As I rub this Shea butter for a refreshing all-over embrace, I remind myself how cold a hospital can be.
About 4:30 am last Monday, my roommate says, I jumped up and screeched as if for a gasp of air. I was hunched over on the side of the bed, clinched with my hands together trying to roll into a ball. "It was for about five seconds." She asked me if I was ok but I didn't respond. I fell back into the pillow as if I fell back asleep, but was convulsing, shaking or shivering. I sounded like I was snoring, but with my tongue out. My roommate put her finger under my nose to see if I was breathing. I was, regularly. I still didn't respond after she kept trying to physically wake me. She called 9-1-1, and when the operator could not hear me breathing on her end she deemed me unconscious.
Once my roommate began to get me ready for the EMT, I came to. I helped put my shirt on, and began to respond to my roommate, and by the time the EMT arrived I was completely responsive but didn't know what happened. All I knew was my name and my roomie's name. I didn't know what year it was. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know what I did to have the ambulance there.
It's funny knowing the motions of an ER stay - how to flinch for their blood lab, how to wrap the blood pressure cup around your arm, how to brace for the cold gel from the echocardiogram, how to ask (and who to ask) questions about the next step you already know is happening. What I never expect is how tedious it is.
For this visit, it was an all-time tedious care! My roommate - who was once a lifeguard and learned how to spot a seizure - spotted a seizure and instead of treatment for a seizure I became a cardiologist's experiment. I'm used to it by now: "your medical background is incredible! No previous heart problems, yet you go into SCA and have this defibrillator?! We must know why..." However, this did not lead to a written referral to Grady's heart center. The grounds they used - a young lady with an ICD, and now with chest pains from a seizure - became grounds to search for something that could lead to what triggered my SCA five years ago.
After a nurse checked my BP, I became surrounded by five doctors, all of whom were cardiologists (young, interning and old), jotting down notes as one of them told the tale of Starletta Watson's SCA survival. When one of them asked what I was here for, I said "because I had something like a seizure." As they looked oddly away the cardiologist followed with "are you having chest pains right now?" I answered yes, and they mumbled among themselves as if my cardiac dance grew more entertaining.
Two of the five cardiologists returned to my room throughout my stay to ask me if I had chest pains and/or instruct me on the next test. And, oh, those tests. I believe I suffered more through those tests than whatever put me in the hospital! I was familiar with the motion of a CT scan - the warm, yucky tingle through my body - and its glorified x-ray, and I made it through that. The actual x-rays and it's pain to my side(s), which I also endured. But the stress test? Not only was it painful physically but also mentally.
I laid around the test area for what felt like hours waiting my turn because I needed a "special" bed. I asked why not a treadmill like everyone else, and the nurse told me it was because I had a defibrillator. I responded, "I ride my bike almost every day and it doesn't go off. You think I can't hit up a treadmill?" The nurse replied, "Oh, ok,"and gave an empty nod as if my previous activity had no value. She explained to me that they were injecting a drug into my bloodstream that would increase my heart rate to monitor how fast it beats and how my body would react.
Not even a minute goes by after the injection where I felt the effects. Heat stormed through my body and I began to sweat. It dried out my throat, choking my passageways, and I couldn't breathe. As I panted and gasped I tried moving and sitting up, but the nurse held my arm and kept saying it's almost over. "Bitch, you said that three minutes ago," I yelled in my head (I think). The doctor overseeing the stress test saw that I was stressed, and looked in awe at my reaction. Furthermore, she looked in awe that my defibrillator did not began shocks. Hell, I did too.
Never should a test - let alone in the name of healthcare - make a person feel like lab rat. I saw the doctor printing out the results, so I asked to see them. She laughed at first, and saw I was serious, so she gave them to me. I didn't know everything on that graph, but I knew it said the same thing we all already knew - we don't know what made me go into SCA.
But maybe that's just me being me. Perfectly normal. And maybe this ER trip was to remind me that I am such. I left the hospital with the new Kendrick Lamar repeating in my head. It's a reminder that in loving my self, I must maintain my health.
Stress is a mutha, and your body will attack it by any means. You don't want to worry your body to the point where it feels the need to shake and rattle off bothersome antigens. You don't want to worry your eyes asleep in your bed to wake up in a hospital bed. I don't mind repeating myself to death that stress did this to me, not appreciating myself did this to me and what happens to me - negative or positive things - are a reflection of how I currently am or where I need to be.
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