Journal of a Living Lady #210
Nancy White Kelly
It is already November. Where has this year gone? When I was a child it seemed that the clock hands moved through molasses. School days were long Then there were those three-month summers. My brothers and I cooled ourselves in the sweltering heat with an oscillating fan and wet rags. Air conditioning in those days was a paper funeral home fan. School didn’t start again until after Labor Day. Following high school came college, marriage, and family responsibilities. The pace of life quickened.
During my working years as an educator, there never were enough hours in the day. Now that Buddy and I are retired, we often ask each other what day of the week it is. While neither of us are idlers, days often seem to blur one into another.
Recently though, out of the blue, a couple of my days virtually disappeared, as if erased, from the calendar.
While Buddy and I were visiting with friends near
Be forewarned. If you show up in the emergency room by ambulance and a CAT scan doesn’t show something imminently wrong in the brain, you are apt to be treated like an over-dosed adolescent. That is what happened to this graying AARP member.
I DO remember coming around as the detox drug flowed into my veins. A warmth gradually spread over my body and sheer panic set in. I couldn’t fully comprehend what was happening, but I felt as if I were shedding my skin. My protesting voice sounded strange even to me, raspy and deep. It was an eerie experience that I hope to never repeat. Only the straps that held me to the stretcher kept me from going absolutely berserk. I faded out again and was relieved to wake up in my own bed later the next day.
Though my memory is sketchy, I remember a young doctor shaking a bottle of white tablets in my face. He kept asking in an accusatory manner, “And what are these?”
I am frustrated that any doctor would assume I had over-dosed simply because I had legally prescribed pills in my purse. Goof grief! I have metastatic cancer. Buddy told them so.
Detox treatment is unpleasant. My first inclination in the ER wasn’t too Christian. I wanted to choke that arrogant little doctor. My second fleshly thought came later. Make somebody pay for treating me so shabbily. What happened to, “First do no harm!”
Time can be an ally to common sense. My family doctor explained that this is typical emergency room protocol. If the treating physician had waited on confirmation of excessive drugs with blood tests, I could have been dead or, at the very least, attached to a respirator. Perhaps they did what they had to do. Neither the hospital nor the patient had the final word. A lab technician did. Bottom line: no drugs.
The coroner waits again. In spite, or in spite of the odds, the Living Lady lives.
nancyk@alltel.net
