My brain went off

“Well, I’d eaten some tacos with Fire sauce and was watching “So You Think You Can Dance.” That’s what I told the docs at OHSU emergency last night when they asked what I was doing when it happened. I was sitting in one of the Smiley chairs minding my own business when something in the back, bottom of my head suddenly went off. It started as a hard pressure, like if you grab a chunk of skin on your arm and squeeze hard enough to hurt. Then it just started growing, taking over the whole back of my head and moving down into my neck.

My first car was a blue Sunbeam Imp. I chose it over a Volkswagen bug that was the same price, thinking, “Hey, everyone has a bug. But nobody has an Imp!” Of course, this was the first of many choices in my life where I chose the odd over the normal. To secure the point, I put giant peace signs in white tape on both doors. For a few months, it was the cool car to be in.

It had a red idiot light for oil, which used to go on every few weeks for a moment or two…just enough to scare me but not enough to take it to a shop. When buddies were in the car and the light went on it would spark a short round of speculation about the problem. But none of us were mechanics. We were all geeks and suburban hippies so talking about exhaust manifolds and oil pans was really a bunch of crap. None of us even vaguely knew what we were talking about. But guys do this.

Eventually we’d exhaust our limited vocabulary and about that time the light would flicker and go out. For me that meant the problem was either 1.) healed 2.) the light was faulty or 3.) good to go until next time. Which worked pretty well until Scott and I and Matt were on our way across the Bay to go camping at the beach when that little red light went off again. A couple minutes of useless speculation got us most of the way across the bridge and to the base of the steep part where the San Mateo Bridge rose up and over the boat channel. Though the Space Shuttle Challenger wasn’t to blow up for another decade or two, I look back now at what happened next as an eerie harbinger of the tragedy to come: “Holy shit–there’s smoke coming out of us!” I saw it at about that same moment as I glanced up in the rear view mirror.

Thick, white, roiling clouds of smoke lay behind us like the wake of a boat. We could barely see the cars behind us as they wove back and forth trying to find a lane–any lane–where they could see and breathe. Inside the car there was bedlam, though I was oddly calm. I knew the car was a goner. Even I could diagnose a red light on the dashboard accompanied by billowing white smoke coming from the rear of the Imp. As I made my way to the guardrail on the right, we crested the bridge and rolled to a stop. Then I panicked, too.

In our preparation for the camping trip we had packed bananas, cookies, beer, potato chips and Frito’s, swim trunks, some wood (Duraflame hadn’t been invented, yet) and newspaper, and some, uh, herbs. And a very cool pipe that looked like a bomb to, uh, heat the herbs. Standing in the slow lane next to our blue peace sign Imp we were all aware that the fuzz (I know, it’s so old. But that’s what we called them with our longish hair and dirty, ripped jeans, tie-dyed shirts and macramé belts…) were going to show up any minute and they would not be happy. The peace sign would be the biggest problem, pissing off the cop and getting us rousted, searched and hauled off to the hoosegow (oh, boy).

We were all good Catholic school boys. No way could we have the man hauling us in and calling our parents, throwing us in jail and ruining our lives forever. Actually, we knew there would be cool chicks at the campground that night and it was already starting to get dark. So we threw the herbs and pipe over the guardrail and into the bay.

It wasn’t the fuzz that showed up but a yellow AAA tow truck. He took us and the dead Imp down to the West side of the bridge, where I sold him the damn thing for $50, emptied it out and hitch-hiked on the to campground. And yes, the chicks were there and we were very cool with our tale of danger and adventure.

So, getting back to me in my chair with a bomb going off inside my head, the point is that blood clot was sort of like the red idiot light on my Imp. Mostly I don’t think that much about it, but when I do it definitely scares me. And I wondered, as my face twisted and the pain kept exploding, if some random blood vessel in my brain wasn’t spewing out clouds of white smoke and my life was suddenly going to get pulled over to the guardrail right when it was peaking.

Peaking because just a couple days ago Judy and I became fiance’s–SOOO much better than “significant others.” That’s another story–a romantic one, yes, but let me finish about my brain, here.

Thought I was buying the farm. It all took about 5 minutes. Pain and fear reaching a point where I was reaching up to my lips to see if anything was numb or I was drooling. Trying one eye, then another to see if my vision was blurring. Trying to remember how you know if you’re having a stroke. Try to smile?

Judy and Jenny were both standing and looking VERY worried. I was still sitting but evidently I looked pretty bad. “Should I call 911?” I HATE going to the hospital. One of my favorite shows was on. Gawd, I love dance. I don’t want to miss that and, anyways, IV’s and stupid gowns and, crap I just didn’t want to go. “No, wait a minute. I think it might be getting better.” Waiting for the red light to go out and hoping smoke wasn’t billowing out of my butt.

But that’s not what I said. I actually said, “Yeah, let’s go.” Because I have a blood clot inside my heart. Because I’m maxed out on blood thinners. And this might be the big one. Judy and Jenny thought the same.

We got out of the emergency ward early in the morning…somewhere around 1:30 am. IV’s, gowns, CAT scans, Angiogram with a contrasting agent that,when it goes in your body, an almost hot, but very warm rush starts at the top of your head and washes down through your body right to your toes. Feels like being in giant rubber bag and peeing it full. (Not that I have ever been in a large rubber bag or peeed myself warm…). Lots of waiting in a room with blinking lights, waiting in a gurney in a hallway, rolling in a gurney counting awful fluorescent ceiling lights, making dark and silly jokes (we needed Pat) and watching hospital staff passing to and fro by my door without making eye contact.

There was a report on TV while I laid there about a woman who lay on an Emergency Ward floor vomiting blood for 45 minutes without help. She died. I was not vomiting blood. In fact, the gurney wasn’t completely uncomfortable. But my anxiety level was a bit high.

As I said, I am 90 to 95 percent normal–which I asked to be recorded and certified for the benefit of my family but they wouldn’t do it– and safe to go home. So now I am. Home. The red light in my head is off. I am 1.) healed, 2.) my brain is faulty or 3.) good to go until next time.

Now go check your oil.