You party here?” he asked with a smile, in broken English. The doctor arrived and ordered some drug that was soon dripping from a bag into my bloodstream. What an obnoxious sound to die to, I thought. The nurses would flip off the alarm, only for it to restart a minute later. I was hooked up to an electrocardiogram monitor, which immediately began beeping danger. Q-tips tickled my brain and another injection stuck my left arm, its contents causing an icy feeling on my left side that soon spread all over. Blood was drawn, two IVs were started and an anticoagulant was injected into my belly.
Upon arrival, I was immediately poked and prodded by two ER nurses.
#Bed screen curtain hospital manual#
Speaking in perfect English, this young, fit man told me my condition could be addressed with a cardioversion - a manual restart of the heart via electric shock. “ Sientense!” Just like that, Julio was wheeling me past all the COVID-19 patients in the hallway and into the ER. The triage nurse pointed at the chair with his right index finger and put his left hand on his hip. “Haha, no, gracias,” I said, confident I could walk. Seconds later, Julio arrived with a wheelchair. He then poked his head outside the room and barked out an order to a man named Julio. He sprang into action, gathering the necessary information with frantic speed. His doubt vanished when he took my pulse: 195 beats per minute. He raised his eyebrows and cocked his head to one side in evident disbelief. Learning from my previous interaction, I more articulately described my situation. In triage I was greeted by a no-nonsense nurse. But she took my concern seriously, gave me a number and asked me to take a seat. “ Me duele mi corazón,” I replied, before realizing how ridiculous that sounded. As I struggled to give my information through broken Spanish, the woman asked the reason for my visit. I was greeted at the emergency room by a kind but slow-paced receptionist. Minutes later I was driving myself to the hospital. I peeked down my shirt and saw my chest contorting in ways I’d never seen.
As I lay on the bed, my back pressed against the crappy hostel mattress, the pounding of my heart, now faster than before, gently rocked me from side to side. The butterflies had been replaced by a drum line. All I need to do is hydrate and relax, I told myself. I entered my room, drank a big glass of water and spread out on the bed. After dinner I told Jake I had a headache (an easier explanation) and retreated to my hostel. But I pressed through, stopping first at a souvenir shop - I had, of course, left shopping for my last day - and then at a food truck. “Oh, is that right? I didn’t know that.”īy the time we entered San Juan, my discomfort was worse the butterflies swirled with greater intensity, and my breathing exercises had done nothing to smoke them out. My focus was elsewhere, so I feigned interest, asking safe questions that wouldn’t reveal my inattention. Jake, always keen on sharing his eccentric thoughts, continued talking about the Iran-Contra affair, or maybe his travels in Thailand, or maybe something else. I took some deep breaths and waited for it to subside. Butterflies began to flutter, and my heart began to race. Still amazed by what we’d just seen, I turned the car left and headed east toward San Juan.īut as we entered the on-ramp to the highway, a funny feeling crept into my chest. I base that estimate on the time stamp of my most recent photo: Jake, stripped down to his boxers, swimming at a Barceloneta beach, some 30 minutes before. “Did you see that?” yelled Jake, a backpacker whom my friend and I had picked up in Vieques, and who was now riding shotgun.
But that lightning bolt, somewhere in the green of Puerto Rico’s Cordillera Central, had lit up the dark gray sky and stricken no more than 100 yards ahead of our car.
Cursory WebMD research offered no support for this theory, and later I was too embarrassed, and lacked the Spanish, to run it by my doctors. I first hypothesized that my four-night stint in the intensive care unit of San Juan’s premier hospital was caused by a single lightning strike.
0 kommentar(er)
