A Crazy Few Weeks

SO….  three weeks ago, I heard the same hurricane warning as did everyone else. AND, like nearly everyone else in our area, I dismissed it.  After all, the storm was to come ashore in Florida and head northwest, on the far side of Atlanta. How could that impact us? 

We do get the effects of hurricanes here, usually in the form of a good rain but little else. It has been 30 years since Hurricane Hugo brought destructive winds this far north. SO… I did nothing, nor did anyone I know. The grocery stores were no busier than usual since nobody was stocking up on food, water, or batteries.  Nobody was even topping off their gas tanks.

It had been raining steadily since Wednesday night,  so when the rain was coming down when I went to bed it was no cause for alarm.  Then at 7:00 AM, Friday morning the power went off. I know that since my CPAP machine stopped working and I woke up.  Still, it wasn’t like dark outside. So, we all gathered in the living room and watched the wind and rain for an hour. Then it was over.

I was sure the power would be restored within the hour.  Just another nothing burger.

At about 9:00, I got in the car to go get some batteries…. but I didn’t get far.

It seems the reason I thought the storm was no big deal was that the wind was coming from the Southeast, and our home is on the northwest side of a large hill, so the winds literally blew over us and we sustained no damage.  That was not the case for those homes in our neighborhood at the top of the hill.  There are two ways in & out of our subdivision to the main road, and I found the normal one I use was blocked by down trees… trees like more than one.  So I turned around to take the other way out. It was blocked by both downed trees and downed power lines.  Two homes, 7 & 9 doors away had huge trees smashed through their roofs.  It was the first sign I’d seen that the hurricane had been much more destructive than I realized.

Once neighbors used chainsaws to open up the road around noon, we went to check on Paula’s mother who lives about 15 minutes away.  It took us close to 45 minutes to get there because road after road was blocked and we had to wind our way through places where the trees had been cut.  In our area, virtually no road was free of trees.  Worse yet were all the down power poles. Not just down, but broken into pieces. By the time we made it to her grandmother’s house, we knew this was the most destructive storm anyone had ever seen. Our son said that 95% of all homes and businesses in the region were without power… including gas stations and grocery stores.  

We were fortunate. Other than some water in our lower floor, we had no damage at all. We kept the fridge and freezer closed to preserve our food, but by Monday everything had to be tossed out.  During our trip to Grandma’s, we found a Dollar General that had power (before everyone else did) and were able to stock up on chips, crackers, juice, and candles.  I still thought we’d only be without power for a day or two… I was wrong.

NOW, all of this was going on as I was recovering from my first surgery the week before, and prepping for my more invasive surgery to remove the metastatic renal cancer from my right lung.  So for a week, I was off my renal diet as we were living mostly on chips and crackers.  FINALLY, on Thursday evening, we got power back. Just in time for our hot water heater to warm me up water to use the anti-microbial soap prior to my surgery the next morning.  OH… we still didn’t have internet since the cable that connected us was down with the power poles and would not begin to be repaired until after the power company was finished.

 On Thursday I called to ensure my surgery wasn’t one of those postponed.  For those of you who live in the US, you likely saw that Asheville, NC was devastated and our nearby city has the nearest Level 1 trauma center (whatever that is) to the disaster up in the mountains. The hospital was past capacity. Fortunately, they decided my cancer surgery could not be put off.

So, I got to meet Rosie the Robot, who along with the surgical oncologist was slated to work on me. Well, I got to meet her before they put me to sleep.

When I woke up, I had a lovely ketamine drip and oxycodone to keep me in a good mood for the next few days as goo drained out of a 1” rubber tube poking out of my right side.  Even when Nurse Rachet yanked me out of my comfy bed at 6 AM each morning to make me sit in a chair until 9 PM, the wonder drugs kept me happy. As I understand it, I had to sit up for my lung to reinflate and the goo to drain out.

All was going well until Monday night. Nurse Rachet was getting my wires and tube ready to take a walk around the unit when Paula (who was in another chair across the room started doing something odd). Seeing me trying to cross the room (and thus pull out my IV, my tube, and all my wires, Nurse Rachet commanded me to sit back down because she would handle it.

In an instant, Nurse Rachet became Florence Nightingale as she says “She’s having a major seizure.”  And calls for backup.

This is all very scary for me since Paula has never had a seizure and I can do nothing about it. She convulsed until foam formed at the edges of her mouth, then she went totally still.

In under a minute my room was filled with women in the royal blue scrubs worn by RN’s at my hospital.  They simply rolled my bed out into the hallway and pulled Paula to the center of the room, hooked her up to my monitors, and put an oxygen mask on her.

I was relieved to see the monitor saying her heartbeat was steady.

Three minutes later, the hospital Rapid Response Team was there, then she was gone.

All the while I was bewildered (remember I was on strong pain meds).

What I do remember clearly is that as they were rolling her out, one of the Rapid Response Team said “Room 4” in the emergency unit was waiting for her arrival.

 So I had to wait.

My son and his wife (who is an RN in the same hospital system) arrived and went right to the ER.

When they came to my room to brief me about an hour after this all started, they said she’d been put on a ventilator and taken to ICU.  The neurologist told them that the seizure was a result of the damage caused by her stroke almost 2 years ago. They were shown a scan just made of her brain that showed a large area on the right rear lobe was dark (dead).  We had no idea her stroke had done that kind of damage.

SO, the next morning the charge nurse took me down to the ICU to see Paula. She looked like she was in very bad shape, even her lips had no color. She was conscious, sort of, but they’d had to restrain her hands to keep her from pulling out the tube that was down her throat.

Later that afternoon I was discharged. I went down to Paula’s room in ICU. She was sleeping, but looked much better… and the tube was out of her throat.  My kids insisted I go home and rest for at least a little while before I went back to the hospital.  Miraculously, even after I’d been off the ketamine for three hours, I had no pain at all.  However, when I got home and lay down, they did not wake me and I slept for six hours. Since it was way past ICU visiting hours, I went back to bed.

One bright spot was that the expected pain from my surgery never came. Since I didn’t take any of the narcotics I was given to control pain, I was able to drive myself to the hospital the next day. I spent the rest of the week sitting with her during the day and going home to sleep at night.

A week ago she was finally released from the hospital and we were both home (with power) and we slept nearly all day and all night.  She is now diagnosed as epileptic, caused by a stroke, and will be on anti-seizure medication for the rest of her life.

THEN…. I couldn’t log onto my website for a week.

SO, I hope you will excuse me for not updating the website until now.