He nearly died several times.<\/p>\n
His wife had to call 911 because she found him barely breathing, drooling, and unresponsive on the saggy living room couch, his white undershirt tight against his swollen belly. Paramedics arrived and tested his nonexistent reflexes.<\/p>\n
Next, doctors at the hospital worked for hours to stabilize him, shaking their heads and isolating his wife in a private waiting room as they worked. They placed him on a ventilator and asked his wife if he had a living will. She shook her head.<\/p>\n
She was prepared to bury him, but the next morning, her husband sprang up in bed and\u2014pointing vigorously at his ventilator tube\u2014mimed its removal.<\/p>\n
Doctors removed the tube from his mouth, deeming it a miracle. After a week in the hospital, where he was kept on oxygen 24\/7, he was released to a rehabilitation center (nursing home), where he was given occupational and physical therapy and kept on oxygen day and night. He learned the difference between refillable portable oxygen tanks and compressors that plug into the wall, drawing oxygen from the air around us like the machines deep-sea divers use. He learned that chapstick is highly combustible around oxygen. His wife always wore chapstick, so no kissing.<\/p>\n
While in the nursing home, he was struck on the head by a falling light fixture, raising an ugly bump on his skull before shattering on the floor and slashing his legs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a miracle you survived that,\u201d a nurse commented. \u201cWith your low platelet count, you could\u2019ve bled to death. If the doctor had been here, I\u2019m sure a CAT Scan would\u2019ve been ordered.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the doctor never appeared in the nursing home, and after a week of bad food, he was sent home.<\/p>\n
On the day he was sent home, they gave him a portable oxygen tank with a few hours of breathable air to tide him over until the home delivery service brought his long-term supply. His wife left him alone to run some necessary errands. As she drove home, her phone rang and he told her that the oxygen supplier had never arrived.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate to complain,\u201d he said, \u201cbut this oxygen tank is red-lining and I think I\u2019m almost out of air.\u201d His wife floored the gas in her car and raced to the nursing home, demanding an oxygen machine for her husband.<\/p>\n
The nursing home social worker tried calling the oxygen supply company and was placed on hold for 25 minutes. Eventually, he found a compressor and loaded it into the wife\u2019s car. \u201cSorry,\u201d he mumbled. \u201cThey\u2019re usually reliable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The wife got the compressor home just as her husband\u2019s tank wheezed its last gasp, and the day was saved, as well as the husband.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know,\u201d the wife asked the husband, \u201cyou\u2019ve had some near-death experiences lately, and I was wondering if you saw the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel\u2014I mean Heaven\u2019s gate. Did anyone ask you to go toward the light?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d the husband said, savoring decent food at home, reassured by the regular clunk of his new oxygen compressor.<\/p>\n
Crunching green grapes, bratwurst, and a dish of blaze-yellow pineapple\u2014he\u2019d had some odd food cravings, perhaps because of the lingering aftertaste of chemically-plastic tubes\u2014he realized the wife had to make extra trips to the supermarket.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did have a strange dream while I was in the hospital on the ventilator,\u201d he said. \u201cI was in a big white room, and someone was asking me questions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSaint Peter,\u201d his wife said.<\/p>\n
The husband chewed his bratwurst carefully as he was now overcautious about choking. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t Saint Peter. It was a woman, and she looked like my third-grade teacher. She gave me a spelling test.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re kidding,\u201d the wife laughed. \u201cDid you pass?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey weren\u2019t hard words.\u201d He swallowed pineapple and sour grape together and grimaced. \u201cI was always good at spelling.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat were some of the words?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t remember,\u201d he said, but as he overchewed his sausage, some of the words drifted back to him. It was hazy, but…<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I died, would you miss me?\u201d he suddenly asked his wife.<\/p>\n
She leaned over and kissed his purplish hand, the fragile skin bruised by blood tests and IVs. \u201cIf I wanted to get rid of you, I\u2018ve had a few opportunities lately that I didn\u2019t take. I admit I have selfish reasons for keeping you around… I don\u2019t want to be alone\u2014not at my age. But I never hesitated to think of that before I called 911. I chose to keep you alive, and that\u2019s a good test of love, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n
He thought of times he\u2019d ignored his wife, or wished she were prettier, and felt ashamed. They hadn\u2019t shared a bed in years, and now he must sleep sitting up, connected to a breathing machine. The plastic tubing in his nose was becoming part of his existence. Like wearing glasses, he rationalized. Nothing, really.<\/p>\n
Those damn spelling words. He shook his head. A nurse told him that intubation damages short-term memory. He could remember things he regretted in the past, but not those damn spelling words.<\/p>\n
Honesty? Priorities? Reconnect?<\/p>\n
Every time one of the words came back to him, it slipped away again like a helium balloon disappearing through the ceiling. Damn. He must\u2019ve been making faces with the effort of hanging onto the words, because his wife told him to relax and remember his blood pressure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you for dinner,\u201d he said. She looked surprisingly grateful. Did he neglect to thank her for things in the past? He couldn\u2019t remember.<\/p>\n
Coiling his oxygen hose around his arm, he practiced the paced breathing he\u2019d learned in rehab.<\/p>\n
Words do matter, he thought, and science and medicine. But love is what keeps you tied to the ground.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t complain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
She leaned over and kissed his purplish hand, the fragile skin bruised by blood tests and IVs. \u201cIf I wanted to get rid of you, I\u2018ve had a few opportunities lately that I didn\u2019t take.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3010],"class_list":["post-18289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-life-death-oxygen-breathing-hospital","writer-dawn-lowe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18289"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19032,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18289\/revisions\/19032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}