EP 127 - The Friend at the End - Part V

Now I was back on my own, just me, myself, and I.  But my attention stayed with my breath as it continued to flow in and out of me.   

“As long as I’m breathing, I’ll know that I’m still alive,” I thought.   

Now, I had been meditating for many, many years, and part of that practice is to focus on your breath, but this was completely different.  Before, the breath was a calming presence.  Now, it was literally my lifeline.

Breathing no longer felt like an automatic process and I made no assumptions about it.  As each breath went out, it was clear that the next one might not be coming in. Instead of just feeling an automatic, mechanical motion, it felt more and more like each breath coming into me was like I was receiving some kind of a consciously given gift.

After some time, I started feeling a little better. My eyesight problem was still the same, but my system seemed to have stabilized a little.

I got up and walked around the pool for a bit. I kept feeling better and better, but I still could barely see. I could make out the time on my watch and was surprised to see that the whole episode had happened in about 30 minutes. My wife, Sally, hadn’t even come down to the pool yet.

I decided to relax and see if I kept feeling better. Maybe my eyesight would clear up and it would all just pass.

Sally came down about ten minutes later and she was pretty alarmed when she saw me. I felt a lot better, but she was very concerned. After a little while, she convinced me to go back up to our apartment with her and get into bed.

I must have dozed off for a while because the next thing I knew, our family doctor walked into our bedroom. He was actually a member of our pool and when he got there for the day, some friends told him what was happening with me.  He called Sally and she asked him to come up and give me a quick exam.

I was surprised to see him. I asked him if he was planning on playing any golf over the weekend. He didn’t answer. He just took one look at me and said, “You’re going to the hospital right now. “ He took my pulse and said to Sally, “Go get an ambulance and tell them it’s urgent.”

When I heard the word “ambulance” I said to Sally, “Make sure they’re taking me to Lankenau and not Roxborough,” Our condo is on the border between two hospitals. Lankenau is much more of a suburban hospital and Roxborough is located within the city limits. They always tell you to pick Lankenau if you get your choice.

She came back in the room in a matter of moments.

“OK,” she said to me, “They’re on their way over and they’re taking you to Lankenau.”

“Is that for certain?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” she answered. “They understood completely. There’s no question about it at all.”

At that point, a whole different momentum started and I realized that my responsibilities in the world had just come to an end. I was about to become a patient, and the only thing I had to do was cooperate with the people who were about to take care of me. Whatever they told me to do, I would do. It was all out of my hands now.

Was I going to live? Or was I about to die? Who could say? I thought I had been feeling better, but from the look on my doctor’s face, it was obvious that I was clearly in serious trouble.

All that I had left now was my breath. It was the only thing that I could rely upon. “As long as I can feel my breath, I’ll know I still have a body,” I thought.  “If I’m still conscious, but I can’t feel my breath anymore, then I’ll know the change has happened and I’ll just have to take it from there. But as long as I’m still breathing, I’m still here.”

The ambulance came within a few minutes and I was on my way. 

The next 36 hours were pretty much of a blur.

Sally told me later that I wasn’t given any drugs or sedatives at all, but I kept drifting in and out of consciousness.

They took me to Lankenau, which is one of the top hospitals in our area. But after a CAT Scan, they immediately decided that my condition was critical and rushed me downtown to the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital of Neuroscience in the middle of the night.  

They determined that I was long past the point where they could have given me a “clot buster” to take care of the stroke. There was absolutely nothing they could do now but put me in intensive care and monitor me closely. While they hoped for the best, they gravely told Sally to prepare for the worst.

“Stay with him. Hold his hand. Talk to him,” they said. “We might lose him tonight. Just…just don’t let him slip away…”

The next thing I became aware of, I was lying in a hospital bed and Sally was holding my hand. When I opened my eyes and looked at her, she looked like she had really been through hell. She told me that I had been out of it for about 36 hours.

          “You’ve had a stroke,” she said. “But you’re going to be alright,” she assured me calmly and kept holding my hand.

          I looked around. I was obviously in an intensive care room. I moved every part of my body to see if everything was working okay and it was. I actually felt fine.

Two close friends of mine had been through small stroke episodes over the past year. They were mini-strokes. They had to stay in the hospital overnight and then they went home. They were told that it wasn’t a big deal. I was pretty sure that’s what had happened to me.

I felt completely fine. My vision had cleared up, except I had lost a small part of my upper left peripheral vision. But other than that, I seemed fine.

Doctors and nurses came and went over the next half hour. They seemed happy to see that I was awake and gave me some very quick exams. One of them told Sally that I seemed to be doing pretty well and that she could take a break.

I don’t know how long she had been there for, but she decided to go stretch her legs a little and get some coffee. The room that I was in had no windows, so it was impossible to tell what time of day it was.

One of the nurses suggested that I relax and doze off for a little. Soon, I was lying in the room by myself. I closed my eyes to take it easy, but I had a funny experience. I found that I had some kind of inner vision. I could clearly see images inside of myself with my eyes closed.

I saw an endless parade of black and white sketches. They were all of rabbis dressed in religious clothing, all from centuries long ago.  It was crystal clear. There must have been hundreds of them, one right after another. Black and white sketch after sketch.

It went on for a really long time. Then suddenly, instead of sketches, a small grey statue appeared. It was the image of the Madonna holding the Holy Child and it was really exquisite.

As I stared at it, it rotated, giving me several different views. Then, all of a sudden, a full color figure burst out of the Madonna part of the statue. And to my shock and surprise, it was Wonder Woman, the comic book character.

She was in her red, blue and gold outfit and she was wearing her bright gold crown on her head. She was standing on the ledge of a mountain and I noticed that she was holding a large grey sack.

She looked at me, pulled her gold crown down over her eyes like a visor and flew into my brain. I watched as she methodically pulled glob after glob of bloody tissue out of my brain and put it into her sack.

This went on for quite a while. Finally, she flew back out of my brain, and landed on the ledge of the mountaintop. She lifted the visor of her crown off of her eyes and put it back on top of her head.

She looked at me and even though she was a miniature version of herself, she seemed to be the embodiment of raw power. She gave me a strong salute, grabbed the bag full of bloody brain material and flew away.

I must have drifted off to sleep after that, because the next thing I knew, I awoke to Sally holding my hand again. She said I’d been out for about an hour.

 

*         *          *

 

Sometime a bit later, a very  important looking doctor came walking into the room. He looked like he was in his middle sixties and was surrounded by about five medical students who were obviously studying under him.

He introduced himself to me and told me that he was the actual head of the hospital. He gave me a quick examination and said a few things to his students. Then he sat down on the bed and looked me straight in the eyes.

“David,” he began. “It’s really important that you understand something. What you had was not a mini-stroke or a TIA or anything like that. What you had was a major neurological episode that could have killed you in about three seconds, or maimed you permanently for the rest of your life.

“You could have been blinded, paralyzed, lost your ability to speak, or all of it at the same time.”

I was completely taken by surprise. I had no idea that any of that was true. I had basically been in a very comfortable, dreamy state, with absolutely no sense of danger.

“Now it looks like you’re going to walk away from this whole thing basically unharmed. But you’re going to have to take care of your Atrial Fibrillation. The stroke was a direct result of it,” he concluded.

“Really?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” he replied. “There’s no question about it. The clot came straight from your heart.”

I had been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat, about six months earlier. I had been treated with medication, but apparently it didn’t help.

“Listen, the chances of walking away unscathed from a stroke of this magnitude are less than one in a thousand. You can’t reach back into the deck and pull out another card like this again. You have to take care of the A-Fib when you get out of here.

“Which brings me to another point,” he continued. ‘We’re keeping you here for another ten days until we know your blood has been thinned down. We have to protect you from having another stroke.

“The next forty-eight hours are critical though. Even though the worst is over, it’s still possible that you can have some swelling of the brain or even some brain bleeding.  There can be damaged tissue involved. It’s not uncommon with a stroke. So we’re going to keep a really close watch on you.

Suddenly, in my mind, I flashed on an image of Wonder Woman. As if sending me a message, she triumphantly held up the bag full of bloody material she had pulled out of my brain. 

“But as it is, you’re looking pretty good,” the doctor concluded and gave me a big smile.

He looked over at a bulletin board on the wall. There was a sign that said,” David, Your Assignment Today Is To EAT.”

“Oh yeah,” he said and pointed to the sign. “Eat, David. Eat up! You haven’t had anything in your system for a long time. You have to make up for it.”

He gave me another very kind smile and walked out of the room, the five medical students trailing behind him. They closed the door and I was left alone in the dimly lit environment. I took a few breaths and let this new information sink into me. I had survived a major neurological episode that could have killed me in a matter of seconds or seriously injured me on a permanent basis. But now, according to this major medical authority, all was well. 

It was all way too much for me to process at that point but for some reason, I suddenly flashed on Wonder Woman holding that bagful of bloody brain matter, and her look of absolute assurance as she put her crown back on her head and gave me a warm salute that seemed to convey a deeply positive essence, rooted in the very power behind infinity.

And as I intuitively let go of it all, I could feel the breath continue coming into me and going out. Coming in and going out. It was the same as it ever was, only very different…