The Boy And I Put Meningitis In A Headlock

The Boy’s voice on the phone was gravelly and sounded like pain. “Mahhhm, we’re thirty minutes out. Pick me up please at the usual place ok?” Click.

He was on his way home from a crew regatta with all of his rowdy cohorts, male and female, in the big yellow tour bus they usually rent. It was a dodgy notion to allow him to go on this overnighter in the first place. He was sick all week prior with blazing sinus and throat. But if he didn’t go, they may as well not compete. His crew posse is a mind-and-body-linked team and to force an unfamiliar rower into his seat would be a something to do, but not a winning thing to do. The Boy is tough as nails, I thought, he’ll prevail and we’ll attend to the “crud” when he gets back. But what if I was wrong…

It’s not like I haven’t been wrong before.

“Mahhhm? Can I sleep in here with you? I’m burning up and I want to be here in case something bad is happening…”

The Boy was silhouetted in my doorway rocking back and forth so I battled the nightstand lamp to get a load of what was really going on. I knew he was sick for about two weeks, but it seemed like sniffles or allergies; nothing severe enough to keep my naïve Catholic boy from his first days of public high school. Other concerns, like how are we are going to cope with the crime, the fights, the tasings and the outright meanness of public high school, crowded my mind. I pushed him that week to just suck it up. Shove nasal spray up his nose, take Tylenol and soldier on just as I was instructed to do as a kid. Tough being the daughter of a doctor. They just don’t cut you any slack!

The bedside lamp popped on and revealed a wraith of my son. His face was pale and blotchy, he was shivering, and his eyes were as red as Lugosi’s in the classic Dracula movies. I don’t know why it came to me so quickly. It could have been the nightly dinner table exchanges with my doctor father when I was a child about different illnesses he was curing. Or it could have been our beloved Sarah, The Boy’s guardian angel at whom he pointed and called by name as soon as he could speak. I suspect she may have whispered in my ear as I lifted my hand to feel his molten brow. I said:

“Can you make your chin touch your chest?”

He tried. And damn near fell over trying but that chin was going nowhere south. “Stiff…hurts,” he mumbled and slumped onto the bed.

“Let’s go, NOW!”

I threw on jeans and a sweatshirt, bundled him in a blanket, put ice on his forehead and burnt rubber to the first Emergency Room sign we saw, lit like a blood red beacon in the night. As we travelled deserted streets, The Boy felt waves of pain. “My eyes are going to pop out! Mom! Oh God!” I leapt out of the car at the ER, grabbed the first wheelchair I could see, and clean lifted my now half-conscious 165 pound son out of the car. Through the glass automatic doors and right up to the nurse station I talked to every medical-looking person I ran into. I was chanting.

“He’s got meningitis, he’s got meningitis, he’s got meningitis, please see him NOW! NOW! Please!”

And to their credit, they did. They did well even though their swift adherence to hospital protocols was still not fast enough for me. The Boy was placed in isolation on a bed in the ER, they ran an IV, took blood for labs, hooked him up to telemetry, and let me sit with him in the dark. The lights were hurting his eyes. He was in such excruciating pain I tried not to weep for him.

Can’t they do something for his pain? Not yet.

I devised some distractions instead. His heart monitor would beep faster as the pain would advance or we talked, which we both noticed. So I proposed a little experiment.

“Hey, say a really bad word.”

“Mom…stop. Come on.”

“No do it! Let’s see where that monitor will go when you do.”

“Ok. Um. Tits.”

Sure enough, The Boy’s heart beats faster when provoked by the utterance of forbidden words. I took such comfort in his devilish smile, even though it was through red-eyed tears of pain and fear.

“Shit!”

Beep-beep-beepbeepbeepbeep.

“Fuck! God damn this hurts like a bitch!”

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPity BEEPBEEPBEEP!

After the nurse came rushing in to attend to The Boy’s “rapid heartbeat,” (She was not amused.) the ER doc came in and concurred with my instincts about the possible meningitis. So a spinal tap was required. He would be back in five. We were to keep our fingers crossed that if it was meningitis, it would be viral, not bacterial. The bacterial form kills in 24 hours. But we won’t know if it is either for three days. What?

They assured me they would light The Boy up with cosmic uber-freaky bacteria doom antibiotics either way so if it was bacterial, they’d kill the thing. Viral meningitis is still dangerous but not deadly if managed. I felt a little better, but the Boy only heard “kills in 24” and went still on the bed. After everyone left to prepare for the tap, The Boy said:

“Mom. Can you get up here on the bed with me? Please.”

I pulled aside all the wires and tubes and oxygen delivery things, and snuggled up against his burning body. He turned his head to me, which hurt like hell, and said:

“Mom, if it is my time to go, I am at peace with that ok?”

My earth tipped off its axis. I looked deeply into my son’s chocolate brown eyes, which were swimming in tears, and said:

“Well, I am NOT at peace with that. So no. I say no. No is my answer to that.” And I held him so hard.

No to you, God. You cannot have him yet. You know as well as I do that he is bringing something to this existence that will shine on. You just take me right now and let him alone. Sarah, you have my back here Angel?

“Ok Mom.”

At that point I almost replicated that scene from that Shirley McLaine movie…well, here it is:



But they brought morphine in just in time so I didn’t have to get medieval with them. (They would not share with Mom though, the stingy boogers!)  I held his hands while they pierced and pulled spinal fluid from his back, and we prayed that there were no bacterial beasties in it. A CAT scan filmed his brain and turned up very little, thankfully. And then the antibiotics flowed like green beer on St. Paddy’s Day. As did the morphine, so he slept and the peaceful visage of my saintly son will remain in my heart forever.

I spent 4 days in the hospital with The Boy as his symptoms slowly backed off. It was viral and he suffering only a few side effects such as light sensitivity. The only theory as to how he may have contracted it was linked to the never-ending sinus infection he had been battling all summer. The sinus infection I chose to brush aside as the sniffles.

So the other night, I picked up The Boy at the usual place, and he looked and sounded miserable. I hugged him hard (checking for fever and he had none – hurrah!).  The next morning, I took him directly to the doctor where we opened a can of cosmic uber-freaky bacteria doom antibiotics to whack this bug in the head before it burrowed into his head.

And I could be certain not to be so very wrong again.

Recover, I Dare You!

It is time for me to put this Tale of the Tumor away and think on things less bulbous, rude and invasive, and more cool, like my scar that looks like a big osprey feather.  One last hurrah though has hatched in my fevered brain, so here goes:

If you are preparing for abdominal surgery and are facing a prolonged recovery period, both in the hospital and at home, let me offer a few survival hints if I may:

In reference to the hospital:

Abandon all notion of time the minute your feet hit that first shiny linoleum tile. Hospitals have some kind of agreement with the gods of quantum physics making time, (you know - seconds, minutes and hours ), either race away like water droplets blowing off your windshield in the car wash, or gum up into rivulets of cold running tree sap. Three ways this happens:

• Nothing painful will be done on time or quickly. Things like the utilization of giant needles, tubing and catheters are announced with great resolve. “We will now puncture you with potential for excruciating pain and the spurting of fluids! Huzzah!” All the equipment is wheeled in with which to accomplish the anxious-making procedure, you grit your teeth and steel yourself for the onslaught and, holy batshit, a delay! Somebody next door codes, or the kid down the hall is wailing, or there is a shift change. And time just slows to a snail’s pace allowing one to really marinate in one’s own flop sweat and in the contemplation of what’s to come.

•  Nothing to alleviate said pain will be done on time or quickly. In my case, my doctor informed me that I should have a visit from Dr. Morpheus around every 4 hours for pain, but I needed to ASK for it. Here’s where time really takes on a personality of its own and the nurses know they have you by the short hairs. The pain (The kind of pain one has when someone has been handling your entrails through a 14 inch incision which is now stapled together with concertina wire) would pop up and say, “Hi! Ready for another go-round?” What I thought was at least a 4 hour sleep was really only maybe 20 minutes or most of an episode of CSI.                 So I held out. When time is up, I then summoned my attending nurse by pressing the call button. “Yes?” she says over the speaker. “Pain meds please?” say I. “Ok.” Says she. Thus begins the ritualistic process of securing the meds from the pharmacy in another wing of the flipping hospital, the multiple signings in and signings out of a highly coveted “NARCOTIC” so we can be sure it doesn’t get jacked by some closet addict on the mile and a half walk to my wing of this hospital. An hour later, there comes my nurse with the injection. They always dismissed the sweat soaked linens, the washcloth I was biting down on and the death grip I had on my blanket, and I just coo’ed and sniffled as the syringe delivered the goods and the sweet sweet lethargy of Dr. Morpheus enveloped me for the next 20 minutes. In short, the pain and the relief never synched up. But it was fun trying.

• Nothing about the patient’s personal hygiene can’t be “put off” until next shift. This is how I slipped through the cracks and was not offered the application of even a simple washcloth to my dopey face, never mind my armpits or other parts, for 4 days. Like pain relief, I had to ask, once I couldn’t even stand myself anymore drugged or not, if I could give myself a sponge bath and wash my hair which was now sticky and matted and very Edward Scissorhands-ish. Honestly, I volunteered to be discharged much too early, necessitating a return trip by ER, just because I wanted to wash my hair. To be fair, apologies were forthcoming and the shift change conundrum was mentioned as the problem. Hint: Ask your visitors to sniff and make sounds like “whew” when the nurse is there so they get the hint.

Interlude : Nurses say the dandiest things -

• “Boy when they found that tumor, I bet everyone thought you were dead girl walking! Good thing it was benign!”
• “Nice that you didn’t end up with a (colostomy) bag. My friend had a tumor like that and it wrecked her colon. And it keeps coming back!”
• “So how long have you had the Parkinson’s? I just lost my best golfing buddy to Parkinson’s. (welling up and sniffling).  Wow.”
• “When you poop, just relax and whatever you do, don’t bear down! You’ll just pop!”

• “Why don’t you like the blue jello?”

No lie. True quotes. I am kind of glad I peed twice/puked once on the floor there. I may have been on the morphine, but there may have been a botched enema as well.  Hmmm. Enema revenge is a new concept.

Maybe the peace sign there should've been another salute of note.

In reference to going home:

As intrusive and institutionalized as the hospital may have seemed, home was 180 degrees the opposite. My loved ones did not know what to do with this stinking, stapled up, babbling, hallucinating, puking, barely ambulatory hot mess with Edward Scissorhands hair and puncture wounds all over, but they tried so hard it makes me well up just thinking about it. A few things to pre-request before going home:

• 
  
  
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  A RECLINER. A pillowy, towel draped, rocker recliner. I call it the HEALING POD. Everything revolves around the Healing Pod. Point it toward the TV with a nice view to the garden, and position the computer, bookshelves and array all liquids and pills on an end table within arm’s reach. It’ll look a little like the command center of the Starship Enterprise when Shatner was El Jefe Grande. Set up the portable “potty” they sent you home with right there (I called it my litter box so there was no confusion), so you can launch either end of yourself at it at a moment’s notice. Here’s a tip: Keep an air horn somewhere nearby for when your family is hiding from your last request for something you can’t do. Like dump out the potty or scratch that one spot near your ass you can’t reach. The air horn works well on the pets too who just have to jump on your sutures with terrifying joy when they see you again.

• A SATIN BLANKET. My worst issue was tangling up in the bedclothes, pinning myself down like King Tut in his sarcophagus. A freak out provoker for sure! And I did! I freaked and it hurt! The slick jewel-toned pink and purple slippery satin blanket (my new cherished “woobie”) allows me to levitate and spin with no friction gumming up the works. Moving about in bed after abdominal surgery is its own circle of hell and my woobie was the key to sanity. And it is pretty.
• MOMMY. (Or someone like your Mom) If you’ve read anything I’ve written so far on this serial topic, you know why.
• REMOTE CONTROL. Self-explanatory.
•  FROZEN LEMONADE. Nectar of the gods, and helps you not feel sorry for yourself when nothing else edible tastes, feels or looks good.
• YOGA PANTS and BIG T-SHIRTS. Bamboo fabric no elastic drawstring pants to gently cover your lower parts where they cut you. Big T’s to camouflage the notion of never wearing a fucking bra ever again! Your sutures will thank you.
• CLEAN EVERYTHING. Do not go home to a mess. Have your loved ones shovel all their steaming piles of mess into their respective lairs, and never look in there. Request that your recovery space is clean, swept and smelling nice. Although it was perhaps the last thing on my loved ones minds, my mortality and transformative pain was kind of distracting I reckon, it would have been lovely to collapse in my HEALING POD knowing that some Martha Stewart obsessive-compulsive scrubbing had been done.

So now, coming to you from the HEALING POD in my 6th week of recovery, I will now lay down this story and move on to others. Life yields up so much joy. I am a-gonna go live it now.

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.