") They were all around the gurney I was on. I was never in pain, but during the time they were working on me and was going in and out of consciousness, I remember thinking, "I REALLY don't feel good". I began to believe I was dying then. Maybe I was. It was really a bad feeling. I thought how upset my family would be if I died. I knew it would be horrible for them and I thought that was what was happening to me. I've researched potassium deficiency, and it can be life threatening, and from all I've read, I was about as bad off as you can get and still be alive.
I don't know what all those people working on me did, but they managed to keep me alive. When I finally started to be more aware and clearer thinking, it must have been about 10 or 10:30 PM, a nurse told me I was on a potassium IV and a saline water IV. She said my potassium was down below 2, as if that meant something to me, and I had no blood pressure when I came in. Later, a nurse told me my pressure was 60 over nothing, which is SOME blood pressure, but not much. Janelle had stayed with me through all this, bless her heart, and I have to say, if I WAS dying, she saved my life. Finally, about 11 PM she was able to leave. The boys were at home with Bea but Bea would get upset if she woke up and her mom wasn't home.
I don't know how many and what kinds of tests I was given. I just know I am absolutely black and blue from all the stints and needles that were stuck in me. Plus all the different machines that looked me over from head to foot. I was still not altogether there so I don't remember everything, but I know now that my heart, head, lungs and blood vessels and arteries are all in perfect condition.
The final diagnosis was hipokalemia, potassium deficiency. As the doctor released me at 2 PM the next day, he said he would tell me what my mother would, eat right and stay healthy. After all that... that was it, no prescription or nothin'. Just eat right.
In other words, you drank too much coffee and it almost killed you! And here I am starting a coffee shop for you. Come home, safe and sound, would ya?
ReplyDeleteMom... We told everyone in Amanda's family -- rife with medical professionals -- and they were horrified by that woman at the Taos hospital. The general consensus was that you should sue them for as many millions as a decent lawyer can get you. Jill said you could buy the hotel we were staying in when all was said and done. Sol might be right, Mom. You need to sue: not just for you, but for everyone else who seeks emergency medical services from that hospital.
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