Another Face in the Crowd: Life in the Face of Cancer - vol 5

A visit to the ER is not exactly an unknown experience for me. I've had my fair share of emergency situations pop up including taking a hockey stick to the eyebrow (the left one - it seems a lot of bad stuff happens to my left side for some reason), my crushed foot, a bout of shingles (which really sucks by the way), the other bloody nose that ended up with me being diagnosed with ACC, and quite a few other things as well. It's not a fun place. Ever. I don't despise them, not really, but it's not like I'm itching to visit them either. The ER that I went to (which I am not going to say the name of) was no different, especially after I had been thoroughly convinced I was going to die.

A little bit of a breakdown of events since the last volume. The paramedics/EMTS (whichever one they were), loaded me up in the ambulance and drove to the nearest hospital ER. It was a good twenty minutes or so away but with my nose finally not bleeding anymore, I wasn't quite so mind-numbingly terrified. Still scared, for sure, but not quite as scared. I even started to...calm down a bit, I guess. Looking back on it now, I was kind of glad I was alone when this happened. I can't even imagine the panic and fear that would have set in if, for instance, my son had been there to see all that.

The actual ride is a bit foggy now but I do remember the paramedics/EMTS were helpful. They were nice. If I remember correctly, I got an IV bag with a saline drip but that was about it. Just as a side note, getting an IV while traveling across a bumpy road can be painful. But a little pain from a needle was the least of my concerns at that moment.

Sometime later, I actually got to the ER and they unloaded me. I ended up in a room and waited to be seen. Nurses came first to get an assessment of what brought me to them as well as all my vitals. I explained everything as best I could and they gave me a hospital gown so I could shed my bloody shirt. Everything went pretty normal from there.

For a little while anyway.

ERs are busy places and I was left alone quite bit. I had time to call my people and let them know what was going on, including my mother. My memory of those conversations are also fuzzy but they went about as expected. Concern and worry for me. People rushing to the ER including my mom. Those sorts of things.

But before she could get to me, things took a turn for the worse.

The nurses and ER doc that saw me were all convinced that I was fine now. I can't really say that I was happy with that diagnosis. Especially after the rivers of blood that came gushing out of my nose just a few hours ago. I didn't really know what to say and they were even on the verge of discharging me. It was a busy ER day. I remember that. I'm not sure if that had anything to do with them wanting to discharge me without taking a closer look only that their intake of patients at the time could have played a role. I obviously can't say that for sure. All I know is that I remember feeling like that was not a good idea.

Turns out, I was right.

I had been left alone for a little while. It could have been five minutes, or it could have easily been ten or twenty. I don't really remember. I knew at this time they planned to discharge me but then I started to cough again. The fear came back immediately. The coughing triggered the first episode after all. I felt pretty confident as I tried to stop myself from coughing that the same thing that had burst inside my nose was about to burst again. And, of course, shortly after, I heard the same whoosh sound as before. Then I felt it pouring down the back of my throat. Just like it had the first time.

The amount of blood felt like the same as the first time, if not more. It quickly ran down my face as well as my throat. I coughed again, almost choking on all the blood, and watched it spray out of my mouth. I managed to hit the call button and blurt out a response to the nurse that answered.

"I'm bleeding again."

I think that's what I said. It's hard to remember all the details when you have that much blood coming out of you. The nurse on the other end though, didn't sound like my situation warranted a sense of urgency. The tone felt...inconvenienced...almost. Like I annoyed her or that the blood gushing from me was most definitely not as serious as I made it sound. This is not a dig on nurses at all. They are extremely overworked and overstressed. I get that. But when you are bleeding and it won't stop, hearing that kind of tone sticks in the mind. Kind of like the laughing paramedics/EMTs stuck in my mind.

I can't say how long it took for someone to finally come in. It wasn't a huge amount of time, I do know that. Eventually, the nurse that was attending to me (a different one than the one on the call button) rushed in and did her best to stop the bleeding. Then the ER doc himself (who'd been scooting around on one of those knee scooters due to I can only assume a knee, foot, or ankle injury) came in too. Chaos is the only thing I remember next. I think at one point in time, the doc was actually on top of the hospital bed, pushing...something...up my nose. That hurt. A lot. Then the nurse jammed a syringe up there too and mentioned something about cauterizing the bleed. Like I said, it was chaos. Absolute chaos.

Considering I'm here, writing this account, I made it out alive. The doc and the nurses did get the bleeding stopped. Eventually. After the scare had died down, they contacted my cancer care team, the ones that excised the tumor, and a plan was made to CareFlight (is it one word or two?) me up to Columbus for emergency surgery. In the end, however, they elected to drive in an ambulance because of the weather. It was an hour drive up to the James and on the way, they gave me a transfusion.

In the end, the emergency surgery successfully sealed the artery or vein or whatever it had been that broke loose. The whole thing was a complete fluke and, thankfully, a fluke that did not repeat. A day or two later, I was able to go back home.

But damn, it scared the holy hell out of me. And it left me with those moments. Moments like the paramedics/EMTs laughing and joking, the nurse's voice on the other end of the call button, and, of course, all that blood. As much as certain details are foggy now, those remain crystal clear.

It's kind of funny what the brain hangs on to in moments of extreme fear.