success.
Suddenly I felt awful. What was happening to me now? I felt hot, very hot, and it was getting harder to breathe. As I lay in bed trying to sleep, my heart began pounding with such fury I actually saw my chest heave with each amplified heartbeat.
Sweat poured down my body, yet cold chills made my jaw chatter. “I’d better check my heart rate,” I murmured. I reluctantly placed two fingers on my neck, afraid of what I’d find. I had reason for fear: my heart was beating one hundred eighty beats a minute! One hundred and eighty beats a minute? Propping myself up with a pillow, I cautiously counted again. One hundred and eighty beats. Now I was scared, really scared. I was slipping out of control. What was happening to me? What was wrong with my heart? Don’t panic, I told myself. You must NOT panic!
Then I thought to myself, I’ll just go to the hospital emergency room. They’ll be able to slow down my heart rate, and then I’ll come right home. I could leave a note for Chuck, I thought. The boys would never know I was gone.
I rolled to my side and elevated my body up and out of bed with a weak push. I dressed, swished mouthwash around my mouth, and whispered to my still sleeping husband that I was driving myself to the hospital. I was not sure if he heard me or not. That was okay, really, because I’d rather go through this alone, at least until I figured out what was happening to me. And if it was just paranoia, I’d only be embarrassing myself in front of some emergency room strangers.
I slipped out of the house and into the chilly morning.
The ten-mile drive to the hospital seemed a hundred miles. It was drizzling. The roads were slick. I had a hard time seeing the road. I didn’t see well at night, anyway. “Maybe I should just turn around,” I murmured. “Yeah. ‘Just turn around.’ Jan, you’re acting crazy.”
At last, I pulled into the hospital parking lot and spotted a parking place near the emergency entrance. Feeling very weak, I struggled out of the car and walked timidly toward the door.
“I feel like I am dying,” I whispered hoarsely to myself.
The glass doors slid open with a metallic bang, sending shock waves down the emergency room hallway. The smell of childhood vaccinations stung my face as I stepped inside and looked around. The room was almost deserted and creepy at this hour of the morning. I can’t believe I just drove myself to the hospital. I hate hospitals! I think I’m going to throw up. I think I’m going to die.
I shuffled to the receptionist’s desk. Sweat rolled down my back as I shivered with cold chills. A tired looking, middle-aged woman stood behind an oversized counter flipping pages on a clipboard. She looked up at me over the top of her heavy specs. “Yes?” she said in a monotone. “What can I do for you?”
I could barely hear her over the sound of my heart roaring in my ears.
I explained my situation as if confessing a crime. “I really don’t know what’s happening to me,” I said helplessly. “I just know I’m real sick, and I don’t know why.”
The tired receptionist ushered me to a cubicle where I exchanged my sweat pants and tee-shirt for a skimpy hospital gown, its flowered blue fabric faded from one too many washings. As if she were the hospital’s headmistress, she instructed me to lie down and wait for the doctor, and left. Listlessly, I obeyed, and fell instant prey to other emergency room personnel who came in and out bearing thermometers, blood pressure cuffs, and plasma kits.
Pain struck. Pain, terrible pain ripping down my right leg. Every time I sensed that wicked piercing pain I hoped the nurses would pick up a jagged spike on the EKG. They didn’t. For months, I had felt extreme biting pain wrap itself around my right knee and repeatedly shoot down my shin. The pains appeared out of nowhere, always without warning. Why didn’t the nurses see what I felt?
The white sheets of the hospital bed felt crisp and cool against my skin. As much as I hated injections, I didn’t mind when they punctured my vein and began the IV, and I was greatly relieved when the EKG became an appendage. I felt secure with it taped across my chest, as if my racing heart would return to normal now that professionals were monitoring me. I drifted in and out of consciousness. I wanted to sleep, just for a bit. Sleep. . . . I tried to drift off. I was too restless, though.
An emergency room doctor on duty that night entered the cubicle and came to my side. He was very young, much younger than I. I’m not comfortable with doctors who remind me of my kids. I prefer the old grandfatherly type. He talked to me about tests and other measures they wanted to take, but suddenly I was very tired, too tired to keep my eyes open, and I sank into oblivion.
The next thing I knew, I awoke in a private room, startled at my whereabouts. The room was dark and felt ominous. I didn’t remember coming there from the emergency room. I must have drifted into a deep sleep. I felt as if I were surrounded by an opaque bubble, the sticky kind my kids popped all over their faces. I couldn’t quite get outside of it, and I was not sure if I really wanted to.
Two days passed as if they were brief moments in time. I wished my husband and the boys were there. They didn’t come to see me. It’s best, I guessed. The boys were so little. I didn’t want them to be scared by seeing me in a hospital bed so sick and swollen. Plus, Chuck was too busy, or so he said when he phoned and explained he was taking care of the boys in every spare minute. I was so alone, though. My anxious thoughts were my only company.
As I lay in bed pondering my situation, I became aware of the television turned on in my room. I was not paying attention to it until an advertisement for a pain reliever caught my eye. Immediately following that advertisement, another ad selling constipation medication bellowed through the room. I reached for the remote and started flipping channels and counted more than twenty advertisements in less than five minutes hawking medications for headaches, aches and pains, monthly cramping, arthritis, constipation, diarrhea, baldness, and tooth pain.
Then movie stars, professional ball players, and slinky models all bore witness to miracle prescription drugs recommended by doctors and available by “just calling your doctor for details.” I never paid attention to commercials like these before. Until now, that is. Lying in a hospital bed, deathly sick, changed not only one’s outlook on life but one’s habits.
A noise caught my attention. I spied a mysterious male figure lurking by my door, which was ajar. Maybe it was my husband, I thought, and propped myself upon one elbow. I was disappointed to see it was the ER doctor.
In the midst of pain, anxiety and sleepiness, I hadn’t noticed much while I was in the emergency room, but now I was more aware of what was going on. The doctor was tall, fairly good-looking, and blond. He wore wire-rimmed glasses that were similar in style to the heavy horn rims the ER nurse had worn. With a sincere smile and a rehearsed manner, the doctor slid a chair next to my bed.
“You are a very sick woman,” he said in his official doctor tone. “We need to have a little talk.”
Uh oh, here it comes, I thought. His demeanor reminded me of the hospital protocol on daytime soap operas. I didn’t know this doctor, yet I was being asked to place a tremendous amount of trust in him. Despite his youthful appearance, I did like him, though, and I felt safe in his care for the moment. I tried to concentrate, but was unprepared for what he had to say.
“You have what we call Graves’ disease,” he stated with textbook form.
Startled, I sputtered, “What...”
“It’s a disease of the thyroid gland, yet we don’t know much about it,” he said.
I
