Living Will

What’d you do last week? As for me, I had a seizure.

I’ve had better times.

Wednesday morning, I’m at the University, only been working in this new position for about 3 weeks now, don’t really know people yet, trying my hardest not to look dumb all the time. Feel absolutely fine — didn’t eat breakfast, but then I haven’t eaten breakfast for oh about 25 years now. Sitting at my desk, I get up while I’m talking to someone. And then something really, really weird happens. A paramedic appears, seemingly out of thin air, and he’s helping me. I have the oddest, scariest feeling — it’s that sense of dread and weirdness you get sometimes with some nightmares, like a shiver of dread. I’m also extremely nauseated and sweating profusely. Also, I’m on the floor. Also, about 15 minutes has passed. Also, everyone is crowded around, looking at me, looking very very worried.

It turns out that as I was standing up, I had a seizure. I instantly went down, broke half a wall with my bulk, fucking up my shoulder a bit, and convulsed on the floor for a couple of minutes. Not twitched — convulsed.

I have no idea what’s going on, only that something terrible has happened. My body is sore and I’m bleeding a little bit from my lip. My tongue is twice its size and really, really hurts. And I tell the mysterious paramedic — he’s got two paramedic buddies behind him and one of those hospital-bed-on-wheels gurneys — “I’m sorry, but I think I’m going to throw up.” It’s astonishing how no matter how confused, how sick, how crazy one is — that I’m-going-to-vomit feeling comes through loud and clear and cuts through all the bullshit. The paramedic grabs a trash can and holds it under my chin for me. I throw up a little, not a big rowlfer but more like a hiccup, and I say again “I’m sorry about that.” Here I am dying of a brain tumor, flopping on the ground, but embarrassment and shame still work real good. The paramedic says, “Uh, that’s ok,” in kind of the way you’d tell someone being blown to bits that it’s ok if his shoe is for the moment untied.

I don’t remember anything. I mean anything. I’ve had some weird shit happen to me, body-wise, I mean just all the usual pains and hurts and fears that you accumulate by this age. I’ve fainted before. I’ve suffered through Crohn’s Disease. I’ve been out-of-my-head sick with fever. But I mean I have never — never — had anything like this happen to me. I’ve never had something happen to me that I had absolutely 100% no warning about. It scared the holy shit out of me.

At some point I’m in the first floor lobby, being wheeled somewhere. I’m in an ambulance. The paramedic guy is nice but not hiding his worry well. He’s asking me lots of questions. I keep thinking, over and over, some variation of: what is this? Is this a dream? Am I having a nightmare? Is this what dying is like? What’s happened here? Did I do something wrong? Where’s Alli? Where’s Mama? Where’s my baby girl? Where’s Alli?

In the ER. I don’t know what your experience is with ER docs — I’ve unfortunately had quite a bit due to my two-years Hot War and then the ensuing Cold War hostilities with Crohn’s Disease. I’ve seen a lot of ER docs. They almost all have the same emergency bedside manner — I’m sure it’s something that’s taught in med school. They minimize everything without ignoring it, they assume the best case scenario is the one going on, and try to get you to believe it too. They may tell you some scary stuff but always with the unspoken emphasis that all the nasty stuff is what could possibly be wrong with other people — as for you, we’re sure it’s nothing, don’t worry, try and relax, everything’s going to be fine.

The doctor I got this time, a young guy — and I’m not dissing him here, he seemed to do a good job for me — talks to the paramedic, asks me like one or two questions, then — I’m not making this up — turns to me and says, “Well Christ we need to make sure you don’t have a blood clot floating somewhere around in there, your lungs or your brain, that’s caused you to seize. Cause that’ll KILL YOU. FAST.”

No shit! He did! Boy oh boy were all my dials turned up to 11 now. Well, this is it I thought. I finally get life figured out and in some kind of order, I finally do one right thing in my life with my baby girl, I finally figure out what I want to do and how I want to live, and then I get the blood clot in the brain. Of course I do. How else could it happen?

So, thumbnail: I get an MRI on my head. A CT Scan on my head and chest. Blood tests and more blood tests. Hospitalized for 36 hours. Et cetera et cetera.

Alli comes to the ER and I feel so fucked up and guilty (?) and scared that I’ve run out of time for her and Miri and all the bad things I’ve done or haven’t done or might have done… I’m basically making out my will. Actually, I really am making out my will. No lie. A nurse asks me at some point if I have a Living Will, in case, you know, something should ever happen. No, I say, I do not, although I am interested in one. Well we better get on it, says this nurse, and again I don’t know how anyone in the world could not receive that wise instruction without hearing WE BETTER HURRY BECAUSE YOU’RE ALMOST DEAD AS WE SPEAK.

So it turns out no one finds anything. My doc tells me, eh, sometimes people have seizures. Shit happens.

So I’m now figuring out how to go through the rest of my life wearing a football helmet. And how I’m going to deal with this. Because I mean I had absolutely 100% no warning at all, no strange feelings, no auras, I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary, I’m at this point trying to figure out how I can reconcile myself to living every single remaining second of my life with the fear that I might drop out at any moment, no matter where I am or what I’m doing, and convulse on the floor. I am not liking this.

So I’m out of the hospital at this point, embarrassed to death — how in the world am I going to go back to the University and see these people who held me down while I flopped around and bit my tongue on the floor — and I figure I just cannot live with this uncertainty. I decide that I am going to figure out what happened. Even if I don’t figure it out, I’m going to “figure it out,” you know what I mean? I am going to full-speed-ahead lie to myself if I have to and one way or the other come up with “why” this happened. So that I can try and live the rest of my life. I am embarrassed, worried, hypochondriacal, sad, weak, beat up, lip-swollen, black-and-blue-tongued and generally fucked up.

Guess what a little research lets me in on? A certain medicine, that I’ve been taking for about 5 months, induces seizures in a significant amount of people who take it. Especially if you don’t take it correctly, meaning spacing out the doses carefully and not mixing it with caffeine and not taking it on an empty stomach and about a hundred other things. No one told me about this. This is a fairly common medicine, I mean it’s not like some untested wonder-drug or something. Now, I accept responsibility here too, cause I never did much research on this drug before putting it in my body lo these months gone by, and I did not pay attention to either the warnings or the dosage precautions.

I’m kind of screwed because this medicine, up until now, has been helping me pretty significantly. But it’s gone. It’s history. Not only am I never going to touch this medicine again, to be honest, I’m all gun-shy and saddle-shy now about medicine in general. I figure I’ll take my multivitamin and maybe a baby aspirin now and again and that’s about as far as I’m willing to go.

So I don’t know what I’m going to do. I only mention it here because: 1) As medicine goes, historically, throughout my life, I have been an enthusiastic supporter. 2) I have historically been cavalier about side effects, dosages, interactions, etc. 3) I am now scared shitless. I’m telling you. Seriously, this is about the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me. It really messed me up. I mean I got scared.

If you’re taking medicine, pay attention to that shit. Seriously. No — seriously.

I extend my thanks and admiration to the good people of Meriter Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin.