It sounds like the name of a band or an album or maybe even a drink.
It feels like all the lights go out at once, leaving a house in total darkness.
It happened to me.
Breathing became difficult around noon that Sunday. Sleep eluded me when I tried to nap. I moved slowly about the house doing only the most essential chores. Hours inched by at a careful pace. Midnight, Sunday night, twelve hours after it all began, I told my husband my heart might be beating a little faster than necessary. He wanted to call an ambulance right that minute. I threatened to kill him if he did.
Eight O'clock Monday morning - twenty hours into the episode - I reluctantly agreed Phillip should call Karen. Quick as a wink she was here and I was in bed with a blood pressure cuff on my arm. She kept writing numbers on paper. Blood pressure was too low and pulse way too high. She knew I was in danger. She knew I needed help. I promised if I didn't get better soon, I'd go to the doctor but I wanted to wait just a little longer to see if the situation would correct itself.
We waited ...
Midnight Monday night, after my heart had been laboring for thirty-six hours, everything happened at once. Ready or not. Emergency vehicles descended upon our sleeping community. Firemen were the first to arrive. EMT's right on their heels. I was whisked out the front door and into a waiting ambulance. Nobody paused by Phillip's hospital bed so I could hug and be hugged.
My gurney barely rolled to a stop inside the ambulance before I was plugged into a monitor where lines, squiggles and numbers told a story of impending death. Ventricular Tachycardia. There was no time to get me to the hospital Paramedics swung into action in that portable emergency room still parked right outside our front door.
Two young uniformed figures worked over me. One boy. One girl. No older than some of my grandchildren.
"Okay. Here we go," I heard tension in her voice as she injected an antiarrhythmic medication called adenosine into my vein.
"You may feel a little bit of a sinking sensation," the boy's voice was steady, "Don't be afraid. You're going to be okay." My own personal cheerleader. Bless his heart. And then I began falling hard and fast, falling, falling into a darkness that rushed to swallow me up.
That all-important line on the monitor lay - for one fraction of a second - perfectly flat.
The boy's voice came from far away. "You're okay. You're okay. You're okay." And then the girl's voice, much closer and shaky with relief, "We've got her!"
I climbed the rest of the way up from wherever I had gone and found - much to my relief - that I could breathe better. I said, "You know what, kids ... I'm okay now. I can just go on back in the house and wash my supper dishes." Nobody laughed.
Next thing I knew there were ceiling lights shining in a hospital room and my precious Karen was beside me. She stayed with me every minute. Her first sixteen hours were spent sitting bolt upright in a straight back chair. I knew I should make her go home. I wanted to make her go home, but I had this eerie feeling that she was all that was connecting me to earth. I just couldn't send her away. She wouldn't have gone anyway.
What did I ever do to deserve such wonderful children?
Today, the joys and sorrows accumulated inside my mind and spirit during seventy-six years of living have shifted in some subtle way I can't explain. I have a sense of gaps and missing pieces.
Light regained after my plunge into blackness doesn't quite reach the back corners of memory.
email: MelindaGerner@yahoo.com
