Get to the choppa
After a surgical procedure, my doctor told me to lay low for a week. Being a college student with his first taste of living on my own, this was not a big ask.
The following week, my roommates and I drove out to Penn State to visit an old friend. Though I typically drove, a roommate said he would drive because of my recent procedure. I did not hesitate to take him up on his offer. I hate driving. Plus, we were going through a gorgeous stretch of Pennsylvania that was filled with scenic mountains and beautiful trees, and I wanted to soak it all in.
I stared out into the evening autumn sky, enjoying the landscape that this city boy never saw growing up. It felt like a nice intermission from my daily routine and I loved every second of it, until I didn’t.
Halfway through the drive, I began to sink lower into my seat. My whole body began turning yellow, and everything closed in around me. My eyesight was blurred, my body limp, my breathing heavy, and my stomach nauseated.
“Are you OK, dude?”
I didn’t hear the question.
“Are you OK?”
“Can we stop? I need to stop?”
We pulled into a Burger King parking lot, where I proceeded to lose a significant portion of blood from my body. I was barely conscious and my memory from that moment on is hazy.
Coming in and out of consciousness, I recall writhing on the floor of the State College hospital entry. They paid no attention to me, assuming I was a drunk kid from the University with alcohol poisoning. I remember feeling like I was being ignored as a punishment for what they assumed was the result of binge drinking.
It wasn’t. I never liked drinking, and I certainly hadn’t taken up the practice on the car ride there. The truth was that I hemorrhaged. I lost a significant amount of blood from my body and it was taking its toll.
Fade out, fade back in. The hospital staff is sticking me with needles and putting bags of fluid and whatnot back into my body. I muttered my first words in hours, or maybe days. I did not know.
“Please don’t tell my mom,” I said to whomever was in my field of vision. It may have been my doctor, or the maintenance person. Whomever it was, I was adamant in my message.
“Please don’t tell her.”
Later, when I was finally stable, a doctor came in to ask me questions. He asked if I had any sort of medical issues. I told him about my procedure and my genetic condition.
“What is that?” he asked. “Is that the name of it?”
He never heard of it before. He conferred with the staff, none of whom had either. So, my family was contacted, as was my doctor.
“Get him the hell back to Philly,” I was told my doctor said.
So, I was put on a stretcher and tied down tight. They told me I was being brought back to Philadelphia on a helicopter and would be sedated with demerol.
I never saw my Penn State friend. My roommates drove back home when they knew I was stable. What I did get out of the trip was an even more beautiful view of the Pennsyltucky landscape, this time from above, while heavily sedated.
I was told I was on death’s door. I was told that things could have easily taken a turn for the worse. I was hollered at by my mother, and cautioned by my doctor.
I could have died, but I prefer to think of it as a big risk/reward situation, with the reward being a drug-enhanced view of nature from above. It was beautiful, but the closest I want to be to the proverbial heavens for a long time.
