Comfortably Numb, a Remembrance...

Lyrics from Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb"

"When I was a child I had a fever,
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain, you would not understand.
This is not how I am."

This brings back a memory...

I was just 20 years old when something weird happened. I couldn't breathe when I lay down. After spending a week or two sleeping sitting up in bed, I finally consented to my wife Fran's entries and went to the emergency room. BTW, she was nine plus months pregnant with my daughter Melissa.

I was immediately rushed to the Intensive Care unit. Now, back in those days, this was just one big room with like 20 beds in it and one nursing station. The only thing separating you from your neighbors was the curtains and they were only drawn when they were doing something to you. So, it was like a coed dorm.

The diagnosis was pericarditis (an inflammation of the heart sack, which then squeezes the heart) and, at that time, there was no cure. You either got better or you died.

Now, I may have mentioned I have shitty veins. So, in their first attempt to give me an IV, they missed and my left hand swelled up like a balloon (hence the memory). So, later that day, they put it in my right hand. Nope, now my right hand was now also a balloon! In the nurses defense, as I said they have like 20 dying people to watch over. So I understand.

Be that as it may, they came back and said, "Damn! We'll have to put it in his foot!"

That was the only time ever I cried in a hospital (not even six year's later when I signed the paper to allow them to amputate my left leg). I begged and pleaded with them not to put it in my foot and they finally relented. They used a baby's IV needle and finally got it in one of my veins in my arm.

So, I know that feeling...

Sidebar #1: It was during that 14 day stay in Intensive care when my daughter Melissa was born and I first saw her.

Sidebar #2: When I first got there, they explained that if anything went wrong, they would call a "Code Blue" and a special team would rush in and save me. Well, the first night I was there, my next door neighbor flat-lined and, sure enough, the special team rushed and hit him with the electric paddles (I forget what's that's called). They didn't have the time to close the curtain, so I watched it all. Unlike what they show on TV, his body actually jumped off the bed. They did that about three or four times, then the doctor announced the time of death. Then they closed the curtain. That was the last time I ever really trusted a doctor...

Sidebar #3: That's why anytime on a TV show they show them using those paddles, I have to turn off the TV and take deep breaths...

Sidebar #4: I spent a total of 89 days in the hospital for that.