Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Suddenly he couldn't make words at all, and his breath was labored and erratic.  I could see his predicament getting worse, and his eyes began to get a far-off look.  The noise coming from his windpipe had evolved from a low, buzzing vibration to the sound of a grass harp--when you hold a blade of grass between your fingers and blow until it "sings."  But this was a song I had never heard.

I got him to sit down at the kitchen table, and as he leaned over, he put one hand to his temple.  He still didn't want any help, but over his now ineffective protests, I headed for the phone to dial 911.

My genetic ancestors include a colorful cast of characters, some notably neurotic but harmless, most endlessly entertaining, and others severely afflicted with anxiety and "toxic worry" (like my mother).  As I fought to keep these genes at bay, peripherally I saw him beginning to slump in the chair.  Still I didn't grasp what was happening.  By the time 911 answered, his head had fallen onto his chest and he was going down.

Dropping the phone, I began to transmit messages I hadn't expected ever to say, much less on a Sunday morning that had shortly before been quite beautifully clear and serene, punctuated only by fall leaves at peak color:

"Honey? Honey? Stay with me; stay with me."

Too late.  He was unconscious, and I couldn't tell if he was breathing.  His shirt was drenched, and his skin was clammy, covered with sweat.  Time--but not motion--seemed suspended.  Collapsing sideways, he began to fall through space.  I grabbed his limp body and sprawled onto the floor with him in my arms.  I guess I broke his fall somewhat, as the hard floor signaled we had hit bottom; dishes were flying, including the dog's nearby water bowl.

While trying not to panic, my thoughts were accelerating like those movie moments, when characters are suddenly transported breathlessly through space to a distant future reality.  What would I tell our daughter?  Suddenly I confronted the distinct possibility that I might have to face life without him in it.  I had never actually ever anticipated being a widow---and had once insisted that he NOT get to be the one who "went first."  But I had also never imagined that I might one day have to explain to our daughter that her father had choked to death.

As I turned him on his side and cradled his head in my arms, he didn't seem to be breathing. Grabbing his neck, I tried to clear his air passage, and reached for the phone again, which I had thrown up into the air during his collapse.

"M'am? M'am? What's your address? What's your phone number?"

Did you know you can forget things like this during a 911 call?  All I knew was that I thought my husband was not breathing.  Balancing the phone with my cheek, I reached down again to his limp head and neck.

"M'am? M'am? Is he conscious?"

"No."

"Is he breathing?"

"No. I don't know. I don't think so. No. He's not breathing.  I think he may be having a stroke."

I put the phone down again.

Then I started CPR.

"M'am? M'am? Here's what I need you to do."

I can still hear him as I'm breathing air into my husband's mouth and pinching his nose, but I'm thinking, `What YOU need me to do?' Take a number, mister. I'm a little busy right now.

"Go unlock the front door. The paramedics are on their way."

"The front door IS unlocked."

"Is he breathing?"

"I'm not sure. I don't . . ." I lifted his neck again and leaned down to check.

His eyes opened a little.

"Honey? Honey?"

He seemed to be breathing.

"What happened?" he mumbled.

The sirens from the ambulance were roaring in our sleepy neighborhood, and the dachshund was close to coming unhinged. (She wasn't the only one.)

The doorbell rang.

I put a pillow under his head and propped him up, then ran to the door as a whole host of paramedics began coming in with equipment.
I directed them to the kitchen floor, following close behind. One of the emergency personnel officers  intercepted me, pad in hand.

"Has anything like this ever happened to him before?"

"No."

"What's your address?"

I stared back in silent disbelief. (My address? Didn't you just come to my house?  How did you find it if you didn't know the address?)  I was sure I had given this information four times by now (correctly, I think), but I dutifully rattled it off yet again.  As they continued to work on my husband hooking him up to oxygen, a heart monitor, and other contraptions, I was kept at bay with similar questions.

Time seemed excruciatingly slow, and the dog was now officially unglued.  There were six people in uniforms in her house, dangerously close to her food bowl.  And there was NO WATER in the other bowl! Clearly, in such a crisis she needed to intervene.  Enormously fond of her "male parent," she began licking him in the face, sniffing and inspecting every piece of equipment attached to him, and using all her best moves to evade the paramedics.

Grabbing the dog, I banished her to the deck outside while they continued to administer to my husband, who could now give somewhat coherent answers.  After a time, they tried to get him back in the chair, but he began to feel nauseous and looked like he was going down again.  A stretcher was brought in and he was loaded into the EMS vehicle. I was asked which hospital I preferred.

Banished to the deck, the dachshund was now screaming loud enough to dominate the conversation.  Loaded onto the stretcher, my husband was no longer arguing about a trip to the hospital anyway.  I let the dog back in and we followed the crowd to the door.  But when they began to lift the stretcher into the truck without her, this was simply unacceptable.  She bolted for the truck, and I bolted after her.  Fortunately, she can't jump, or we'd both have been joining the patient on the stretcher.

During what seemed like an endless drive to the preferred hospital, I was surprisingly calm.  But in the back of my mind, I recalled Joan Didion's shock she eloquently described in a recent piece, After Life, which poignantly recounts her husband's sudden, fatal collapse in a chair, while she was in the kitchen preparing dinner.

I pulled into the ER lot and could see the EMS vehicles in the bay.  I had a sinking feeling of déjà vu, since this was the same routine I had followed a year and a half ago when my mother went into cardiac arrest.

I never saw her alive again.

Running around to the visitor's entrance, I inquired where my husband was, dreading that I would be asked to wait in that awful room where they put you before they give you terrible news.

"What's your husband's name? What's your address? . . . um, wait a minute.  Um, I'm not finding him. Was he brought in by ambulance?  Um, he doesn't seem to be in the system, yet.  Sometimes you have to wait 15 minutes or so for him to show up."

Reluctantly, I walked around to that familiar waiting room and sat down.  Probably for a minute.  Then I walked back to the desk.  She was not happy to see me.

"Come around back here," she said, motioning me to enter through the barriers guarding her door.

"What was the name, again?  What's your address?"

(Again, with my address.  I was sure everyone in the county knew it by now.) "I want to know where he is.  I want to be with him."

"O.K. Go around to the back.  They don't have him in a room, yet, but I'll tell you where they've put him."

(Where they've put him, I thought.  Oh, God.  Not again.) Reluctantly, but still hopeful, I listened to a complicated set of directions and followed a maze of corridors into the ER. As I rounded the last turn, I could see his shoes at the end of a gurney.

HE'S ALIVE! They wouldn't leave him in a hallway if he were dead, .  .  .  would they?

He was hooked up to an i. v., an EKG, and oxygen.  Then I saw his face.  A feeble smile crossed his face as he saw me approaching.

"Hey.  How do you feel?" I said, barely able to contain my joy.

"I didn't see a white light." (I could see in his eyes that he knew what I had been re-living.)

"What?"

"The `white light'.  I didn't see it."

"You didn't?  Well, I did.  You scared the hell out of me!"

"I wanna go home."

My husband is a quiet man, an academic, a scholar, a creative workaholic, but a very calm, unexcitable, gentle creature.  For a man who's written six books, numerous articles, and spent a lifetime lecturing, he's also maddeningly non-communicative sometimes.

"How do you feel?"

"I'm cold, and this i.v. hurts."

Nothing to do but go scrounging for warm blankets and find an unattached, attending physician.  There were sixteen rooms in the ER.  All full.  More gurneys were lining the corridors. He'd have to wait.

And wait.

Eventually a pleasant woman walked up with a chart in hand.  I was hopeful.
 
"I need to get some information."

I began to relate the tale.

"Oh. O.K. I just need to get some paperwork done.  What's your address?"

Hours later, he still hadn't seen a physician, and he was complaining a bit more forcefully now.

"I wanna go home." (He's a patient man, but an impatient patient.) "This i.v. really hurts."

I called a nurse over and she looked at it.

"Yes, these things are uncomfortable."

"Particularly when you hit a bump as they're inserting it," he said.

"Oh.  Ow," she said.  "Yeah, it's on pretty tight.  Oh, .  .  . I see what's wrong. They missed the vein.  Oh.  Your whole arm is swollen up." Sure enough, his arm looked like our dachshund, a "slightly" obese mini.

"Well, it's ok.  It'll just get absorbed into the body eventually, but it'll be uncomfortable for a few days and take longer to go down."

Oh.

Finally, growing a little uncomfortable listening to an addict's withdrawal screams from across the hall and watching the guy on the next gurney getting ready to try to re-insert his own trachea apparatus, I made another attempt to grab someone who looked both official and sympathetic.  My husband wanted to go home, and by now I was inclined to agree.

I said, "He's going to try to make a break for it."

The nurse wasn't sure if I was kidding.

I wasn't.
 
"O.K., wait.  I'm going to see if I can get someone to examine him here in the hall."

Another hour crawled by.

The bedside diagnosis was mercifully quick.  Apparently provoked by severe acid reflux, he had aspirated into his windpipe, hyperventilated, and his windpipe seized; this was then complicated by an allergic spasmodic reaction and anaphylactic shock, causing him to lose consciousness and stop breathing.  The attending physician, who happened to be the Director of Medicine in the ER, also suffers from this same condition.  Who knew something this simple could be so dangerous and so terrifying?

Once the paperwork was rolling, and all the various pieces of equipment and apparatus were removed and unwound, we were headed out an hour later.  Only one more hurdle--discharge. We stopped at the desk and I looked at the pleasant woman who had first approached us with her chart in the ER.

"Ready to go home?" she cooed.  "What's your address?"

He's resting quietly at home now, though fatigued from the ordeal and strangely irritated by my constant hovering and surreptitious glances in his direction.  Armed with his new medication, a preliminary diagnosis, dietary restrictions, and more aggressive nagging strategies ("You know, you still need to be tested for signs of a stroke."), I have a newly enhanced appreciation for the "clean" air we breathe.

Tomorrow is my birthday.  But I'm suddenly less interested in any more of life's "moments that take our breath away." Right now I'm focused more on the number of breaths--and besides, I have to go vote.