Bleeding: a Rite and a Privilage

Warning: The following entry is not for the faint-of-heart. If you have an aversion to the to the thought of blood or the description of physical injury, do not read any further!

This picture of Alejandro Escovedo performing with David Pulkingham and Susan Voelz performing at the MFA last November has nothing to do with the following entry, but serves as a last warning for those who are squeamish.

I cut my finger while preparing dinner last night. Nothing serious, I just bumped the back of my index finger with my excruciatingly sharp favorite knife. The cut was small but deep enough to start bleeding immediately. A curse on my part, and few tissues, blood droplets around the kitchen, a nice tight band-aid, and the bleeding stopped within 5 minutes, and I was back to chopping.

But it got me thinking. The boy who turns 14 in a couple has never really bled to any great degree. It may be due to the protected life he leads, and he is not a physical risk take. He has had a few skinned knees and bloody lips over the years, but nothing that require much more than a band-aid and certainly nothing that required stitches. I mentioned this to the boy, and he said that he didn’t see the need to change the situation.

I don’t care to change the situation either, but I remember back to my childhood and it seems to me that some one was always bleeding for some reason. Growing up in a family of 8 kids, with six being boys, perhaps the ratio per person was low, but added together it just seems like there was just lots more blood. Among my brothers, there are a couple of legendary events that required trips to the emergency room, which fortunately was just blocks from the house. There was the time when Pete was about four and he walked into the bedroom just as another brother kicked the door closed. Pete took the doorknob to the side of the head. Lots of blood and hysterical crying of course with the result being several stitches and a shaved spot on his head. Then there was the time Mike was playing in the woods across the street and fell on a broken coke bottle, it was one of those old thick green glass ones. He cut the palm of his hand pretty deeply, as I recall it took something like 13 stitches to close that one up. I recall that a couple of my brothers could produce a nosebleed at will. This was particularly useful in preventing themselves from being pounded to a pulp by their older brother (me). The blood would stop the fight without any real bodily harm actually being inflicted. (A side note: In spite of the sometimes knock-down-drag-out fights we had as kids, we are all very close as adults, even if our behavior is still childish.)

If it wasn’t our family, it was one of the myriad of other kids in the neighborhood courting disaster. Moe R. rode his bike down the ramp to their garage, unfortunately the door was closed at the time and he took the garage door handle in the mouth. (Moe was not considered the brightest kid on the block.) There were bloodstains on the concrete for days afterwards. Eddie K. stepped into Kirk A’s back swing with a 9-iron, taking the golf club at almost exactly the same location as Moe took the garage door handle. My recollection of that was mostly the resultant swelling and range of purple, greens and yellow that his face was for days after that. Lance R. who had mild cerebral palsy lost his balance walking from the garage to the patio and put his arm through the glass on the door. I don’t remember a whole lot of blood, but I do recall seeing all the tendons and muscles on the underside of his arm for that one. I there when that happened, and having been in Boy Scouts, I grabbed a towel and did the old direct pressure thing and brought him back over to his house. Again it was luck the hospital was just blocks away. I don’t recall anyone being permanently disfigured by these incidents, and with the exception of Moe, they were all just chance accidents.

As for myself, I never required stitches of any of my mishaps, but I did my share of bleeding never the less. My most memorable mishaps took place in 5th grade. There as a cul-de-sac on the block behind us, with a nice long sloping decline to it. Near the bottom, a neighbor kid had propped a slab of plywood against a concrete block making a crude ramp. I peddled my bicycle pell-mell down the maybe 100-yard length of the street and launched the bike and I into the air. The launch went fine, the landing not so much so. I think I tumbled entangled in the bike for another hundred yards before coming to a stop. I was bruised, scraped and lacerated, and bleeding from my scalp above my right ear. I somehow managed to peddle home before collapsing in tears at the back door, crying that I had cracked my head open, a fear of every boy of the 50’s and 60’s. I spent a day or two on the sofa after that one, and I can still feel the scar on my scalp.

Bicycles are a great device for providing cuts and other physical damage to kids. Another time while riding down the street, a friend riding along said’ Never try to steer you bike while crossing your arms and holding the handlebars.’ So, what did I do? Of course, I crossed my arms and grabbed the handlebars! The nearly immediate result was that I lost control and I found myself lying in the crushed rock on the side of the road. Arms were lacerated from taking the force of the fall. A word to the wise; the voice of experience, do not cross your arms and try to steer your bike!

There were numerous other incidents beyond those. I tended to lead with my head; I can find at least another 5 scars on my head beyond that previously mentioned. There was the time I didn’t duck low enough under the half-opened garage door, and took the front edge at my hairline, and the time I slipped on an area rug in my parents bedroom and connected my eyebrow with the cedar chest. That eyebrow has one other scar in it, and the other side eyebrow has at least one as well. I could go on, but my purpose here was not to list my entire history of bloodletting encounters, rather to illustrate that blood was an integral part of the growing up process when I was a kid.

So by my figuring, if the boy had been growing up at that time, there would have been a half-dozen times that he would have had bloodied himself by now. I think that they must find all their risk taking adventures in video games these days. Again not that I want him bleeding all over the place, but I wonder if he hasn’t missed out on some rite of passage.

Into the Beast of the Belly

I just spent last Friday night in the emergency room of one of Boston’s biggest and most popular hospitals. Actually I spent more than just the night, it was more like an afternoon a night and a good portion of the next day. I checked in at about 2:30 in the afternoon and did not escape again until 1:00 on Saturday. It was an experience to say the least.

I suppose a little background is in order. Periodically I get attacks of what I call killer heartburn, which involves rather intense chest pain in my left shoulder, back, and arm. The symptoms can mimic a heart attack; it is occasional and intermittent but can last for a few minutes to a few hours. It has bothered me on and off since my early 20’s and I have a few techniques and medication to deal with it. Lately it has flared up again with the added symptoms of sweats, nausea and shortness of breath. This really scared the crap out of me, and added anxiety as another symptom! After suffering thru a few hours of this Thursday night that the usual remedies didn’t seem to cure, and then having another ‘attack’ on Friday morning at work, I called my Dr. He felt that he couldn’t get a cardiologist to see me so suggested that I go to the emergency room. Fortunately Mrs. had a half-day at work, so I drove home and she drove me to the hospital, which is located a short distance from the house.

And so the adventure begins.

Stepping up to the desk in the emergency room and saying ‘chest pain’ immediately whips them into action. Within a moment or two I was lead to an examination room for a brief interview, electrodes were pasted to my chest, (these resembled little snaps backed with foam adhesive tape) and I was connected to an EKG machine. A few beeps and printer output followed, and in a few more minutes the results were determined to be ‘normal’, meaning that I wasn’t in the midst of a heart attack. Still concerned about the chest pain, which it was felt might be related to a heart problem, it was decided that I should be sent to the emergency suite. With that I was escorted thru the big double doors to the other side of ‘emergency’ and because all of the examination bays were full I was directed to lie on a gurney along the wall. I was again instructed to remove my shirt and once more my electrodes were connected to a heart monitor. Little did I know that I would not be free of that tether for many hours. Over the next hour or two a couple of doctors and numerous nurses stopped by to check on me talk to me and generally take my medical history. Mrs., who was still in the emergency room lobby and I were texting back and forth on our cell phones as I appraised her of the developments. Eventually they allowed her to join me in the back.

At one point a nurse came up and inserted an IV in the back of my hand. Remembering what a friend had told me years ago, ‘once they get an IV in you. You know they are gonna keep you over night.’ I figured my fate was sealed. I was thankful for it on one level, as they seemed to need blood samples from me on an hourly basis, and it beat the hell out of having needles stuck in one each time. Following one of the blood taking episodes the nurse asked me if I was in pain. Feeling a slight stabbing pain in my side, which may have been the result of sitting oddly on the gurney, I said 'Yes. a little'. With that he promptly dosed me with morphine, saying something the effect of ‘We want to dull those pain receptors.’ It wasn’t a big dose, and it gave me a nice buzz and nicely took care of any pain I was feeling, physical and emotional.

Doctors continued to come and look at my chart and one decided that an ultra sound of my heart was in order, I think as much as there was an ultra sound machine parked next to me. That required removing two of the electrodes firmly glued to the center of my chest along with them went tufts of chest hair. After he ultrasounded me for a few minutes, he said ‘Well I was just taking a look, this isn’t an official ultrasound or anything.’ He instructed a nurse to paste two more electrodes to my chest and wire me up again. He then walked off, and that was the last that I would see of him. Some time later another doctor or nurse or physicians assistant came by looked at my charts asked a few more questions and said I think we want to keep you over night for ‘observation’ and then have you take a stress test in the morning.

With that they found me a room in ‘observation’ and wheeled me over. I got situated on the bed and they once more reconnected me to the heart monitor. I settled in, fortunately I had my iPod and I had brought a book with me, knowing from experience having taken others to emergency that the stays can be long. I ordered food and settled in, tethered as I was to the heart monitor I wasn’t really going anywhere. Mrs. kept me company for a couple hours until it was time for her to go and tend to the boy. He was not please that I would be spending the night in the hospital, and I assured him that I was ok, but they were just wanting to check on me for a while.

The ‘observation’ area consisted of a dozen or so patient bays around a central nurse / doctor station. There is a constant buzz of activity as patients are coming and going. The medical staff is in constant motion as well, and the lights are always on. Trying to sleep with all that activity going on was like sleeping on someone’s sofa while the whole family is going about their everyday business. I read until late in to the night, with the nurses stopping in every so often the check my vitals and take blood. It was well after 1:00am before I fell asleep and even at that is was fitful sleep, and the monitor wire prevented me from really moving about on the bed. Morning finally came around; I pretty much finished my book, and heard almost every tune on the iPod. Contrary to the evening before it seemed that the nursing staff was ignoring me. It seems the call button had not been connected when they put me in my bay, and had drawn a curtain in front of the bay sometime overnight. Finally hollering from my bed I got a nurses attention so I could get some food and a restroom break.

Eventually they informed me that I would be ‘going upstairs’ for a stress test, and a three young women with a wheel chair disconnected the wires one more time and wheeled me thru the labyrinth of halls and elevators, ‘under the street’ and up in the ‘tower’. Upon arrival, One more time the electrodes were removed from my chest, taking with them more chest hair, and a new set were attached to me, this time at least they shaved the really hair parts. And this time even more wires were attached to those. They terminated in a sort of fanny pack affair that fit around my waist, and from that one lead went to a computer that was also connected to a treadmill. After the now usual ‘5 minute’ wait that turns in to 20, I climbed on to the treadmill for my test. For the test they work in 3-minute increments, increasing the speed each time, taking ones blood pressure while monitoring the heart on the EKG. The first setting was a moderate walking pace, certainly no slower than I usually walk, and while my heart rate went up, I didn’t break sweat. The next segment was a very brisk walk, when asked to rate my exertion on a scale from one to ten, I gave it about 4.5 to 5, I was working harder and starting to sweat. The third setting was a very brisk walk, but I felt fine, I dropped my breathing into my full chest, and walked on and my heart rate was up to 172 bmp, I was ready for the next increment, and they shut me down! ‘Wow, you did great! My thought was, ‘That was it? Gimme the next 3 minutes, I got more in me.” Instead, they made me lay down on a cot, no walking it off; they wanted to monitor my heart as it returned to it’s resting rate. That resulted in a headache, but other than that I felt fine. Once I was cooled down and the wires again disconnected, the three young women returned with wheelchair and trundled me back to my bay in ‘obs’. Within 15 minutes of returning they told me I could get dressed, and a physicians assistant came in and said “You can go, your heart is fine, but talk to your Dr about treatment for GERD.” (Gastro esophageal reflux disease.)

Needless to say, I was out of there like a shot. I called the Mrs. while buttoning my shirt and she was there in the car at the curb waiting as I walked out. When we arrived home I pored myself a nice hot cup of coffee, something that I had been denied at the hospital, and hopped into the shower. But not before pulling off that last batch of electrodes, along with even more chest hair.

It made for an interesting 24 hours. This was the first time that I have spent any time in hospital except for having my tonsils out when I was 6, and I am of mixed feelings about the experience. The medical staff were all very thorough, and generally concerned about my health and comfort. They were not always good about communicating to me what they were thinking and the reasons for doing some of the procedures however. I am relieved to know that my heart is healthy, and I will be contacting my Dr to seek treatment for the GERD. Just knowing what it is though is a relief.

Now if I can just get the adhesive from those electrodes off my chest and stomach, it has been 4 days and as many showers; tenacious stuff.