When I became very ill I was alone. I thought that I had the flu so I didn't think I needed to bother anyone because I can deal with the flu on my own. At first I had the cold sweats and I all of my joints were inflamed which was very painful. I had weird diarrhea that was dark and like tar. I took my temperature and it was 97 degrees which I didn't expect at all. This went on for about four days and I began to feel better and the diarrhea seemed to have stopped. I couldn't eat at all while I was sick but I was now able to eat a small amount yogurt and juice. The next day I had to do a job and I was thankful that I was feeling good enough to do the job. As I always do before I work I have a good meal and take care of any personal needs and I decided that I wanted a burrito and a taco at Del Taco, along with lemonade because I thought the vitamin C would do me good after fighting a bad flu.
The recording session went well enough but I noticed that I still wasn't right. The shoot was more difficult then the usual ones I've been doing lately so I really had to push myself to stay focused and deal with all of the details. I was doing several jobs at once, I was Producer, Director and I had 3 cameras with only one other cameraman so I had to run 2 cameras myself. I was weak and I had no stamina at all, but the show must go on so I sucked it up and got the job done.
When I returned home it was all I could do to just fall into bed and sleep. The next morning I didn't feel too crappy so I made some coffee, had a little juice and ate some yogurt. I need to do a little shopping so I headed out and did a few chores. After I got back from my chores I felt a little worse so I went into my bedroom and decided to take a nap. When I woke a short time later I felt even worse then before and I began to get very sore in my joints again and the cold sweats had returned. I was in so much pain I did something that I almost never do; I took an aspirin then went back to bed. Little did I know at the time that that tiny little pill almost killed me.
It didn't take long before I became nauseated and had to stumble to the bathroom with a bout of diarrhea that turned into vomiting blood. I was so out of it that I couldn't connect the dark red substance I was throwing up into my trash can with blood. I thought it was just the fruit juice I had just consumed. I didn't even notice at the time that the volume of my puke far exceeded the amount of juice I had. After I was finally able to get myself off of the bathroom floor I crawled my way back into bed unable to move. I thought something was very wrong but I didn't know what. I considered I could have Ebola or some food poisoning or who knows what but I was very sick.
One of my good friends who lives in the Santa Barbara area became worried about me because I hadn't answered my phone or any email for a few days, which is unusual for me, so she made a call to the park manager and asked her to check on me. The manager asked my next door neighbor, whom I am friends with, to stop by and see how I was doing and relay the message. I was able to make it to the door and told my neighbor that I needed some help and could she please go get Dell, another neighbor that is a nurse. When Dell arrived she took one look at me and the state of my bathroom which was cover with blood, and called 911. The paramedics checked my vitals and blood pressure and decided that I had to go to the hospital as quickly as possible so they rushed me to Joshua Tree Memorial Hospital.
At this point I was barely able to talk and I couldn't move on my own having no strength due to blood loss so I was in no position to object to being sent to the hospital due to lack of funds and no insurance. I was CAT scanned, poked, prodded, had things put into me in every orifice, and had some of my remaining blood taken for tests. I was placed on an IV to help with the dehydration then told they had to send me to Palm Springs where they had the facilities to handle my illness. I still didn't know what was wrong and was becoming even weaker.
So, in the middle of the worst blizzard in recent memory I was put into an ambulance and rushed to Palm Springs. When I got to Palm Springs Desert Regional Hospital, the one Frank Sinatra built for his ailing mother, they put me into one of the private rooms and wired me with sensors all over and began giving me what turned out to be 4 units of blood along with two other medications and a saline drip so I had tubes in both arms. Slowly my blood pressure began to recover and the pain in my abdomen subsided but throughout the entire ordeal my heart never missed a beat and was strong, which gave the doctors hope that I would fully recover.
The blood test showed I had a nasty bacteria in my stomach in what they described as "extremely high levels" This is what was causing the trouble so they began treatment for that at the very moment they got the results back from my first of what turned out to be many blood tests. It was touch and go the first day or so but then slowly I began to stabilize which allowed the doctors to proceed with an endoscope inspection of my digestive system. When I got the report from the GI specialist he told me he expected to find Swiss Cheese perforations in my stomach because of all the blood I had lost and looking at the CAT scan indicated that I indeed was in bad shape. To his surprise the doctor told me when he located every one of the lesions but they had already stopped bleeding and had began to heal over the wound so he didn't have to do anything except take pictures of the now healing lesions. He was ready to cauterize the lesions and take biopsies but none of that was necessary. The good doctor also told me that I was lucky I have a strong heart and other organs because if I didn't he was certain I would not have survived. Someone was watching over me or else the devil didn't want me so he threw me back like a trout that didn't measure up.
On day 10 I had my first meal of some broth and a small dinner roll being the first thing I could keep down in 10 days. I was in heaven, I could eat again and my blood pressure was almost normal. Just to be sure I wouldn't have a relapse I was fed a bland diet for two more days before I was strong enough to be sent home.
I've left a lot of the details of what happened to me during my stay in the most expensive hotel room in Palm Springs because I am embarrassed by some of it and some of it you just don't want to know about.
I want to say that the doctors and nurses that saved me deserve a medal for the fantastic work they performed. I cannot sing their praises enough because they knew what to do and reacted very quickly. Having said this I am even more a supporter of a single payer, government run health care system instead of our current insurance, profit driven system. Why? Because the hospital has a finance department that was relentless about pressuring me to give them money I didn't have and I have no insurance because I cannot afford that either. Because the finance department almost sent me into a relapse and the doctors had to tell them to not bother me anymore while I was so critically ill. I discovered that the people that run the hospitals are not so much the doctors but the finance department which operates the same as the mafia runs their businesses. The people that work there look and act like they are Mob enforcers. I would rather have the government run things any time over having the Mob run things, which they now do at the peril of the patients. I can't wait until I get the bill.
|
