With Monday morning came my attempt to go back to work. I had not been there in over a week and I not only did not have medical insurance with this particular job, I had no real sick or vacation leave, either. In exchange for being allowed to go on tour with the Grateful Dead whenever the mood (and my wily ways with manifestation) struck, I wasn’t technically a true employee. However, I had obligations and deadlines to meet just like everyone else who worked there and I had already been missing for over a week with any real explanation for my absence.
The actual getting to the office was an exercise in complete folly. I couldn’t really see. I needed to wear sunglasses because the light of day (even in always overcast San Francisco) felt as if it was sizzling tiny brain bits on the back of my skull. I politely brought an empty grocery bag with me and vomited into it (my own bus sick bag!) but knew by the looks of my fellow passengers that they would have much preferred that I not join them for this journey across town at all.
Somehow, some way, I got there. I stumbled up the steps, walked into the front reception room and promptly collapsed into a heap on the floor. I honestly do not remember much more after that with the exception that my boss insisted that I was not well enough to be there, wanted to know what kinds of drugs I had been taking for the last week, and insisted upon taking me home.
Instead of taking me home, though, she took me back to the Emergency Room. Again. She decided she was going to be my advocate and get them to actually figure out what was wrong with me and do something! That was very kind of her, I will admit, but I will also share that the moment we arrived and she got a gander at the clientele who occupied the waiting room and also learned that the wait, alone, could be hours and hours, she promptly left me there. I found a place on the floor, again, under some chairs and settled in for what I knew would be a very long wait.
When I was finally seen it was by a very matter of fact doctor who decided that what I needed first and foremost was an IV. He determined that my week of vomiting had left me so dehydrated that it was no wonder that I had a headache. Plus, he deduced, my electrolytes were completely screwed up. Oh, and had I been tested for AIDS? Because, you know, with my hippie dippy free love lifestyle it could be AIDS.
It’s still amazing to me the various diagnosis that those who truly work in Public Health will pull out of the air in their attempt to help the patient presented to them. Five days and I had a bad headache, a hysterical pregnancy, meningitis and now AIDS.
Finally, I sighed the heaviest sigh, looked at him and said, “Don’t you think we might want to, you know, maybe do at CT Scan of my head?” He couldn’t believe that I was asking. But I insisted. I told him that this was, again, like no other headache I had ever experienced in my life, that my brain felt like it was too large for my skull, that I was certain that Baby Jesus had taken up residence in there thinking it was a cozy manger full of straw and if we didn’t at least do a CT Scan to confirm the presence of the baby, I was going to just walk out.
I believe what he heard was, “I’m going to just walk out” because he just replied, “That would be against medical advice and then you’re really on your own!”
I felt as if I was speaking in tongues and no one, not a single person, could understand me. My head hurt. I had lost my vision. I was vomiting non-stop from the pain and my new strange world view. Yet I could not convince any of these doctors to actually listen to me.
Dr. Convinced It Might Be AIDS came back and started the IV. The only decent vein was in the top of my hand so that’s where it went. Then he just disappeared. I was left there, in the dark, on the table, IV slowly dripping into my hand and not given any more information.
The bag finally emptied, I needed to pee, and I wanted to remove the wastebasket-now-vomitbasket from the room. So I got up and wandered into the hall. Again, I had trouble navigating because of my missing vision, but eventually found my way down to a desk that was buzzing with activity.
They were all startled to see me. I asked about the removal of the IV from my hand and was told that no one could do that, I had to wait for Dr. Convinced It Might Be AIDS. I then asked about my CT Scan and when they couldn’t find anything about a requested CT Scan in my chart I told them that Dr. Convinced It Might Be AIDS must have forgotten to write it down, but that I KNEW that he most certainly wanted me to have one because we’re concerned there might be a tumor in my head.
I’m uncertain why on earth anyone standing there believed me, but a few minutes after being escorted to my room, someone came for me and plopped me in a wheelchair and wheeled me straight to radiology.
In order to have a CT Scan of your head, they put your head in a vice like brace on a table. It’s important that you stay very still so that the CT can scan your head and brain. The problem was I was still really really sick. And I kept vomiting. The technician got so frustrated with me that he used duct tape across my chin to tape my head in place. It did not allow me to move up, down, or side to side.
When I vomited? I started to choke and aspirate. I ripped the duct tape off, sat up, and spewed all over the technician. Who in turn spewed a litany of obscenities at me.
Back and forth we went with my head in the vice while he tried his best to get scans of my brain. I just could not stay still. It was a choice between getting the scan or choking and dying. I just couldn’t die.
I think the technician finally just gave up because I do not remember a moment when things actually went well while I was strapped to that contraption. They wheeled me back to the room upstairs, reattached a new IV drip, and left me covered in my own vomit.
It was at this point that I started to cry. I am unsure how long I sat there in the dark crying and crying. It hurt to cry, each sob was like a big bad gong going off inside my head, but I just did not care. I knew I was going to die and I knew that no one, not a single person in that hospital, in that city, in the world could save me.
Dr. Convinced It Must Be AIDS never did come back. Another doctor waltzed in after about an hour to tell me that my CT Scan was inconclusive. Did I know I had lots of head trauma? Scarring? It was difficult to assess what might be new or different since this was his first time looking at my scans. The IV should help me to stop vomiting and if I’m not feeling better tomorrow I really should go see my own neurologist. The ER is for emergency, didn't I know? I should get a regular doctor to take care of these problems.
Then he turned on his heels and waltzed out.
I waited in that room for two more hours. No one ever came. Not a nurse, not a doctor, not even a candy striper. No one. I grabbed the IV in my hand, ripped it out, used a paper towel to stop the bleeding, stood up and slid and slithered, leaning against the walls, out of that hospital. I was convinced that Death lived there and I never wanted to go back there again.





