Drama in the ER

You can count my visits to the emergency room on one hand. Literally. There have been exactly five—three of which were due to chest pain. All three of those turned out to be false alarms, but when it comes to chest pain, they say you can never be too careful.

The latest false alarm was Tuesday night. I started experiencing the pain just as I was about to go to sleep, and it steadily got worse. Loretta drove me to the hospital. By the time we arrived at the ER the pain was gone, but I figured I should probably get checked out anyway.

The ER was busy, but when it comes to chest pain, they don't mess around. Within the first half hour, they had taken an EKG, chest x-ray, and several vials of my blood. After that I spent about a half hour in the waiting room before the doctor told me that everything looked good, but that they would have to do another EKG and blood work in a couple of hours. He said they would put me in a bed as soon as one was available. I sent Loretta home and told her I would call when I was done. I regretted not bringing my Kindle, but as it turned out, there was no shortage of entertainment. I now know why so many movies and television shows are set in hospitals, and especially in emergency rooms.

The majority of the patients were children, all accompanied by exhausted-looking mothers. One mother fretted to her husband on the phone over how they would be able to afford the copay. Another wondered how she would have the energy to go to work in the morning. Her son, Coby, seemed like a happy, normal child; it was hard to believe he was sick. But I overheard Coby's mother tell a nurse that he had EoE and had been vomiting all day. I had never heard of EoE, so I used my phone to Google it:

Eosinophilic (e-o-sin-o-FILL-ik) esophagitis (EoE) is a recognized chronic allergic/immune condition of the esophagus.

The doctor had given Coby anti-nausea medication, and he seemed to be fine now. He chattered away non-stop to his mother and, at one point, to his father on the phone. About all I could understand were the words "Mommy" and "Daddy," until he loudly and proudly announced, “I have to poop.”

When they finally got me into a bed surrounded by a curtain, I could still hear everything going on around me. In the bed next to mine, a succession of nurses unsuccessfully attempted to insert a catheter into a man's—well, you know: "This time we’ll try the smallest one we have, and first we'll numb you with lidocaine. It's the same stuff your dentist uses.” (I bet he never used it there.) I cringed every time I heard the man yelp in pain. On the other side, a woman who thought she might have swallowed too many pills was being asked if she had ever had thoughts of suicide. Across the room, someone's groans called to mind Disney's Haunted Mansion.

Later, I heard the friendly young tech who had just administered my second EKG being reprimanded by his supervisor: “You take too much time, and you’re too familiar with the patients. It took you twelve minutes to put on that knee immobilizer. That’s much too long. And when the patient said his leg was too short, you said something about other parts being longer. You can’t say things like that.”

But the main event of the evening occurred while I was still in the waiting room. Just outside the door, in the hallway, we could hear sheriff's deputies talking to a man who was under arrest. "Why?" he complained. "I didn't do anything. My brother's the violent one. He punched me in the nose. You should be arresting him, not a seventy-one year-old with a heart condition. This is the worst day of my life!”

The deputies patiently explained, again and again, that he had to come with them to jail. After several minutes of this, the prisoner cursed under his breath. There were sounds of a scuffle, followed by the prisoner crying out in pain and shouting, "You broke my arm!"

"You're lucky I didn't knock your teeth out," the deputy growled. "What were you thinking, grabbing for my gun? Were you planning to shoot me or yourself?"

"I just wanted to end it all," the prisoner whined.

A few minutes later, I saw the deputies march him past the door in handcuffs: a dejected, disheveled old man, half the size of the deputy he had attacked. A doctor accompanied them, to examine his "broken arm." I never saw them again, so I don't know if the arm was truly broken. I suspected he was faking it, until I later overheard a witness tell another deputy that during the scuffle he had heard a "pop."

As I said, my chest pain turned out to be a false alarm. It was probably a muscle spasm—either that, or gas. It was nearly 3:00 AM when the doctor released me. I didn't want to disturb Loretta, so I asked the receptionist to call me an Uber. She called, but she told me it would be a while before one was available. A man sitting next to me in the reception area kindly offered to take me home. I politely refused his offer, but he pointed out that I was unlikely to get an Uber at that hour, and that for him it was better than just sitting there, waiting to hear about his mother, who had suffered a stroke. So I took him up on his offer.

An exciting night, and through all the drama, the staff maintained their composure, compassion, and professionalism. As far as I know they only lost one patient: that woman who took too many pills.

She didn't die—at least not that I know of. She just wandered off. They were still looking for her when I left.

Panic!

Just kidding. Please don't.

When I started this blog, I chose the title "Don't Panic!" as an homage to one of my favorite writers, Douglas Adams, and as a promise to keep things light even when writing about serious subjects.

Subjects like the current global pandemic.

It is a serious subject, indeed. Every day we receive emails from businesses reassuring us that they are doing all they can to keep their customers and employees safe. Schools are closed, theaters are closed, amusement parks are closed.

Yes, even Disneyland is closed.

Loretta planned to go to Costco for a few things this week. Then we turned on the news and saw the mobs of people lined up to buy toilet paper. "It looks like the end of the world in there," said one shopper.

"Forget it," said Loretta.

On television, the people who tell us that above all we should not touch our faces are rubbing their eyes and putting their fingers in their mouths, and our president, who claims he knows more than anyone about every subject and has a "natural ability" when it comes to virus outbreaks, is, as usual, saying whatever stupid thing comes into his fat orange head.

Loretta and I were supposed to embark on a long-anticipated Caribbean cruise this Wednesday. That's obviously not happening, but we will attempt to make lemonade from the lemons life has handed us. To be more accurate, we will make limeade from the limes in our backyard, add some rum, and pretend we're in Jamaica.

In other words, we will do our best to keep our heads and make the best of the situation, and I advise you to do the same. If you're interested, here are some specific suggestions:

• Don't join the hordes of hoarders at Costco. Stay home if you can; if you can't, at least try to stay away from crowds. 
• Try not to touch your face. (It isn't easy. I touch my face all the time without thinking about it. When I do think about it, I suddenly get an itch. Maybe I should try one of those dog cones.)
• Don't listen to bloviating blowhards who have "hunches." Listen to the experts. They're called "epidemiologists," and they work at places like the World Health Organization and the CDC.
• Wash your hands. Wash them after you use the toilet. Wash them before eating. Wash them before touching your face. Wash them after touching your face—or after touching anything. Basically, when you're not doing something else, you should be washing your hands.

And above all, don't panic.

Comfort in Mayberry

I have been sick for the past two weeks, and I have spent much of that time in my recliner: coughing up and blowing out snot, drifting in and out of consciousness, and seeking comfort in favorite movies and television programs, preferably those in black and white. For some reason, I find black-and-white television more comforting when I'm sick. Maybe the color irritates my eyes, or maybe it's just because I'm reminded of my childhood, when everything on TV was black and white.

I watched a few old movies from my DVD collection, then started watching episodes of The Twilight Zone, which was a mistake. It turns out that "another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind" is not a particularly comforting place to be when you're sick. Also, I know this sounds crazy, but the smoke from Rod Serling's cigarette seemed to aggravate my cough.

So I started binge-watching The Andy Griffith Show. TV Land airs twelve episodes a day: six in the morning and six in the afternoon. In between are episodes of Bonanza and Gunsmoke. I watched a couple of episodes of those shows, but I found that the Ponderosa and Dodge City were nowhere near as comforting as the fictional setting of The Andy Griffith Show, Mayberry, North Carolina. For one thing, Bonanza and Gunsmoke were in color. For another, they had a lot more gunfire. Sheriff Andy Taylor never wore a gun. Deputy Barney Fife did, but Andy only gave him one bullet, and he made him keep it buttoned up in his shirt pocket (with good reason).

Speaking of Gunsmoke, here's a bit of related trivia. It started out as a radio show, with a completely different cast. Two members of the cast of the radio show—Howard McNear, who played Doc, and Parley Baer, who played Chester—went on to become featured cast members of The Andy Griffith Show, as Floyd Lawson, Mayberry's barber, and Roy Stoner, Mayberry's cantankerous mayor.

I have always loved The Andy Griffith Show, and it was wonderful getting reacquainted with the residents of Mayberry. When I was young, my favorite episodes were those featuring Andy's bumbling blowhard deputy, Barney Fife, played brilliantly by Don Knotts. This time around, I especially enjoyed the first-season episodes featuring Elinor Donahue as Ellie Walker, Mayberry's pharmacist and Andy's first steady girlfriend. (Ellie disappeared without explanation after the first season, which is a real shame. I thought she was a lot cuter and a lot more fun than her replacement, schoolmarm Helen Crump.)

Most of all, I enjoyed the scenes between Andy and his young son Opie, played by future Academy-Award-winning film director, Ron Howard. "Ronny," as he was then known, was only six years old that first season. His scenes with Andy are so genuine and natural, you'd swear you were witnessing a real conversation between father and son. Often, Andy uses humor to teach Opie an important lesson about life, such as the time he explains feuds by telling the story of Romeo and Juliet. Just as often, Andy is the one who learns a lesson, as when Opie points out that his lying to a friend to make a trade for a pair of roller skates is no worse than Andy's "horse trading" with an antique dealer over an old cannon.

I suppose this is what I find most comforting about Mayberry: Andy and Opie's relationship reminds me of my relationship with my father. Like Andy Taylor, my dad was good at explaining things, good at listening, and always had time to talk to his son.

I really miss those talks.

In the wake of this week's massacre in Orlando, only the latest in a series of mass shootings that become more frequent and more deadly with every passing year, I find myself wondering what Andy might say to Opie about such a terrible event, and what my father might say to me.

I feel sure of one thing: it would be something comforting.

Sick in Discworld

Today's post is brought to you by NyQuil®, which is why it's late and probably less than coherent.

Is there anything worse than being sick on the weekend? Being sick during the week, now that's another story. When you're having a particularly hectic work week, it's kind of nice to take a day off to just kick back and be sick. Of course, I'm not talking about "running to the bathroom every five minutes" sick. I'm talking about "common cold or flu" sick, where your worst symptoms are a headache and a head full of snot.

That's why yesterday I decided to stay home in my recliner with my fleece blanket, a couple of boxes of Kleenex, a cup of peppermint tea, and a cat in my lap. I napped, watched a couple of DVDs, and did some reading. I love reading a good book when I'm sick—unless my nose is dripping on the book, which with a Kindle is not even a problem, because the snot wipes right off.

When I was a kid, there were no DVDs or videotapes, and—difficult as this is to imagine—daytime TV was even worse than it is today. When I was sick, my mother would go to the library and bring me a stack of books. My favorites were the stories of Ray Bradbury and the collections of scary stories for kids edited by Alfred Hitchcock. One of my favorites from one of those collections (I wish I could remember which collection or the name of the story or its author) was about a feverish child who overhears his parents gossiping about the people in town and somehow transforms their figures of speech ("her tongue wags at both ends," "he has eyes in the back of his head," etc.) into reality. The whole town goes crazy for a day then, when the child's fever breaks, everything changes back to normal. You can imagine the effect of reading such a story when I, myself, had a fever. I became convinced that I, too, might have the power to transform reality.

Speaking of transforming reality...

The book I have been currently reading is Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Pratchett, he is a brilliant, prolific writer of humorous fantasy. Terry Pratchett doesn't need to worry about transforming reality. He has created his own reality: a place called Discworld. Discworld is a world that is round and flat (hence the name "Discworld") and is carried through space on the backs of four enormous elephants, which, in turn, stand on the back of an enormous turtle. As you might surmise about such a place, anything can happen there.

Over a decade before J.K. Rowling gave us Hogwarts, Terry Pratchett introduced us to Unseen University, Discworld's school for wizards (and, eventually, witches). However, unlike the wizards of Rowling's world, Discworld's wizards are hilariously inept, and their magic nearly always has disastrous results. There is an entire series of Discworld novels devoted to them—as well as a series about Discworld's less inept witches, a series of mysteries involving the City Watch (the police of Ankh-Morpork, capital city of Discworld), and a series of award-winning young adult novels about a young witch named Tiffany Aching.

My favorite Discworld character is Death, who has his own series of novels and also appears as a minor character in nearly every other Discworld book. He is, in his own words (which are always expressed without quotes and in caps), AN ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION. Stereotypically, he is a skeleton who wears a black robe and carries a scythe. Unstereotypically, he rides a horse named "Binky," is fond of cats, and has an adopted family. (Downton Abbey fans may be interested to know that, several years before playing Lady Mary Crawley, actress Michelle Dockery played Death's granddaughter Susan in a superb TV adaptation of Hogfather, the fourth Discworld novel about Death.)

Death also has a sense of humor. In the following scene from Men at Arms, he has come to collect the soul of a dwarf named Bjorn:

'I believe in reincarnation,' he said.
I KNOW.
'I tried to live a good life. Does that help?'
THAT’S NOT UP TO ME. Death coughed. OF COURSE ... SINCE YOU BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION ... YOU’LL BE BJORN AGAIN.

All told, there are forty Discworld novels, of which I have only read seven.

It's a good thing I'm sick. I have a lot of reading to do.

Kotor and Ravenna

The next port of call on our APHC cruise was Kotor, Montenegro. Here is a picture Loretta took from the deck of the ship:

Kotor, Montenegro

It's a lovely scene, isn't it? That's all I ever saw of Kotor. It's what I could see from the window of our cabin, which is where I spent the entire time we were in port.

In my last post, I wrote that when we left Naples, I felt like I was coming down with a cold. The first symptoms weren't so bad: just a cough and sniffles. However, approximately twenty-four hours after we witnessed the eruption of Mount Stromboli, I was awakened in the middle of the night by rumblings in my bowels signaling an impending eruption of my own.

I will spare you the grisly details. Suffice it to say, I had a rough night. When morning came I felt much better, but I had taken the last of the Imodium. The ship's sundry shop would be closed until after we left port, so I made my way down to the ship's medical center to see if they could provide me with some, just in case.

The doctor on duty said she had "good news" and "bad news." The good news was that she had Imodium, which she gave me (or rather, sold me)—along with Tylenol and Dramamine (neither of which I needed) and several disposable thermometers (although I did not have a fever). The bad news was that I would have to be isolated for twenty-four hours from the time of my last "eruption." I was not allowed to leave our cabin, and no one was allowed to visit (not that anyone would want to)—except for Loretta, who was free to come and go unless she got sick. Not even our steward was allowed to enter the cabin. Instead, a "sanitation team" would do the cleaning.

As I returned to the cabin, I thought of Mark Twain and his friends who, in The Innocents Abroad, sneaked ashore when their ship was quarantined at Athens. These days, with magnetic ID cards that track everyone who boards or leaves the ship, such a thing would be impossible.

At least we didn't have an excursion planned. Susan and Kevin took a tender ashore to do some exploring. I told Loretta she should go with them, but she insisted on staying on board with me. We began filling out the six-page survey the doctor had given me, listing everything I had put in my mouth for the past three days. (You should try it sometime. It's a real test of your memory to recall everything you have had to eat and drink in the past 72 hours.)

When the sanitation team arrived, Loretta had to leave. There wasn't enough room. I felt like Groucho Marx in the stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera, as men in masks and plastic gloves piled in, stripped the bed, bagged all towels and linens, and sprayed and wiped down all surfaces with disinfectant. Oddly enough, they did not remove the towel origami pig our steward had made us the night before. They left it on Loretta's bedside table. They did, however, spray it with disinfectant.

I discovered that being sick on a ship isn't all that bad. The ship's crew pampered me almost as much as my mother did when I was sick as a kid. Room service brought me a tray with broth, crackers, and ginger ale. The front desk called and offered to send down books and DVDs. I told them "no thanks." I had Mark Twain on my Kindle, along with several dozen other books, but I spent most of my time watching the ship's satellite TV—mostly made-for-TV movies I would never have watched at home. I slept a lot, too—often dozing off during one movie and waking up during the next. I was confused when King Arthur and Sir Lancelot in The Mists of Avalon suddenly turned into Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in Pirates of Silicon Valley, and when Bill Pullman as The Virginian metamorphosed into Mandy Patinkin as The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Loretta came and went. She saw some of the shipboard entertainment and went on deck to take pictures so I could see more of Montenegro than could be seen from our window. The sanitation crew came and went, stripping the bed again (though I had not slept in it), wiping everything down again, and giving the pig another spritz of disinfectant.

I slept well that night and awoke feeling fine. It was our last day on board the MS Ryndam, and I intended to make the most of it. I paced the cabin, waiting for permission from the medical center to leave "the brig." Finally, the call came at 7:45: I was free!

Over breakfast (just oatmeal and bananas for me), Susan and Kevin told us about Kotor, and Susan showed us her pictures. It's a quaint, pretty city, known for its large population of cats. We were sorry to have missed the cats. We talked about how much we all missed our own: Molly and Murphy, Dickens and Zorra.

Kotor Cats Dining on Sardines (photo by Susan Logue Koster)

After breakfast, there was a meet and greet on the Lido Deck with Garrison Keillor. Susan and I stood in line: Susan with a copy of his latest book, I with the souvenir t-shirt Loretta had already gotten most of the other entertainers to sign. When my turn came, I told him what a wonderful time we were having (not mentioning the twenty-four hours I spent in quarantine), and how much we enjoyed the Alaska cruise seven years ago. I asked him how he thought this cruise compared with Alaska. "This one's good," he replied. "Anywhere you can be on a boat with people singing." I handed him my t-shirt and told him my name; he signed it and handed it back. I looked at what he had written:

Hi Don! It's you.
Garrison Keillor

While we were having lunch, the ship arrived in Ravenna. We took a bus into the center of the city and explored it on foot, without guide or guidebook, map or GPS. I don't know if it was because I felt so much better after being sick for twenty-four hours, or because it felt so good to be outside after being cooped up in the cabin, but I loved Ravenna. The city was charming, the weather was perfect, the crowds—well, that was the best part. There were no crowds. We strolled through peaceful, quiet streets, alleys, and piazzas—past Dante's Tomb, Teatro Alighieri, the house where Byron once lived, and another leaning tower (apparently there are leaning towers all over Italy). When we were tired of walking, we found a quiet cafe in the sun-drenched Piazza del Popolo, where we sat in the shade and drank prosecco.

Piazza del Popolo, Ravenna, Italy

Before we left town, we went into a grocery near the bus stop and bought several boxes of cookies to bring back to co-workers. We thought they were Italian cookies, but it turned out they were imported from Germany.

Someday, we hope to visit Germany and buy some Italian cookies there.

Courtyard in Ravenna

Adieu! Adieu! yon silver lamp, the moon,
Which turns our midnight into perfect noon,
Doth surely light thy towers, guarding well
Where Dante sleeps,
where Byron loved to dwell.

—Oscar Wilde, Ravenna

iVomit

Nearly everyone has experienced the literally gut-wrenching horror of the norovirus, otherwise known as the "stomach flu." It doesn't last long—usually less than twenty-four hours—but while you are experiencing it, you feel like you are dying. Dying, in fact, seems like a preferable alternative.

The norovirus is highly infectious. You hear countless horror stories of it decimating schools, retirement homes, and—worst of all—cruise ships. (The plumbing in cruise ships is notoriously sensitive. Imagine the strain put on it when everyone on board suddenly begins spouting from both ends. Talk about horror stories.)

I have personally encountered the norovirus a number of times over the years, and, while my memory is not the best, I remember each encounter in vivid detail: fever, chills, aching joints, and miserable hours spent in the bathroom.

There was, for instance, that time when I was about thirteen. Our family was living in a big, old, two-story house in Goshen, Indiana. Behind the house was a detached, two-story garage that had once been a stable. My Aunt Vonna was visiting from Fort Wayne, and she had taken us kids to Olympia Candy Kitchen—an old-fashioned, family-owned diner/soda shop/candy store on Main Street—and allowed us each to pick out a bag of our favorite homemade candy. I chose chunks of white chocolate, which I immediately devoured. It tasted delicious going down. It was nowhere near as good when it came back up a couple of hours later.

We were just sitting down to dinner when it hit me. I asked to be excused and raced to the bathroom. I did not receive much sympathy at first—the general opinion was that I had simply eaten too much candy—but when it became apparent that I was really sick, my mother put me straight to bed. I spent a feverish, hallucinatory night filled with strange noises—loud voices, banging doors, the wail of sirens. When I arose from my sick bed in the morning, weak and shaky, I discovered that our garage had burned down during the night. The fire department had been called; everyone had gone outside to watch; the entire neighborhood had turned out. It was positively, hands-down, the single most exciting thing that had ever happened to our family.

And I missed the whole thing.

Not only that—to this day, I cannot stand the taste of white chocolate.

There is no cure for the norovirus, and there is no vaccine against it. You simply have to ride it out. However, there is some good news. Some extremely clever scientists have devised a robot to help them study the way the norovirus is spread. The video below shows the robot in action. They call it "Vomiting Larry."

Much as I admire scientists, I will never understand them. Here they have the genius and imagination to build something as marvelous as a vomiting robot, and the best name they can come up for it is "Larry."

Did none of them think to call it "Ralph?"