Sometimes, I'm just a little stubborn.
A few years back Charlie became quickly and desparately ill. Convinced it was a heart attack, he whispered between gasps his life instructions for our daughters as I drove him to the hospital and he clutched his chest.
The diagnosis of gall bladder attack was surprising, but welcome. Three days after surgery he was up and around.
I was by myself in the efficiency last January when my first one hit. I kept reminding myself I did not need to call an ambulance because there was no pain in my left arm. Five miserable hours later, it was over. I went to work sleep deprived but otherwise whole.
In our precarious financial state, with our household divided by the impending move, I used my work load as an excuse to ignore the nighttime ritual that was popping up every few weeks. Survived the last one = will get through this one. Who needs fried food anyway?
It was July when the first daytime attack dropped me after lunch. I couldn't go back to the office (sweating, writhing and moaning is bad form for senior staff). Feeling like a wastrel, I took the half day off and doubled up my work efforts when I came back the next day.
I worked my way through it and forced it back into the midnight misery pattern. I won.
I was waiting for a television interview to be finished Thursday morning when that wave hit. Maybe this one was a heart attack, I thought as the room spun and sweat soaked my suit. My friend, Lisa, stopped to see what was wrong and I talked my way through it convincing us both everything would be alright. I headed from the interview to a waiting meeting and by the time the meeting was over so was the attack. I would not have my schedule taken hostage by superfluous organ.
When it struck again a few hours later, I still wanted to go to the concert that night, but conceded that we might stop at an ambulatory care clinic on the way. I rerouted us to the ER as we were pulling out of our parking lot.
"Yep, that's gotta go" the doc said looking at the bedside ultrasound. That sounded good to me. Everything sounded good to me. There were some great drugs in my IV. I loved this doctor. I loved the world.
That sweet, wonderful amazing son of Hippocrates even gave me pain and anti-nausea medicine to take home for the next attack and suggested a Benadryl chaser that just did the trick.
It worked on the Friday night attack and again for the Sunday afternoon one. Last night we left the Monday Night Jam in a hurry with yet another flare. I have an appointment today with a surgeon. I had it all figured out -- how to fit the surgery in between finishing up this job and starting the next. I thought it required only the acquiesance of the surgeon's schedule.
But a few hours ago that miserable little obselescent organ again made yet another solid statement to the contrary.
It wins. I'll do whatever the surgeon says whenever the surgeon says to do it.
Uncle.
Copyright 2005 Judi Griggs