It’s not every day that a person’s face stops working. This week I got to experience that. My face was shutting down. First, I could not spit when brushing my teeth. Then, I could not whistle to my dog. While I’m dismissive of aches and pains, this seemed like something I should not ignore, so I hustled off the emergency room.
My local hospital is in a construction boom. We missed the ER parking area due to changes at the hospital’s entrance. The walk up to the ER from the parking lot was surreal. My legs were moving, the sunlight was incredibly bright, and I could not stop thinking that all the stress of the last month had finally defeated me.
Checking in proved to be an adventure. Airport security at a hospital? It’s a sad state when we must go through this kind of security at a place where the goal is to care for people. I’m not commenting on the hospital in this case. People are screwy. At some point later in the day, there was another mass shooting, at least eight people were killed. See what I mean.
I went through the first screening in haze. It’s difficult to explain what I felt while crouched down to talk under a Plexiglas window, through a mask, and with a mouth that was having an increasingly difficult time forming words. The staff was doing what was required of them, so I focused on being patient, on hiding my facial expressions that I wear freely on my face. Come to think of it, my face probably wasn’t expressing at all.
After a couple of minutes of answering questions, I got to enter the waiting area.
“Go over and have a seat until we call you.”
Seat? This place was packed. I went elevator mode and tried not to look at people. The room was part Aliens and Matrix as the chairs were surrounded by Covid blocking Plexiglas. Luck was with me as I found an end seat and texted my wife that it would be awhile before I would see a doctor.
Then I looked up and made eye contact with a lady across from me. She was probably in her eighties, dressed in winter clothing, and had a tub of bloody tissues resting on her lap. If she was not getting treated, there was no way I was getting to see a doctor anytime soon. The blood was coming from a nose bleed, but her energy was positive. Her mask was pulled down and she smiled. I nodded back. I could not smile at this point, but her energy made me feel calmer.
Then there was a call, “Christopher Hancock.”
I had been in the waiting room for less than five-minutes. I did not dare look at anyone who was waiting. Who knew what they were thinking? “He just got here, how’s he getting in so fast?” A tattoo covered nurse led me back to an observation room. I felt like I aced all the physical checks, but one question stumped me, “What year is it?” For a moment I didn’t know. This year seems like last year. Didn’t we stop keeping track of years when Covid hit? Shouldn’t we be tracking time as BC, Before Covid and DC, during Covid.
Some day we’ll get to AC, After Covid.
Nonetheless, I was whisked off to a CT scan. I have had one MRI, but never a CT scan. People seem to freak out about being in the MRI tubes. My MRI was like being wrapped in a blanket. The sounds of the machine were as soothing as Tibetan bells and I fell asleep. The CT scan machine was a donut and it took me longer to get situated on the table than the actual test.
At this point in the journey, I was noticing two things. One, I couldn’t pucker. Two, they kept calling me “code gray.” I didn’t know where that was on the code scale, but I hoped that no one would order a code red. I would not know how to handle that truth.
They took me off to another room. This time on a bed instead of a wheelchair. Two nurses came in and the next barrage of questions started, they took blood for testing, and an EKG machine was readied for use. I was a bit disappointed that the screen was behind me because I could not see the numbers. Whenever I’m hooked up to an EKG machine, I like to see how low I can get my heart rate. My wife watched the screen. She said I was able to relax enough to find the mid-fifties. Once I stopped concentrating, though, the heart went right back into stress mode. Lesson learned…
The doctor arrived soon thereafter and told the nurses not to worry about an EKG test. He looked at my eyebrows, thankfully I had trimmed them, so they were not an eyebrow. Based on the CT scan, blood work, visual symptoms, and my trail running history, he cleared me of a stroke.
Thank, God (and I did…)
After explaining to me about Bell’s Palsy in great detail, he ordered a test for Lymes disease and riffed about a former doctor from the hospital who retired due to the pandemic. The former doctor was convinced Lymes and Bell’s Palsy were related given the medical evidence and correlation of Lymes to Bell’s in our area. In his routine, the doctor also found time to comment on my hair, a frequent occurrence in my life and one I have grown tired of. His comment was new, though. I have never seen Mad Men, but my coif seems to look like one of the characters in the show.
The last bit of excitement arrived with the discharging nurse. He was presented with an ER dilemma before he could get started. A technician stood outside of my curtained room with two bags of blood. I hoped they were for the old lady in the lobby. As it turned out, he was supposed to have one bag. The new nurse freaked out and excused himself. He had an excited conversation with the blood delivery folks and “zeroed out” one of the bags.
According to my wife, the screen showed my heart rate increasing. “You better do your little heart trick thing,” she said.
He returned and went about his business in a most professional way.
“We are going to be putting you on Prednisone.”
I laughed.
“Why is that funny?” he asked.
“My dog is on Prednisone. We’ll be ‘juicing’ together.”
He laughed and explained that it would taste awful, so I should not let the pills rest on my tongue too long. With that, he handed me a glass of water and two pills.
“Can’t you put them in some peanut butter?” I quipped.
“Excuse me?”
“Peanut butter, that’s how I get my dog to take it.”
He laughed, again.
Everything was finished. No stroke. A sort of clean bill of health. New perspectives on all this “life stuff.” On the way out the door, I thanked the last nurse.
He waved and said, “Enjoy the peanut butter.”
