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The Roller Coaster

I wish I could say it was smooth sailing today but you I both damn well knew it wouldn't be.

It started at 7:30am when I was awoken by a phone call from one of my sisters stating that the doctors had visited and said they were going to "cardiovert" our mother at 8:30am. "Cardiovert" is a rather hackneyed term some physicians use to say in a way that "sounds" kinder to the family the procedure of shocking the heart though the skin using paddles that administer a very large current. The procedure is not gentle by any means.... and any person who has seen any medical show in the last decade can attest that the body given such a treatment convulses and arches due to the massive current. It is being done to attempt to convert her heart rhythm from the recently (36 hour previous) returned atrial arrhythmia to a hoped for normal sinus rhythm.

I quickly dress in my usual long sleeved shirt and tie, quickly run a comb through my hair and briefly brush my beard and moustache into some semblance of order, grab my pipe, my pouch, and my lighter, and get into my old truck to quickly drive to the hospital, my pipe and National Public Radio my only companions. I get there at roughly 8:10am and bound into the hospital, and push the button to the infernally slow elevator. The ride up to the sixth floor seems to take longer than if I were to walk it (I usually DO walk the flights when I am here to visit someone when it is not life threatening or when I occasionally visit the neurology library that is on the seventh floor... which has several more medical oriented neurology journals I like to access on occasion than the more traditional research journals in neuroscience held in my U's library). Finally the elevator door opens and I bound down the hall to the ICU.

My mother is puffy and swollen, significant edema is seen through her whole body. I wonder about her Feurosemide levels and suspect they should be temporarily doubled to drain the accumulated fluids. I wish they would work hard to keep her fluid balance in check for 48-72 hours and see if it allows the heart to relax back into a rhythm without surgery or additional drugs, but it is not something they have ever tried in the multiple week stay in the hospital. But, unfortunately, I am not a MEDICAL doctor, but instead have a research doctorate in physiology so my opinions are typically worth less than a pile of horse dung. Regardless, I try to grin as wide, happy and hopeful a furry-faced grin as I can muster as I come into the room to greet my mother. She is rather groggy already, although they have not yet administered the anesthesia, so I simply tell her everything will be fine and that I love her as I bend over the bed and gently kiss her cheek and forehead.

"Raspberry." she whispers quietly, "you're reminding me of your father." She is referring to the smell of the raspberry tinctured burley pipe tobacco that mingled in my beard and moustache. It was one of the several favorites my father kept regularly on hand in his study.

I leave the room and wait in the waiting room with my one sister who had arrived earlier. Other siblings arrive throughout the day, and some live too far away to visit at this time.

The shocking of the heart goes as expected and the physician who performs the procedure (who by the way reminds me distinctly in terms of looks, mannerisms, and voice of Woody Allen) comes in and informs us everything looks "good" and she will be moved (shipped out is the way it sounds to me) to another floor.

We are then told by the nurses that she will likely remain asleep for several hours. Because of this, my sister and I both leave and I ride to the lab to see if I can somehow find some sort of way to organize the chaos that has developed in my once orderly lab. The mental and emotional trauma I and my family has experienced is mirrored in the horrible disarray and mess of my lab. Even my back, back office is in disorder. Papers scattered about, books left open and scattered across the desktops, ashtrays unemptied and filled with the ashes of weeks of pipes. I even found one of the pipes I had wondered where I had mislaid two weeks ago.

I grab a few books, and transfer some files from my computer to a drive I take with me and head home to try to help my wife and to cut the lawn.

When I arrive back in the afternoon, my sister and I arrive at the same time and find my mother has been dumped onto the South 4th floor. Those with any ties to the medical community shudder when a loved one is sent to the South 4th floor. It is known that this floor has the weakest nursing staff, and is a "general" surgery floor but is also the floor with the highest death rate of any in the hospital. My sister and I both grimace and head up to her room as quickly as possible.

We get into the room and my mother is not only asleep, she is very hard to arouse. She is very, very pale, and looks far more sickly than she did this morning. I grasp her wrist and because of the severe edema, I cannot easily locate her pulse. My sister tries as she is better at sensing the pulse and quickly determines our mother's pulse is at 120 beats a minute..... the typically very fast heart beat that she displays when in arrythmia. We both feel fear and frustration.... why is this not being taken care of? Why are we the ones who find this out and not the nursing staff? We look on her chart and there are no records beyond the 10 am reading....over 5 hours before!!!! We quickly pull the nurse away from her chatting at the nursing station and tell her of our mother's pulse rate. She looks slightly annoyed but wheels down a blood pressure cuff and pulse and oxygen monitor. Exactly as we said, her heart is racing again at 120. The nurse visibly tries to arouse my mother who is mostly non-responsive. This sets into motion a series of events that leads to my mother being taken back to the sixth floor.... not the ICU this time but right next to it... in the cardiac wing with significant monitoring of her condition.

We feel more at ease. It takes about 2 hours but when we are allowed back into the room, my mother is lucid and is willing to talk with us. She still has significant edema, and her heart rate is still high, but the cardizam they are administering is slowly bringing the rate down (and hopefully the rhythm back into normalcy). We leave at roughly 9pm.

We continue to hope and pray that there is a good outcome.

PipeTobacco