My doctor’s appointment on Tuesday was mostly pointless. I explained my shortness of breath and general weakness, and how un-ordinary such troubles are for me, but I don’t think the message got through. I was instructed to come back for a follow-up visit in three weeks, when to me it was pretty clear that three more weeks of this would leave me dead.
In addition to pointless, it was physically hell. The clinic is a block and a half from the bus stop, which means I walked a total of three blocks, and that should be nothing, but it was too much. I had to stop and rest twice each way, coming and going, and when I came home, all I could do was sleep.
The next day, Wednesday, I was sill utterly sapped of strength, so I stayed home to recuperate, bought a cane on-line with overnight delivery, and researched local stores that could sell me a used wheelchair. My plan was to go to the wheelchair store on Thursday, but I was still too tuckered.
Friday was the twice-monthly breakfast with my family, which would be a good test of my recovery from Tuesday. The trip involves very little walking: half a block from my door to the bus stop, then a bus ride to the Burien Transit Center, and a few footsteps across the concourse. Then it’s a second ride to the restaurant, where I cross the street and a parking lot, and take our family’s usual table in the back. It’s probably less than one block’s walk, total.
I barely made it to the bus stop by my house. Had to rest before and after crossing the street, and then the last twenty steps are slightly uphill, and I had to rest on my new cane four times in those twenty steps. I could hear my heart beating, and then couldn’t even find the strength to say “Hi” to the bus driver as I struggled aboard.
At the bus depot, I needed five minutes on a bench before walking across the concourse.
At the restaurant, crossing the street and parking lot and finally entering the building took twenty minutes, with four long rests. Inside, I took the first empty table at the front, because the extra thirty steps to our usual table at the back would’ve killed me.
I’d taken an early bus, planning to arrive half an hour before breakfast, specifically so my family wouldn’t see me haphazardly walking to the table. With all the rest breaks, though, I arrived at my usual time, absolutely enfeebled. I put my head down on the table to gather any strength that could be gathered, which was none. My head was still down when my mom, sister Katrina, and friend Adelle sat down ten minutes later.
We ate the normal breakfast, though with no appetite I couldn’t finish my food. We talked about my physical problems, which they’d already known about, and also talked about other things. All through this medical mess, I’ve been OK long as I’m sitting down, so it was an enjoyable conversation, but from the hell of getting to the restaurant, I knew I needed a better doctor than Tuesday’s doctor, and soon.
After eating, as always, my sister offered me a ride home.
“I’d rather go to Harborview,” I said. That’s the big public health hospital, where I spent the next two days. Katrina, being the bestest sis ever, canceled her plans for the afternoon and drove me to the hospital, with Mom and Adelle tagging along.
“Now comes bankruptcy,” I said as they got me a wheelchair and rolled me into registration and triage. I have only Medicare Part A, the free plan that covers 80% of costs while you’re hospitalized. Paying even 20% of an emergency room visit would wipe out my tiny bank account. Oh, well.
In the ER, they ran a dozen tests on me, including X-rays and a CAT scan, before admitting me. Having worked in insurance, I was pretty sure that tests run before being admitted wouldn’t be covered as “in-hospital services,” so if I survived it would be in abject poverty. Maybe I could move in with Mom, which would make me completely mental.
A doctor popped in with test results, and explained that I had a ginormous pulmonary embolism — a collection of blood clots in both lungs. That’s why even the slightest exertion was increasingly difficult and dangerous; my weakened lungs couldn’t get enough oxygen, and my heart was working twice as hard to pump blood past the obstructions. “It could kill you at any moment,” the doctor said, “so we want to get you to surgery as soon as possible. How long since you’ve eaten?”
I said I’d had a light breakfast, probably swallowed my last bite before 11AM. We’d spent hours in the ER, so it was about 5PM, which I guess was long enough since eating, because the surgery started about twenty minutes after that.
From slice to stitches, it took 2½ hours, in a room with Star Trek-style equipment engineered into the ceiling and walls. If I’m gonna die, heck yeah, let me die on a science fiction film set. The machinery undoubtedly cost more than my lifetime earnings.
They pumped me full of fentanyl, enough to take away any terror, but left me awake through the surgery, watching the doctor’s progress on enormous monitors. The surgeon pushed tiny equipment up my arteries from my groin into my lungs, then used a fancy joystick to beat the hell out of the blood clots, and then sucked the entire mess out of me via a tiny vacuum tube.
The surgical crew was the doctor who’d explained everything to me beforehand, with a woman working beside him who might’ve been an assistant, technician, or another doctor, but never introduced herself, while four technicians darted around pushing buttons and fetching whatever size clamp or gadget or doodad the doctor(s) asked for.
Toward the end of the surgery, I began feeling more clear-headed and energized than I have in weeks. My recovery was already underway.
When they’d finished, the second doctor or doctor’s assistant showed me what they’d sucked out of my lungs, and it was spectacular: on a buffet-sized platter, a veritable mountain of dark red blood blops, each one kinda like you might get if you blow a bloody nose, but so many of them it was the size and shape of a generous serving of mashed potatoes (only, made of blood instead of tubers). It was the grossest and coolest thing ever to emerge from my body.
“This could’ve easily killed you,” she said, same as the (other?) doctor had said before the surgery.
“Can I keep it?” I asked. She said no, because it would dry out and blow away.
All the above happened on Friday afternoon, after which I was cured, but being a hospital they kept me for a couple more days to keep an eye on my recovery. Finally on Sunday morning, a nurse watched me walk down the hall in a walker, first time on my feet since Friday morning. It felt so good that I ditched the walker for the walk back to my room. I was not lightheaded, needed no rest, and it was only fear of a scolding that kept me from doing a spin and curtsy. I am 100%.
And that was my weekend. The doctor prescribed blood thinners to prevent future clots. I’d already been on a diet and losing weight, and now I’ll be taking a walk every morning. With a little luck there’ll be no more posts about me almost dying until I’m ready to actually die.
10/6/2025
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