OUR MIRACLE
She had been in a coma since the botched surgery
nearly killed her and she was airlifted on life support to the University
Hospital. She had tubes and hoses
hooked up to her and a dialysis catheter on the side of her neck that could
only make me think of The Bride of Frankenstein. She lay there reminding me of my own Grandmother who suffered a
debilitating stroke at 88 years of age.
Erin’s pale and near-lifeless color blurred the distinction between
those 45 years of difference. There was
no difference. I looked down and saw a
once young and beautiful woman, incapacitated and as close to death as I think
one could get, but no one dies on my watch.
Sometime
around day eight, after sitting quietly by her bedside in the University
Hospital ICU, her eyes opened, as I knew they would and she started to
stir. The Transplant Team had come in
every morning to check up on her development all the while jotting notes on
hospital-issued clipboards while I stood nervously by, composing my delicate
questions on her progress.
Sixty-five
percent necrosis in the liver and total kidney failure was the initial
prognosis upon her admittance to the ICU.
Fifty percent necrosis is borderline, where they determine the
necessity of a transplant in order to insure the patient’s survival. The liver is a regenerative organ, but with
two-thirds of it dead, the professionals and student followers following along
throughout the process, all agreed that a transplant was the only way she would
survive and come home again.
I
was on the phone daily, after the white hospital-issued jackets and ubiquitous
clipboarded doctors and interns passed on to the next of the endless line of
Intensive Care patients. I called the
BA of my Union, I called the National Benefits Fund, and I called the insurance
carrier, all in order to make sure that we were covered so I could continue on
with this partner after so few years spent together.
I was in the business office of the University Hospital, remaining
composed and reminding myself that the manager of that department had nothing
against my wife or myself, but was merely explaining what the hospital could
and could not do in order to proceed with a liver transplant. It was a cold, matter-of-fact discussion
about whether we had the resources to keep her alive and I strangely understood
that it was nothing personal. It was
assumed that with a new liver and some ongoing dialysis, the kidneys could come
back, so the liver transplant was the biggest component of the equation of her survival.
After
two days of frantic phone calling, I found out that our insurance would indeed
cover the full cost of the transplant but would not cover the follow-up meds, a
key component of the entire process. I
hadn’t realized that the transplant was only the beginning and that the body
would reject the foreign organ for the remainder of her life. The meds that would confuse the body into
accepting the transplanted liver amounted to $2,000 a month for life, and my
insurance plan covered the procedure, but without the prescription coverage, so
the entire point was moot. The hospital
would not transplant a liver to someone who could not keep up with the protocol
that was necessary to consider the surgery a success so quite simply, she would
have to go on as long as she could without the help that she needed.
It
was also confusing that while she was in this new hospital as a result of a bad
reaction to surgery, that they would put her under, if any other surgeries were
required and with no idea of the side effects of new and different anesthesia
that may be administered. None of this
really mattered as all I wanted was for her to come back home to our beautiful
house in the mountains and all of our loving animals. I would still forge on and see if I could upgrade our plan so she
could get the transplant she so desperately needed. I was born in April and have never given up easily.
We
had no living will and had not yet discussed contingencies in case of medical
emergencies or accidents. She had just
turned 44 and I was a few years older and we had been together close to eight
years at that point, but neither of us had really considered mortality to the
point that we discussed what to do “if”…
I
had just left the business office at another wing of the hospital, still trying
to upgrade the insurance to cover the follow-up meds and walked across the
campus to the ICU. The Union BA hinted
that he could pull some strings behind the scenes to upgrade our policy without
anyone finding out. I didn’t think that
even he, the politician of politicians, could maneuver the insurance company but
was nonetheless grateful that he fed me the optimism that helped me through
another day.
I
walked over to the ICU building and headed through the lobby. There was a grand piano in the center of the
common area, and volunteers would play or attendants would switch the mode to
“automatic” and beautiful, classical music would waft through the lobby,
creating the gentle mood that helped most of the visitors maintain. People came and people went, being admitted,
visiting, being discharged, and the mood varied, depending which floor you were
going to. In the days since her
admittance, I had passed hopeful faces, sad and distraught survivors, victims
of horrific accidents and patients with little or no visitors and some so far
gone that you knew it was their last day on earth and all you could do
was wish them well on their journey.
Pain finally exiting their bodies was the only relief for some.
I
walked in and took my usual seat next to her bed. She was still hooked up to
more machines than I could count. She
was starting to stir and for the first time since her accident, her eyes
started to open. The Transplant Team had
been discreet and professional and none of our discussions ever took place within
her room. I realized that she hadn’t
any recollection of where she was or how she got there. Her far-away eyes focused up on me and she
gestured me closer to her. Her vocal
chords had been paralyzed from the initial injury, another clue that things had
gone horribly wrong the day she was supposed to simply have a fractured elbow
repaired.
She
had never fully recovered from the anesthesia and with her vocal chords
paralyzed and her writing hand in a sling, had no way to communicate. I came in
to check on her regularly and though she had been prescribed painkillers, she
seemed cognizant the days following her surgery, but at this point after being
airlifted out of state and waking up in a strange hospital room, I had no idea
how far back she could recall, or how much of her memory may have been erased
by the coma.
I
took out the camera I had given her the year before, a “wrap” gift from one of
the movies I had crewed on, and showed her a picture I had taken of the outside
of the building where she lay. I
pointed to the sixth floor window and explained that that was where we were both
sitting. I told her about her
helicopter ride from the first hospital and my following her a few days later
by car. I told her about seeing the
rainbow in the near-blinding snowstorm as I raced through Raton Pass in early
July but didn’t tell her that one of the Colorado doctors told me that if I
didn’t get up there soon I may never see her alive again. I methodically explained about the
Transplant Team and that her only chance for survival was to have a liver
transplant.
As
she gestured me, I leaned forward, leaning closer to her face so I could hear
her, and with an atrophied, gravely voice she whispered desperately in my ear,
“I DON’T WANT A TRANSPLANT!”
I
sat back and looked at her. All I had
done since arriving at the University Hospital was to sit by her bedside,
willing her to come back to life, and rushing in and out of the business office
and on the phone for hours at a time, trying to get a green-light on the transplant
that would help her come home to us again.
I stopped and thought about the high cost of the follow-up meds and the
realization that the recipient of any transplant was always living on borrowed
time, as perhaps we all are.
I
then understood more than I realized I would and nodded confidently back at
her. “Then there’s only one way you’re
going to be able to walk out of here.”
I took a deep breath and stepped out of her room in an attempt to regain
my composure. I had never been so alone
and I had never had the desire to so much be with someone again.
The
doctors came in and I went out and headed out on Colfax Avenue for one of the
many long walks I had taken during those days.
I walked up the endless sidewalk until I couldn’t walk anymore, stopped
and went inside a coffee shop restaurant and sat down to think. During those days it was best not to think
and I was amazed at how calm I could remain during such a crisis. Everything was overwhelming, everything was
riding on the outcome, and all I could do was remain in control or
out-of-control, or whatever state of mind it was that kept me going through the
crashing waves of uncertainty.
I
ate my meal, drank my coffee, put a generous tip on the table, and headed back
to the hospital. I walked in past the
grand piano and headed for the bank of elevators. Getting out on the ICU, I passed more and more waves of newly
admitted patients and more and more seas of hopeful and stunned faces. I walked into her room and sat down in the
chair next to her. She looked up at me
and forced a grin through hoses and tubes.
I smiled back, this time beginning to realize that she was aware I had
been there, sitting by her bedside.
She
was a Massage Therapist and Reiki Master and believed in the Universal power of
healing. I was more feet-on-the-ground,
but also accepted the power of healing.
Through my years of weight lifting, I would massage my sore muscles and
over time, learned to linger and apply subtle pressure that would have an equal
healing property. I have had out-of-body
experiences, I had seen the Stickman walking beside me in the desert, and had seen the yellow bird take my Father’s soul away from this
earth on the day he died so young.
I
reached over and placed my hand on her side, where I believed her liver
was. I touched gently and placed the
open palm of my hand there. I had
spoken with Mother earlier that week and she said that a woman at her church
had told her of the healing power of the Eagle in Native American medicine. I should have known this, as Tse Pe and my
good friend Tim had given me the Tewa name Tse Cun or “Eagle Wing” several
years prior. I had the name and an
eagle from my Father’s War II uniform proudly tattooed on my back to celebrate
this animal spirit coming to me. We had
been placed in many prayer circles after her accident, and with the advent of
the Internet, were told that people were praying for us all over the world.
With
the picture of the eagle on my back, taped on the wall over her bed, I closed
my eyes and felt my hand warming up on the side of her torso. I could feel her liver pulling my hand in
closer as I started to leave my body. I
saw bolts of white lightning surging down from the Heavens, cursing through my
hand into her dying liver. I started
convulsing as I felt the energy bolt through me and at the same time saw the Eagle
fly from my hand and eating the dead tissue of her liver, tearing it up, eating
all that had died, all that was decayed as the living tissue proliferated in
its place. The Eagle chewed with a
vengeance and my body, from my hand all the way through my body and up to my
head, surged and convulsed with energy.
The lightning continued to shoot through me as the Eagle continued
voraciously consuming the decay.
I
have no idea how much time had elapsed as, completely wasted, I finally pulled
back and sat slumped back in the chair, winded and exhausted. I tried to regain my breath and slowly
pulled myself up in the chair. She sat
there quietly with a serene glow around her.
We basked together in the stillness of the quiet room and I reached over
and gently touched her torso.
I
went back to Cousin Phil and Laurie’s that night and sat up with them after
dinner, sipping on cocktails. They had
been great throughout the entire ordeal and having a place to stay and people
to connect with, this far from home, this far from the safe reality I once
knew, was a gift I couldn’t have even imagined.
The
next morning I made my daily pilgrimage to be by her side, parked the car and
made my usual walk into the lobby, past the grand piano and up the elevator to
the ICU. I walked in as doctors were
standing over her with their clipboards.
The mood was more upbeat than I had seen as I stood up and poked my head
over theirs.
There
she was, sitting up in bed, pale and feeble, but without the respirator, with
several of the tubes gone and a distant look of relief on her face. The Head Doctor noticed me and walked me out
of the room and into the corridor. He
described that she had experienced a “Medical Miracle” and that her liver had
gained full function and was fully recovered.
The kidneys, with dialysis, should follow soon. No one could say what happened, but everyone
was grateful and relieved that she was off life support and would now be
admitted to a room in the general ward of the hospital. There wasn’t much discussion, but when
doctors used the term “Miracle” I do not feel inclined to question. They see life and death daily and for those
men of Science to declare her recovery a “Miracle” I can only say “Amen!”
Copyright 2011 Dale Lotreck
