Okay, so here’s what went down last night.
So at around 9:30 pm on Thursday, January 20, 2022, I noticed this somewhat odd feeling in my chest.
Not pain, exactly. At least not acute pain. More like heartburn, with a slight sense of pressure, like someone was pressing lightly on my ribcage.
This bothered me. After all, that was a spot very close to my heart (literally), and I’d had work done on my heart last fall, so… concern was warranted.
So I decided to get up and move around a little both to see what effect that had and to express my newfound agitation.
In order to get up, I had to briefly rest my weight on my left hand, and that’s when I noticed that said hand was REALLY numb.
Like, if the norma thing was your hand “falling asleep”, this was it lasping into a coma.
And my immediate thought was HOLY SHIT because I know what THAT means.
I remember when all the PSAs warning people of the signs of a heart attack were on the air and I remember what they said.
AND I remember all the pop culture heart attacks I have seen on TV and in movies.
They all agree that one of the surest signs of a heart attack or stroke is having the left side of your body go numb.
So after what was (for me) a relatively brief period of dithering, I called 911. And sure enough, while I was waiting for the ambo, the left side of my FACE went numb.
Luckily, Bertrand Emergency Mode had kicked in and that kept me from freaking out about little things like how I might be dying. Instead I was focused and calm.
Like I said last night, panic never helps.
So when the EMTs showed up, I was calm, clearheaded, and most importantly, dressed. They examined me out in the hall outside our apartment ’cause there’ way more room there. I got to see on their high tech stretcher.
Then it was a strangely long ride in the ambo. I mean, it’s only six blocks to the hospital but it felt more like 20.
And that would make sense if they were driving super slow in order not to jostle me, but that was one of the roughest rides I have ever endured and I come from a place where the roads are more patch tar than pavement.
On the way, the EMTs ask me questions, and have a lot of trouble getting my blood pressure via the old fashioned stethoscope method.
Anyhow, we get their alive (huzzah), and I get checked in, and the tech THERE has trouble getting my blood pressure with the fancy new electronic BP cuffs!
I assure him that despite the issues getting my BP, I’m pretty sure I HAVE one.
What follows is the usual long periods of drowsing in the ER in between things like X-rays, bloodwork, and some drunk ranting for 5 mins before security can hush him up.
All to reach the completely unsatisfactory conclusion I described in the previous entry. No idea what made my face and hand go numb. And they don’t care.
They are the ER, and they patch people up and send them home. Obscure philosophical questions like “what is the true measure of a man” and “why did my face and hand go numb” are not their domain.
Guess I will just wait to keel over, then.
More after the break.
Freezing in the dark
Really feeling the cold wind of isolation bite right now.
It’s like there is a part of me that knows what should be there. Knows on the same deep animal level that our bodies know to eat when we’re hungry and what to do when our bladders are full. It know what warmth and connection should be there but the big dumb organism it’s attached to and part of doesn’t know how to make that pain go away.
Or if he does know, he’s far too maladapted and malformed to do it.
So maybe it’s easier to just tell himself he doesn’t know rather than face he truth that he knows – he always knows – but he’s just too god damn chickenshit to do it.
It amounts to more or less the same thing anyhow.
You know what I find touching? (WARNING : also morbid. )
The fact that when people think they are about to die, they immediately think about not seeing everyone they love ever again.
That’s how intimately social a species we are. To us, death is fundamentally a separation. When facing our own doom, which is impossible for us to truly encompass, what we perceive instead is being taken away from all our beloved fellow humans.
That, we can imagine, and it’s horrible. One of the worst things possible.
Hence our collective fear of being “taken away”.
As in, “you keep doing that and they’ll come take you away”.
Notice that there need be no mention of where you’re being taken to, or what will happen to you when you get there.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are being taken away from everyone and everything you know. They are removing you from your current habitat, to which you have adapted, and putting you somewhere new where you won’t know anybody and you will have to start over from scratch.
I think that’s why the image of someone being loaded into a police car and driven away has such enormous power in the public mind.
The cops can, will, and do take people away. All the time. It’s a big part of the job.
And even if you are 100 percent sure that said person deserves it, a little part of you can’t help but identify with them and feel the horror of being “taken away”.
Then there’s the opposite of being taken away, being taken home.
I’m still looking for someone to take me home.
But first I’d have to know where that is.
I’ve never even been there.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.