Part 6: Great Scott!

After about a week of somewhat unsteady lack of improvement, this blog’s wife had a suggestion. This is why she is kept around, you know, for her worthwhile suggestions: “No, I would suggest not playing hopscotch on the roof, dear.” Or, “Yes, honey, I would suggest you stop antagonizing that large man with a barbecue fork hiding in the closet.” This time, her suggestion involved me branching out to a section of the Medical Care Establishment somewhat, as they say, off the beaten path. “You should go see my chiropractor.”

Chiropractors are, to put it politely, the laughingstock of the Medical Care Establishment. It is their premise that, by simply “adjusting” the location of various vertebrae, a whole host of ailments can be corrected including, but not limited to, headaches, colds, influenza, indigestion, Marburg hemorrhagic fever, and low gas mileage. Indeed, there is no condition to which the human race suffers that a simple, chiropractic manipulation cannot solve. Or so they say. In fact, some extreme members of the chiropractic community believe that even Jesus Himself was initially a chiropractor before He changed careers and pursued other interests.

The selection of the right chiropractor is also a sensitive matter, since it is tantamount to the establishment of a life-long relationship, not unlike a marriage. There is a joke which illustrates this concept very helpfully: How many chiropractors does it take to screw in a light bulb? Only one, but it will take him seven visits to do it. So this decision is not to be taken lightly, or made after one has consumed large amounts of expensive medications.

But this blog’s wife’s chiropractor comes highly recommended, as you would expect, and specializes in pediatric and pregnancy-related chiropractic care. So she seemed like a perfectly natural and obvious choice to me. I went to see her on Day 31, and although the historical record will likely decide that it was the right move, it is interesting to note that when I first arrived and was greeted by the sight of several small children running around and the sound of an infant screaming, I began to wonder.

I lay on the chiropractor’s bench, and she began poking and prodding, frowning, and occasionally asking me questions: Does this hurt? Can you lift your leg? What is the capital of Nebraska? Soon, however, she found something which caused her to exclaim and, no doubt, entertain visions of extended vacations to the Caymans. Apparently, one or more of my ribs were severely misaligned, and my sternum was torqued in and to the left. This was not normal, she noted, and indicated that it would require weekly visits until I either died or started collecting Social Security to fix it.

Starting on Day 32, and continuing to the present day, I have perceived something more or less absent from the first month: improvement. Although I haven’t usually been able to discern a difference from one day to the next, I am feeling much better. One doctor told me that improvement from this particular illness should be measured in increments of weeks, rather than days. It seems he was right. Oh, goody. Presently, on Day 58, I find myself back to about 80-85% of my “normal” capacity, and looking forward to the day when I’ll be able to run, jump, bike, swim, and double-flip back handspring. Hey, I’ve never been able to do one of those.

So what was the final, official diagnosis, you ask? In piecing together the professional opinions of cardiologists, emergency department personnel, and yes, even chiropractors, it appears as though on the morning of August 31, I over-extended myself, causing one or more ribs to become misaligned. Over a short amount of time, this caused my sternum to torque in direction God had not had in mind at Creation. Over time, this misalignment of the rib cage either caused or exacerbated an inflammation in my ribs, lungs, or heart, or some combination of the above. At the moment, the inflammation appears to be mostly calmed, and my bones appear to be mostly in their correct places. Thank God.

There you have it. The Medical Care Establishment, at its finest.

Part 5: Not Funny, Bob

Although this blog is somewhat hesitant to admit it, we will tentatively concede that the culinary offerings of the local Medical Care Establishment which we found before us for lunch on Day 19 were actually quite delicious. And when we say delicious, it is also worth noting that we had not eaten for 18 hours and, at that point, according to food scientists around the globe, even a bowl of overcooked mushrooms will taste like filet mignon. This is why many of your finer restaurants will have you sit at your table with nothing but a glass of water and a bottle of ketchup for several hours on end before even starting to prepare your meal. They know the customer is not in a position to truly enjoy their offerings until the second or third furtive glance at the condiment dispenser.

After I finished my entire meal, including the contents of the ketchup bottle, the very helpful emergency department personnel returned to my cell to give me an update on my condition. Apparently, in the calculus of diagnosing causes of chest pain, the Medical Care Establishment first attempts to identify problems that, if left untreated, will kill the patient. If death is not imminent, they will dismiss the patient and keep their collective fingers crossed behind their respective backs. Then, if the patient does not improve and, in fact, is so ornery as to return to the emergency department, the proverbial book is thrown at them. This was the case with me, and explains why I was subjected to further testing, which included rechecking for those things which could cause immediate and sudden death, and also checking for things which could cause problems later on, when you least expect it.

Finding no problems, though, presents another problem. I mean, you have to diagnose the patient with something, especially when aforesaid patient is a healthy 32-year old young man who eats healthily and exercises regularly but who suddenly can’t go up the stairs without becoming short of breath and is kept awake at night with intense chest pain in his chest areas. So, in these situations, there is a secret list of diagnoses, usually kept in a safe in an undisclosed location in the medical care facility, which are then pulled out and, were it not for my tremendous respect for the many qualified members of the Medical Care Establishment, I would say that one is selected at random. As it is, though, they use a strict, rigorous process not unlike the popular pub game involving darts.

So, my official diagnosis is pericarditis, which is an inflammation of the pericardium, the lining of the heart. The very helpful medical care personnel allowed that it could be pleuritis, which is an inflammation of the pleura, the lining of the lungs, or costochondritis, which is an inflammation of the costal cartilage in between the ribs and sternum. Fortunately, and this is the clearest evidence to date that someone in the secret diagnoses department was thinking clearly, the treatment for each of the above –itisis is the same: you take the maximum amount of ibuprofen allowed by the FDA, or more if they’re not looking, and you don’t do anything that makes your pain worse such as activities including, but not limited to, sitting, standing, walking, running, laying down, eating, fasting, talking, or thinking. Oh, and you don’t think or talk about or do anything stressful. Ha, ha! I promise I am not making this up.

I went back home the afternoon of Day 19, after 25 hours in the emergency department of the local Medical Care Establishment facility, secure in the knowledge that the expert medical personnel, using every test and piece of knowledge at their disposal, could find nothing wrong with me. But at least I had a diagnosis and a prescription. I could go home, take it easy, take the drugs, and get better. And for a week it worked; I horked down enough ibuprofen to have caused a significant number of laboratory experiments involving rats, and I tried not to do or think anything that made my pain worse. After carefully adhering to this regimen for seven days, I could confidently report, with a tremendous amount of secure optimism, that I felt no different than before. Perhaps even a little worse.

Part 4: "Move, Sloth!"

Early the following morning, on Day 18, I was scheduled to partake in the time-honored Medical Care Establishment tradition referred to colloquially as a cardiac stress test. This is a procedure that involves being injected with a nuclear radiotracer and walking, or running, on a treadmill until either your target heart rate is achieved or you experience a heart attack or some other potentially fatal complication. I swear I am not making this up.

Of course, the preparation for my stress test began much earlier, at about 6pm the previous evening. It was at about that time that I swallowed the last morsel of my “dinner;” a few hours later, I was told that I couldn’t eat or drink anything until after the stress test. So there were no late-night snacks, no glass of water right before bed, and no wandering down to the refrigerator in the nurses’ station in the middle of the night and drinking straight from the orange juice container. It was a harrowing experience. Then, in the morning, the nurse returned and reminded me, with a smile on her face, that I couldn’t have anything to eat or drink until after the stress test. I mentioned that I was really thirsty and could I maybe, please, just have a small sip of water if I get it myself. She said she would go ask the doctor, but she hasn’t come back yet, even to this day, so I’m guessing not.

At about 8:30, or maybe at some other time – it was all an ethereal blur, the Transportation Department (motto: We built the hospital like a labyrinth on purpose.) came to transport me via wheel chair to the secret cardiac stress test location, buried deep within the bowels of the local Medical Care Establishment facility. The first step in this process was to have a very thorough and detailed picture taken of my heart. This involved laying on a bed that was about as comfortable as slab of concrete, only not as warm, and holding my arms above my head in a very casual, yet uncomfortable fashion. Then a mammoth “camera” swooped down and very nearly swallowed me whole. This took about 15 minutes.

After the camera finished digesting my heart, and it was my turn for the stressful part of the test, I was removed to an ante room for further preparation. At this point, the friendly personnel, with smiles on their faces, removed all of the EKG sticky pads and put on new sticky pads for a slightly different device called an ECG. ECG is a slightly different Latin phrase than EKG, but it means about the same thing. As alert readers of this blog will recall, an EKG is a device which medical care personnel attach to people to see if they have a high tolerance for hair removal pain. Under the right conditions, the ECG will also check to see if one’s heart is malfunctioning, although in a different way than the EKG. Then I was connected to all manner of wires and probes, including a large, thick one that made me think of umbilical cords. Finally, I was led to the chamber.

Inside the chamber were three doctors, and when I say three doctors, I really mean two doctors and one nurse. The nurse, of course, was smiling, and looked like she just desperately wanted to bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies for me, if she could just find the time in between measuring my blood pressure. One of the doctors looked like he could be my little brother, and was just as nervous as I should have been, had I not been severely drugged. The other doctor was the one who was clearly in charge, and obviously had been since the Dark Ages. She was clearly a secret agent of the KGB, for she spoke with a foreign accent and had one of those Russian names that have about nine syllables, one vowel, and is pronounced, “Smith.”

Anyway, KGB doctor led me onto this platform, connected all of my wires and umbilical cords to her computer, and then pressed a large red button that was nearby. At about the same time, and quite coincidentally, I might add, the ground beneath me began to move and I was forced to walk in order to remain upright. It was then I perceived that I was on a treadmill. The KGB doctor explained that she was going to attempt to raise my heart rate to something like 169 beats per minute. “Or kill me,” I’m pretty sure she said, under her breath.

After several minutes of strolling on the treadmill and my heart rate not getting anywhere near the target, the KGB doctor exclaimed, “We just might be here all day!” Then she rubbed her hands together, laughed in a manner not unlike that undoubtedly demonstrated by Josef Stalin when he took over Eastern Europe, and pressed another large red button which was also nearby. At about that time, and quite coincidentally, I might add, I found the ground beneath me moving at A Very High Rate of Speed. And it became quite steep. For those readers of this blog familiar with my brother-in-law and my driveway (which are two things I’m not always able to use in the same sentence), imagine doing the Jeff Turner Death March up my driveway, for about five minutes.

Sidebar: it was at this point in the stress test that I thought of those words which are also the title of this post. It was originally a quote from the movie Ice Age, but is now a quote from my son. James, when once attempting to race upstairs to answer a call of nature, found his brother plodding up the stairs very slowly. After waiting patiently for several moments, he yelled these words. It was just about the funniest thing ever, though I dared not laugh in the presence of the KGB doctor.

Well, after five minutes of the driveway death march, I reached my target heart rate and the nervous doctor reached for my IV Harpoon of Death and injected a nuclear radiotracer. This was so they could get an effective “After” picture of my heart that they could compare with the one before. At this point, the KGB doctor mercifully stopped the treadmill and I collapsed in heap and very nearly passed out. Then they laid me on the concrete slab and took pictures of my heart again with the mammoth camera. After all this excitement, I was led back to my cell where I found a curiously delicious lunch waiting for me.

Oh, the stress test showed everything to be normal. No problems there. “He sure is an ornery one,” the doctors all thought, in unison.

Part 3: Cue the Fire Hydrant

After I got off the phone with my doctor, I (cough, cough) proceeded to ignore his careful instructions and enjoy a leisurely lunch, realizing that it very well could be my last real meal for who knows how long. I haven’t even started to describe the culinary offerings of the Medical Care Establishment, and there’s a reason for that – they defy description. I mean, you would think that any establishment that was dedicated to the preservation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would hold at least this truth to be self-evident: that not all foods are created equal, and persons who fear they might be approaching, as they say, the end of the rail, might shouldn’t be inspired to head further down the line by the sight of their lunch. But enough about that.

So after finishing my last meal, tying up a few loose ends in the office, reading a few books to the children, and making sure my will and personal effects were in order, I returned to the emergency department of the local Medical Care Establishment. Apparently, my doctor had warned them that I was coming, which was evident not because I was able to register and be seen with blazing speed and efficiency, and not because of the four large men with surly goatees and bulging biceps standing near the exit, but because of the expressions of the receptionists, who had only recently woken up, which seemed to say, “Where have you been? We were expecting you hours ago!”

Since my previous visit had been unsuccessful in satisfactorily keeping me from returning, the emergency department personnel decided to up the ante. They pulled out their expert doctors, the ones who spend most of their days lurking in the closets, carefully reviewing the bags of tricks up their sleeves, and who are especially talented in dealing with ornery patients. And boy, was I ornery. Here I was, insisting on having these chest pains, even after 17 days, and not just getting better already. They were clearly irritated with me and, determined to rid me of my orneriness, they threw the proverbial book at me. Not a real book of course; that would be a violation of the HIPAA Act, or something. But I bet they daydream about throwing things.

So, I was connected to an EKG again, complete with sticky pads, wires, and smiling personnel. In fact, they thought it was so fun, they took all the sticky pads off, in a carefree manner, and put on new ones. They did this so they could tell me, with a straight face, that my heart was not malfunctioning.

I had x-rays taken again, complete with the harmless radiation capable of killing Superman. Nothing abnormal there.

I was connected to the IV Harpoon of Death, complete with the military grade duct tape and smiling personnel. They used this access point to drain me of what seemed like several quarts of blood, so they could take it away for “testing.” Nothing abnormal there, either.

Then, not wanting me to get bored or anything, I was wheeled down a intricate maze of hallways and through about a dozen doors with the words “No Access. Do Not Enter.” written on them to a secret laboratory for a CT scan. A CT scanning machine is basically a x-ray machine on steroids. Using enough harmless radiation and contrast agents sufficient to kill several Supermen, this machine takes a 3-D image of one’s innards. Surprisingly enough, though, nothing abnormal was found here.

At this point, the emergency department personnel decided to try a new method of attack – drugs. They began introducing various and sundry substances into my person and would then stand back and watch, with hands on chins and eyebrows indented, as if they were expecting something interesting to occur. So sometimes, I would begin twitching and jerking my head around. Ha, ha! Not really, but that would have been fun. One of the more interesting substances was a narcotic called Dilaudid. The emergency department personnel would inject this drug into my IV Harpoon of Death and within about 20 seconds, I would have this sensation in the back of my skull not unlike when someone hits you in the head with Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. Then I would feel drowsy and no pain for several hours. That would have been nice, except this particular drug was accompanied by a disturbing feeling in my southern innards – you know, the ones in the stomach and intestines region, that made them feel like they were in the spin cycle. Ugh.

I was not to be worn down though; I was still feeling sometimes intense pain, except when on the wonderful dictionary-to-the-head, stomach-to-the-spin-cycle drug. And so the emergency department personnel, undeterred also, and, you really have to give them credit for this, determined to get at the root of my orneriness, announced that I would spend the night in their “observation” room. Of course, I could only stay there if I was pain free, the doctor said, winking. It was either that, or the ICU, he warned, where they’ll wake you every 30 minutes and rearrange your sticky pads and remove blood and maybe even poke you in the eyeball with a dull spoon. I decided that I would stay in the “observation” room, and he hit me up with enough drugs to make me forget the world for the night.

Part 2: Uh, Mr. Narrator...

[Editor’s Note: When the experts for this blog’s quality control department reviewed the previous post, they discovered what they perceived to be an error. “You didn’t get an IV that time; you’re mixing it up with a later visit to the emergency department.” To this observation, this blog politely responds, “Just give us a break already. The stories we intend to be true are based on real, live facts, which we swear we are not making up. At least not on purpose.”]

I left the emergency department later that morning, that final day of August, comforted by the knowledge that the skilled personnel of the local Medical Care Establishment had labored over my case for minutes on end and concluded that I had chest pains of unknown origin that probably wouldn’t kill me, but if they did, I should by all means rush back into the emergency department. “That will be $1,300 please.” And people say we need health care reform. These fly by night characters have obviously never experienced the security that comes from knowing, beyond all shadow of doubt, that you have no clue what is wrong with your body, and neither does anyone else.

The following eight days were kind of a blur. I had been given instructions to take 600 milligrams of ibuprofen as needed for pain, but I quickly discerned there was little to be gained by such an exercise. In fact, it seemed as though the pain would see the ibuprofen coming, laugh in a maniacal fashion, and be inspired to new heights of intransigence. I still had the chest pains, which were constant and dull, although they varied in intensity, and I discovered that such inconsequential things as physical exertion and stress made the pain worse.

On Day 9, I called my doctor to alert him that in spite of the expert care provided by the skilled emergency department personnel, I was not feeling any better. He frowned at me over the phone for a few minutes and concluded that I had ____, and at this point he made a noise not unlike that which occurs when one politely coughs when they are unexpectedly discovered attempting to swallow a mole. I asked him to repeat that, and he just made that coughing noise again. He then explained that it was an inflammation of the cartilage between the ribs; later, with the aid of the medical dictionary that is Google, I learned that he had been attempting to pronounce costochondritis. This, of course, required a prescription for prednisone, which is a steroid used to treat certain inflammatory diseases. And it has side effects.

The following eight days were kind of a blur, in a déjà vu kind of way. I had been given instructions to take the prednisone every day, but I quickly discerned that there was little to be gained by such an exercise. In fact, the only discernable benefit was that I noticed my brain less and less up to the task of completing sentences and forming coherent thoughts, and more up to the task of saying and doing completely unexpected things at the most inopportune moments. Some people thought this was funny, but these are the same kind of people that find humor in America’s Funniest Videos, random puns, and other such drivel.

My pain had not alleviated and in fact, there were times when it was very intense. During the morning on Day 13, I awoke with most severe pain I have ever felt, and so excited was I by the security of not knowing what it might mean, that I immediately passed out. When I came to, the pain had diminished so, instead of risking additional exposure to the Medical Care Establishment, I went back to sleep.

On Day 17, I called my doctor to alert him that in spite of the enjoyable side effects of the prednisone, I was not feeling any better. Oh, I added under my breath, attempting to mimic his coughing noise, I also passed out a couple days ago. The doctor was not pleased with this information, or my apparently severe lapse in judgment, and ordered me to proceed directly to the prison department without passing Go or collecting $200. I’m pretty sure he meant the emergency department, but it was probably just a Freudian slip.