As I'm writing this, I'm in a hospital room at California Pacific Medical Center, looking at the rise of Clay Street as it marches off into the distance. I don't really know what direction I'm looking, but the view is beautiful. At night, I see car lights or tail lights, the lighting of windows, lamps, and the deepening shade around the hill. This morning, the fog as it settled in.
Hospitals are hospitals. They do the craziest things. Here, I have blood pressure and lab draws at all hours. Midnight, 5am, doesn't matter. If the room is dark, they turn on the lights and ask me if it's ok to come in...of course it's not ok, idiot, but that won't stop you. So why bother asking?
Scott has been commuting to his new job in San Jose and still coming before and after work the past couple of days, and it shows on him...and we both love the new mattress at home, so sleeping on my glorified hard butt cot is not exactly heaven to me.
How did I end up here? Well, the day after I had my "asthma attack" it was time for chemo, so I sucked it up and had the luxury of Scott driving me early in the morning to the oncologist's office, Dr. Kramer, associated with Cal Pac.
When I got here, again, so out of breath, I had my blood draw, and they took my weight and vitals, and I waited to see Kristen, the Nurse Practitioner, who reviews how the week has gone with me, and the treatment plan, and how I'm adapting to the side effects. Kristen is always nice and calm, and encouraging....this is always pleasant.
This visit, though, I could see her look slightly--panicked? concerned? of course I was laboring for breath and that's not normal, so any reaction I describe is not our normal outcome. She got the doctor on duty and they decided to send me to the Emergency Room of the hospital attached to the medical services wing.
I don't have to tell any of you that a trip to the ER is pretty much going to be a day long affair until you present with a knife sticking in your back and a simple request to remove it. In my case, with many possible suspects and no bleeding knife, the process of elimination was slow and tedious. From 10am to about 4pm, when the lung CT was read, no one knew it could be pulmonary embolism--but finally, there it was, undeniable, on film.
And not just any embolism they tell me--big, laying itself like a blanket over an artery, claiming lung space and acting as if quite at home.
This is the story right now--at risk of sudden death, I cannot leave the hospital without a drug that I inject twice a day that my insurance doesn't cover. My insurance doesn't normally cover this drug, so my doctors have to appeal. Their appeal could not be heard because my COBRA election from IU has not been reported, so my insurance believes i'm no longer covered--and if I were them, after everything they've spent the last couple of months, that would be the pause that refreshes.
So, I'm in stasis at the moment as we work this out--the hospital, the former employer, me, the insurance company, the doctors, the appeals, the process....process! in the meanwhile, I'm watching True Blood on the Ipad familiarizing myself with the Vampire and Supe culture and trying like hell to figure out why everyone in Bon Temps wants to bang Sookie Stackhouse. That could take a million years for me to enculturate...
My vitals are great. I'm well rested. I refuse to get stressed. If there's indeed a ticking time bomb that has strapped itself into my lungs for a visit, I intend to act with the gravitas of being appropriately threatened by its existence and pull no heroics that alert it to the fact that I'd like to scream and cry and cuss and talk about how unfair this shit is on a continual basis,
Of course it's unfair. It's cancer. This is the ticket you get for the infraction. Deal with it,
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