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The Journey to the ER
Adrenaline is a hormone secreted by the adrenal glands in times of stress. Biologically speaking, it increases your heart rate, blood pressure, and generally amps your metabolism to keep you alive. The stress is caused by situations where your autonomic nervous system determines you are in grave danger. In my previous post, I described The Fall. Adrenaline got me from the floor of the studio to the car. It’s the only explanation.
It’s 3:30 PM on Saturday and the next ferry leaves at 4:00. We aren’t going to make it, but we’re trying anyway. I’m in the passenger seat, fully reclined, in total agony. Specifically, my lower back on the left hand side is a knot of intense pain. 8-10 on the proverbial 1-10 pain scale. I get asked a thousand times over the next few days what my pain level is. I mostly tell them “5-6” but on the floor of the studio and the way to the ferry it is way higher than that. At some point on the drive, my left hand totally cramps up in screaming pain. I’m trying to manipulate it with my right hand, but it’s a bit useless. My fingers are in this weird, gnarled state of crampiness. It’s agonizing. It takes several minutes of massaging them to get them to relax and stop hurting.
My wife swears she made the fastest trip from our place to the ferry we have ever made. We hit traffic in downtown Kingston near the ferry booth and we can see the ferry is still loading. We get to the booth just as the 4:00 ferry is leaving. The next ferry is at 4:40 but when we pull up, the ferry booth has a sign that says “5:30”. In other words, the 4:40 ferry is already full with cars that made it there before us. My wife simply says “we’re going to the emergency room” and I guess the booth person took one look at me and believed her. He or she gets on the radio and says “medical” and points us to lane 4. We wait there for a half hour but I have no memory whatsoever of that half an hour. All I remember next is that someone comes to our car and they tell us to get behind two employees’ cars and they put us on the 4:40 ferry first. Normally this is the very best spot on the ferry, secured only by chance when you are the first person to miss the previous ferry. There’s normally a nice view. But I was reclined and in no position to look out. Like I said, it was one of the nicest days of the year so far so it should have been a spectacular ferry ride.
Somewhere on the journey, I started shivering terribly. I was so cold. I was thinking at the time, “shock”, which it might have been, but in retrospect I think it was my parasympathetic nervous system taking over. In other words, the adrenalin wore off. So my blood pressure dropped, etc. and all of a sudden I was So Damn Cold. My wife pulled every jacket she could find and piled them on top of me. Getting tucked into these jackets sent spears of pain everywhere. But at least I was a little warm again.
All the way there we were debating where we would go. I remembered in the fog of my situation that there is one Level 1 trauma center in Seattle. Turns out this is at Harborview Medical Center. I’m on my phone doing research, it’s so amazing how valuable our smartphones are. I wanted to go to Harborview, they have the experts at everything. But it’s also in downtown Seattle and that’s not where we live (we live on the Eastside of Seattle). There are two Level III trauma centers on the Eastside, Evergreen and Overlake. If you search for Evergreen they will tell you that it is closed on Saturday and Sunday. What? Who closes a trauma center at any time? By the time the ferry docks and we get off, we decide not to go to Harborview but go to either Evergreen or Overlake.
We pass right by the exit for Evergreen and decide not to stop there in case it really is closed. I find out later that it was definitely open but we didn’t know that at the time. We pull into the ER at Overlake and a guard directs us into a spot nearby because my wife tells him that I can’t walk in to ER. They come out with a wheelchair, take my wife’s key and valet park our car so she can accompany me in. From the desk to the ER exam room is quick and they keep my wife behind to fill out the paperwork. I cannot overly emphasize how efficient this felt. I don’t know what time I got into the room, but they started evaluating me right after 6:00. So it took us two and a half hours to get to the ER. That was a long, painful, scary trip.
Next post: ER.