Frank Hayden

My world didn’t stop, but it slowed down so much that it began to wobble on its axis.

It started out like any other Tuesday morning, but Tuesday morning, June 28, 2005, was going to be one whale of a day, never to be forgotten.  It had been a lazy morning and I was feeling pretty good in spite of all the doctors’ visits for kidney infections since Easter. Like I said, I was feeling pretty good til about 9:30 or so. That’s when the fit hit the shan. It started with not feeling too good and it quickly progressed into being tired.  It got worse from there.

That’s when the pains running from my back straight through to my chest got my attention.  I thought they would go away any second, but guess what!  They didn’t. As a matter of fact, they got a lot worse. That’s about the time I figured it was alright to let my wife take me to the hospital.  By now of course, I was as weak as a kitten and sinking fast.  I made it as far as the deck, but no further.

“I’m going to call 911, no matter what you say.”

“Please, do.”

I had slumped into a deck chair just outside the kitchen door and was having great difficulty staying upright. Sue had called 911 already and was trying to keep me from falling on my face.  She did, but just barely.   EMS was Johnny on the spot. They were there in a matter of minutes and was I ever glad that my nose didn’t have a blunt trauma with the decking boards.

It seemed like an army had descended on my deck. In seconds, there were eight emergency personnel:  EMTs, fire fighters and police, all feverishly working on this old boy.

I thought it was kind of funny, because they all knew my name and I hadn’t told them what it was. They all kept hollering at me and asking me questions.

“Frank, are you still with us, buddy?  How old are you, Frank? How bad is the pain Frank?”

“Awful.”

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how is the pain, Frank?”

“Are you sure you don’t have any thing higher than a 10?”

“I take that to mean it’s a big 10.”

“Yep.”

“Have you ever had a heart attack, Frank?”

I told them no. Not having one now either.  The symptoms are all wrong.
They even asked me who the President of the United States was.  I thought everyone knew that, but I told them anyway just to make them happy.  I got it right too, by golly.

In the ambulance, I figured out that my wife, Sue, had told them my name. The hollering and the questions continued.  I told them that if they didn’t listen better, I wasn’t going to tell them any more.  They cut my shirt off me, stuck all kinds of leads on me and stuck a shunt in the back of my left hand.  That hurt!
I checked and I still had my “little buddy” with me.  The catheter was put in the week before in anticipation of prostate surgery.  We were inseparable, my little buddy and me.  We were joined at the hip, as they say.  Well, we were joined at another part of my anatomy, but everyone knows what I mean.

They got me to Southwest hospital and turned me over to ER.   I only remember a few things there because I was coming in and going out quite a bit.  I do remember being unloaded at the hospital and my daughter, Rose, was there.  I was wondering how she knew I would be here.  Then it dawned on me: Sue strikes again. Rose was a tremendous help throughout my stays in both hospitals.

I also remember Dr. Miller and Leanne, from when I first arrived. They were everywhere.  Like the “mark of the mouse”, they were everywhere, they were everywhere.  They were asking me all kinds of questions, too, but they wanted different kinds of information. They did ask me the same one about the pain on a scale of 1-10.

“How’s the pain, Mr. Hayden, on a scale of 1-10?”

I told them a big 10.  I remember telling them at 9, 8, and 7 as the pain went down.  They called me “Mr. Hayden” and their voices were much softer. I knew when I was going to go out because all the voices started to sound tiny. Oh, oh. Here I go again. Sure enough, hello lala land.

When I came back in, I could spot Dr.Miller and Leanne and that made me feel good.  At one point, somebody took my glasses off and things really got wild then.

When I would pop back in, I tried to find Leanne or Dr. Miller but I searched in vain.  Ever once in a while though, if they were close enough, I could find Dr. Miller or Leanne and that made me feel a lot better.
On one of my trips in, someone was saying: “Total renal failure.  A couple more hours and we couldn’t have done a thing for him”.

I knew it wasn’t Dr. Miller or Leanne because I knew their voices. Besides, they worked so hard to keep me here.

I said, “Told ya I wasn’t having a heart attack.”

Somebody asked, “Do you need something, Mr. Hayden?”

“Oh, nothing. Everything is fine now.”

They told me that fluids had backed up in my body.  Those fluids surrounded my heart and lungs and were effectively squashing me to death internally.   I’m not sure exactly what they did, but I’m still here to tell the story.  They were good.  ER took care of me from 11:30 AM to about 8:15 PM. Then they shipped me up to ICU.

When I got into ICU, everything was a bit of a blur.  They said I gave the Records nurse all my history.  I found that very odd.  I don’t know that information even when I’m in my right mind and not sick.  My better half, Sue, keeps all the records and knows all that history stuff off the top of her head.  Well, I don’t remember any of that; but they insisted I had, so I took their word for it.  I do remember the 2000 pound gorilla grabbing my right arm every hour on the hour.  I wondered at the time how in the world they trained him to be so precise.  I also remember the little green tube constantly changing its numbers.  I wished they had trained it better at picking the right numbers.  Oh, I also remember my E.T.finger that glowed red.  I kept touching body parts with it, but it never healed a thing.

If you haven’t figured it out, the next day I found out that the 2000 pound gorilla was the blood pressure cuff, the green tube was my monitor making sure all my parts were still working and the E.T. finger was the oxygen monitor.

My hospital room was my “home away from home.”  It was big, well lighted, had plenty of seating, and was clean and cheerful.  There was plenty of room for my family to visit.  My wife, Sue, kept bringing things up to try and keep a “normal” routine going.  Things like: Kleenex, newspapers, magazines, the mail, etc.
The food services people had very snappy outfits: black pants with a white shirt, black vest and a bow tie. They all came in with a smile and a cheerful greeting at each meal.  I picked all of my meals and the food was pretty darn good, too.

The food service, nurses, and doctors were my extended family.  I had a heart doctor, lung specialist, urologist, surgeon, family doctor, staff doctor and a kidney specialist.  I paid a bill for a proctologist, but for the life of me I can’t remember him seeing me at the hospital.  (I know I would have remembered his exam.)
My nurses were absolutely the best.  Starting with Stephanie (my farm buddy).  She was so cheerful and “down home.” She really bolstered a body’s spirits. She drug me out of the pits a few times during the first days of my incarceration.  Her partner, Andy (a great nurse in training), would do anything in the world for his patients.  I had to call on him several times.  Martha (my soul buddy), whenever she had any spare time, she shared it with me.  We talked about everything and nothing.  Somehow, she was finding out things about me that very few other people knew:  like my wanting to write, my having to write, plus a few other experiences thrown in.  She asked such good questions that I thought I should answer them. Donna (my smiling Amazon), lit up a room just by walking into it.   As a child she was one of those adults we looked up to.  And we wanted to be just like her.  Well, the girls would anyway.  Marlene (my Philippine walker) would take me for a walk around the ICU every night just after she came on duty. Mimi (my philosopher), kept my head screwed on straight when things were looking their worst.   She picked me up out of the dust, brushed me off and put me back on my mental feet.  Each of these wonderful nurses, in their turn, had something for me that I really needed and they each delivered for me at the time when I needed them most.
Every time I turned around, the vampire lady was in my room wanting more blood.  She told me that she was feeding two vampires in the basement, so I should expect to see her often.
For some unknown reason, my blood pressure dropped into the basement.  It was down to something like 62/28 or some such ridiculous number. I saw it come up on my little green tube and in a few seconds the nurse was there, taking my blood pressure manually.  She left and was right back with a pill for me.
Well, I took the blamed thing and settled back down.  The next time the gorilla grabbed my right arm, my little green tube said 175/98 and my blood pressure was in the attic.   Yep, that’s right, another pill and my blood pressure was in the basement again.  They were using a big sledgehammer pill to send my blood pressure up into the attic and another sledgehammer pill to send it back to the basement.  There my poor blood pressure was, in the basement looking at the furnace and hot water heater one minute and then in the attic the next, looking at the junk that was supposed to be antiques.  I told the doctors we should get a 16 ounce carpenter’s hammer pill and tap my blood pressure down slowly til it settled nicely in the living room at say oh 132/78 or so.  Well, by golly, it worked and everything settled out- for about 10 minutes.

The night of July 1, my heart went into atrial fibrillation.  Some place in through here, the vampire-feeding lady found out that my hemoglobin count had dropped from 10 the last count to 9.5 now.  The norm, they told me, was supposed to be 11. I told them that I didn’t need these kinds of numbers, because I was trying to get everything squared away for prostate surgery on July 5th.  They didn’t hold out too much hope for the 5th, what with my heart being out of rhythm, the hemoglobin dropping and the creatinine level elevated.  My chances for the planned surgery date were kind of slim.

I couldn’t seem to catch a break of any kind here, folks; but on the third of July, around midnight, my heart went back into rhythm.  My blood pressure, hemoglobin and creatinine were holding steady.

That’s when Mimi really shone.  Once she was filled in on what was needed, she took my problem and started to work on it.  First, she got a room for me in Caritas where the surgery had been scheduled, then proceeded to get me cleared at Southwest and transportation to Caritas.  None of which was any small task, let me say.  That being said, at four o’clock, that afternoon, the ambulance was picking me up at Southwest and headed for Caritas.

The check- in at Caritas was slow and the status of the operation was still up in the air.  About 7:30 P.M. or so, they told me I wouldn’t be getting any breakfast in the morning because my surgery was scheduled for 1:30 P.M. the next day.  The surgery was only an hour later than it had been originally scheduled for two or three weeks ago.  I don’t know what happened but, I think all my good fortune was due to Mimi and a very good surgeon looking out for his patient.

Come 1:30 P.M. July 5th, good fortune smiled on me a second time.  They wheeled me into the prep room for surgery and the anesthesiologist was going to give me a general until I told him about all the trouble I had getting here.   A little angel (my daughter- in- law Therese’) told me to make sure I told him my history before he gave me anything.  As I related to him what had gone on, his eyes got bigger and bigger. When I finished, he quickly changed his mind and said I was going to have an epidural.

By the time I got to the operating room, I didn’t know I had a thing below my waist. Let me say that my friend was one weird feeling.  The surgeon was in a good mood, singing the whole time.  I couldn’t help myself. I told him he couldn’t sing worth a dime.  His reply was, “I know it,” but he went right on singing.  That’s when I noticed that something was pointing at the ceiling and bent out at a greater than a 45 degree angle from my body.

“Is that my leg, doc?”

“Sure is.”

“My leg don’t bend like that.”

“It do now.”

A little bit later, my left leg was doing the same thing.

“I guess it do now, too, huh?”

“Yep.”

Well things went along nicely.  Then ever once in a while someone would say “oops.”

“ ‘Oops?’ What’s ‘oops’?”

“Oh, nothing for you to worry about.  Everything’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, of course I’m sure.”

“Ok.  You’re the doctor.”

They were having a grand old time and I wasn’t doing too badly myself. Things went along swimmingly and before I knew it, everything was over and they were wheeling me into the recovery room.  The nurse (a very nice young man), very carefully hung my little buddy over the side rail.

“Wouldn’t it be easier going under the rail?”

“It would be alright for most doctors, but yours wants his patients to pee over the rail.”

I finally got back to my room.  The whole family was there and all smiles. They had all been burning up a lot of miles between home, work and the hospitals.  They were super, working together like a well-oiled machine.  They would spell each other and that way nobody got burned out. Doc had already talked to my wife and family about the outcome and all, which, by the way, was great.  He even had color pictures and snippings to prove it. One thing I could never figure out, though, was how he got those pictures.  He had a drop light, a pair of scissors, a wash out hose, a vacuum hose, a hot wire and a camera all up inside there. For the life of me, I still can’t figure out how it all fit.  I don’t believe I want to think about it anymore, either.

July 6 was fairly uneventful.  My numbers were stabilizing slowly.  All, that is, except bad boy hemoglobin and he was still going in the wrong direction.  I was calling him Wrong Way Corrigan and that’s the only thing I can repeat that I called him.  July 7 he had dropped to 8.5 and the family doctor said I couldn’t go home til that bad boy came up.

“How far up, doc?”

“Your hemoglobin has to come up to at least a 9.5.”

“Well, how do we get my hemoglobin up to 9.5?”

“A blood transfusion.”

“Well bring it on; let’s get this show on the road.”

My son, Frank, offered to be a blood donor but he couldn’t.  It takes three days for a turn around and that was too long. When the blood arrived, Frank checked it over and calmly asked: “Dad, is your blood type A negative?”

“Nope.  A positive is what my dog tags read for four years in the Air Force.   Why?”

“This is A negative blood.”

“What?”

“A negative blood.”

Well, sir, I hit high C.  And the nurse was in there trying to explain why they were trying to put A negative blood in an A positive vessel.  She assured me that they typed my blood every time they drew it and I was A negative.

“They type everything again before they start a transfusion as an extra safety measure.   “Mr. Hayden, your blood type is definitely, absolutely, and positively A negative.”

I don’t know what happened with the military blood typing, but I told them if they were sure it’s right now, then let ’er rip. Part of the instructions before a blood transfusion was to watch out for a high temperature, nausea, and convulsions.

My son said he was going to stay with me, just in case.
Did you know it takes about 3 1/2 hours to get a pint of blood pumped into a bodies plumbing?  Boy, that was a very long time.  The wait was made bearable by my son keeping me company from 8 to 11: 30 P.M. while I was on the needle.  We talked almost constantly about everything and anything and, by golly, he talked just as much as I did.  Frank is the quiet one in the family-most times.

Finally, I had the extra pint in my crank case and my dip stick measured 9.5.  By then, the doc had gone home and it would be tomorrow before she would release me.  All the other doctors had already released me so all I needed was her signature and I was out of there.

The next day was slow in coming, but it finally got there. I had my discharge papers in hand and they removed my “little buddy.”  I was a free man, halleluiah!  A free man at last!

We gathered up all the things we had dragged in there, sat me down in the wheel chair and headed for the front door.

The recovery at home was a bit slower than I would have liked.  The very worst part was not being able to drive for four weeks.  The time did pass and by the time I could get behind the wheel again, I felt almost human.

Speaking of human-the first time I got a good look at myself in a mirror I was shocked, to say the least.  I was gaunt, drawn and looked like a skeleton with some gray skin drawn over it. I looked like a POW refugee.  That changed rather quickly though, because I was eating anything that came within arm’s length of me.  I can say for a fact that wax fruit doesn’t taste worth a dang, either.

It took a while for me to be able to write about this time in my life, but it had to be written.  If we concentrate only on the bad things that happen to us, we would go crazy.  Everything in here happened.  Plus a bunch of other stuff, but I chose to write only about the good things and the funny parts of the experience.  The fact that life is precious was driven home to me very pointedly.  I’m so very thankful that The Force decided that it wasn’t my time yet.  The mornings are brighter, fresher, more invigorating and I look forward to each and every one of them now.

I hope everyone had as much fun reading this as it was therapeutic for me to write it.

May the Force be with thee.

Tell me a story, Grandma.

As a child, I loved to sit as my grandmother told me stories of her adventures as a young artist in New York; Or her perspective of the Dirty Thirties; Or, especially, the stories of meeting and marrying her true love—Grandpa. But as the years passed, the stories she loved to share seemed to take longer to tell as she was robbed of the details. It pained me to watch her face go vacant as she struggled to find the memories that used to be right at the tip of her tongue.

She fought an unseen force stealing her thoughts, memories and personality for many years. It was subtle at first—a forgotten name, appointments slipping her mind, getting angry or frustrated at small things. I think we all suspected but nobody said anything. In my early twenties, Grandma was hospitalized in order to have various tests done. She finally got the diagnosis we all feared but already knew: Alzheimer’s.

It seemed as soon as she got her diagnosis, she slipped away from us even quicker. Grandpa refused to put her in a home. He wanted to take care of her by himself—like he promised her he would all those years ago on their wedding day. But when Grandpa started getting sick from the stress of taking care of Grandma, we had to step in. We figured out a way to keep Grandma at home, like Grandpa wanted, but still be able to help him so he’d have some time to himself.

My Uncle Craig, Aunt Dorothy and I all took turns at different times of the day and night to sit with Grandma so Grandpa could have a rest. Even if all we did was sit and have tea, the extra company was appreciated. The first time my shift came, butterflies tickled my stomach as I walked up the narrow sidewalk to their house. Would she look the same? Would she remember me? Would things be awkward? Questions swarmed my thoughts as I yanked the heavy screen door open—the way I always did.

As it slammed shut behind me, Grandma called from the living room,
“Who’s that tap-tap-tappin’ on my garden door?” Just like she always did. I smiled and the butterflies calmed. I saw Grandpa in his favorite blue velvet armchair as I walked through the kitchen to the living room.

To finish the routine I answered, “It’s me, Grandma. Coming in to get a bear hug.” Then I went up to her on her couch and gave her a big hug. This time, I held on a bit longer as her fake bear growl echo through her chest.

She cupped my face in her velvety ivory hands—hands that always defied her age—and smiled. “What are you doing here, dumplin’?”

I looked at Grandpa. He looked so tired and he’d caught a cold.

“She’s here to help, Mummy.” Grandpa coughed. I kissed his cheek and grabbed his hand.

“Help? Bah.” Grandma waved her hands at me. “Who are ya helping?”

Her smile faded and the vacant stare tried its best to settle in. She was confused. Grandpa’s eyes welled with tears. He opened his mouth to remind her but I squeezed his hand.

“I’m here for tea, biscuits and a story, Grams.” I said. “Shortbread, right?”
Grandma’s face brightened again. “Well, that’s just dandy. That would be wonderful.”

I made the tea strong, put it in her favorite bone white china cup with her shortbread on the saucer. Just like always. When I came back, Grandpa had fallen asleep in his armchair in the middle of folding the laundry. I gave Grandma her tea, covered Grandpa with a blanket and folded the rest of the towels while Grandma talked.

It still felt the same to me. Her stories were a bit mixed up, she stopped occasionally and needed to be prompted to continue but I knew she was still there. My Grams.

She put her cup down and motioned me over. I went to sit on the floor but she grabbed me and hugged me tighter than she did when I first got there. After a minute I asked, “Grams, are you okay?”

“I know what’s happening to me, you know.” Grams said. “Everyone around her tip toes around it but I know. I forget things. I forget faces—even my own family sometimes. I hate it.”

I didn’t know what to say. I pulled back to look at her. She put her hands on the sides of my face and continued. “One day, I may not be able to say this to you so you just listen. I am proud of who you’ve become and where you’re going. Don’t you let anyone make you feel small, you hear me? You’re a lot like me dumplin’ and I’ll be watchin’ you. Even when I won’t be able to look at you and see you anymore, please know these times will be tucked away in the corners of my mind. Those are the memories I’ll take with me. And that’s how I want you to remember me.”

I cried, burying my face in Grandma’s chest. She stroked my hair and whispered, “You’ve always been my favorite, dumplin. And I’ll never leave you.”

Grandma’s condition deteriorated rapidly after that visit. In fact, she went into the hospital the following week where she slowly faded away from us until she let go. But I remember in the hospital, even when she couldn’t speak anymore and all she could do was stare up at me, I saw a little sparkle in her eye whenever I leaned down to give her a kiss.

Grandma’s stories can now only be heard when I replay them in my mind. On days when I really miss her, I pour myself a cup of strong Earl Grey tea—in her favorite bone white china cup that she left for me—grab a shortbread cookie and close my eyes as her voice fills my ears.

She was right—she’s always with me. Tucked away in the corners of my mind…whenever I need her.

Chynna Laird
(www.lilywolfwords.ca)