Wednesday night did not turn out anywhere near what we had planned. Maria came home from her belly dancing class; we ate the pasta/plant sausage meal I cooked for her and sat down to watch at least part of a mystery. We were both tired and looking forward to popcorn, a short mystery, and sleep.

It was the most frightening night in our marriage, and I learned again that I seemed good at being in the hospital. I love talking with the nurses and patients and hearing their stories.

I had a deeply troubled, angry, and combative roommate who argued the entire night with the nurses and staff. I recognized him as a dementia victim and ended up using my Mansion experience to contact him and help him calm down and stop fighting. I think I will write about that later. To me, it was the most important decision time of my adventure .

All I can say about what happened is this: After dinner, I got up and felt queasy and sick. It was a new feeling; it just didn’t feel right. I rested downstairs in a chair to rest for a while.

I went into the kitchen and remembered nothing after that until I heard Maria’s voice pleading to wake up and speak.

Then I remember three emergency service rescuers from the Cambridge Valley Rescue Squad coming through the door and leaning over me, taking my blood pressure, looking into my eyes, picking up and putting me in a stretcher, hurried me out to their ambulance, and headed for Saratoga Hospital.

Maria’s sketch is of my arm on the rail of a bed and her sense of the night. She never stops being an artist:

So many days, I’ve heard the sirens of the CBR rescue zooming up and down our road; I never once imagined I would ever be in it. Life is a wheel; it just turns and turns.

I remember little of the ride, except that they kept talking to me and making sure I was awake and conscious of where I was. I sense that they thought I might be having a heart attack.

I wasn’t.

One of the doctors suggested that Maria probably saved my life by keeping me talking and calling an ambulance right away. She said she thought I might be dead at first, and I started to open up and speak when the EMS crew came pushing through the doors and past our barking dogs.

All I knew was that I had fallen and was in great pain. I knew my back and the back of my head had taken the brunt.

The CVR squad was remarkable, as efficient, quick, and kind as I have heard. We got inside, and the doctors rushed me into the hospital for tests.

This was still a blur to me; I felt disbelief that this was happening but knew I was in serious trouble.

Maria followed the ambulance in her car. I didn’t even have my regular clothes with me; we were hurrying to the hospital.

After some tests, a doctor came into our waiting room and said grimly.

“You have blood on your brain. We call it bleeding brain.

You might need brain surgery, and we can’t do it. We’ve hijacked an ambulance and are sending you to Albany General Hospital,” the famous hospital and research center in Albany. “They can handle this, we can’t. And it would help if you got there quickly.:

For the second time in the night, we were terrified. I didn’t sleep the first night in Albany or the second for different reasons.

 

Albany Hospital Hallway

For the second time in a few hours (now 3 a.m.), I was being rushed into an ambulance to a hospital for emergency treatment.

I’m too tired to go into details, or perhaps never will, but the bottom line is that the blood in my brain was there, caused by head banging on the hard kitchen color.

The neurosurgeons said there were no reasons to operate, not now or down the road. The blood was small, consistent with a concussion, and would absolve itself.

Maria was her usual amazing self, staying by my side all day Thursday and today, rushing home to the farm to care for a million things, from the dogs and animals and sheep and donkeys.

The doctors peppered me with questions about the fall, and the best I could come up with was dehydration, which I am prone to and felt acutely that evening. I had a ton of thorough tests.

My heart was good, nothing was broken, and my stomach and digestion were ok.

Once again, I felt fortunate. I never slept a wink either night.

The truth is that I don’t know how our why I fell like that; I know that I am in great pain, some of the most intense I have ever experienced, in my back and ribs where I fell. I know I’m in shock and in some pain.

I know I will get better soon.

I know that once again, I somehow slid by the worst and experienced the best – in Maria, in me, in the wonderful nurses and concerned doctors, in the people I met in distress. I always learn something, I always grow.

I can sit comfortably in a chair if I am still, and I am comfortable writing this in my office. I get up very slowly and carefully and will for days.

Nothing was broken or fractured there. I should recover quickly and steadily. I could and should resume my regular work on Monday, said the doctors, but take it easy. No more tests are needed, although they did suggest eliminating one or two of the medications I have been taking. They were suspect.

Maria was understandably horrified by seeing me unconscious and on the floor like that. Concussions can be fatal if not cared for. That’s the best I can do for tonight.

I’ll be blogging on Sunday; I’m taking tomorrow off (except for a flower photo or two.) I get dizzy and feel tremendous pain when I stand up to walk; this is also consistent with a concussion. We may never know the cause of my passing.

More later, it’s good to be back. That’s enough. Bed.