Walking thru the Valley 11

While some of the “bumps” we encountered just days earlier were minor, one, in my opinion, was not, unless you call running out of oxygen, minor.

November 27. It all started one morning as I arrived at the hospital. Joey was sitting in his wheelchair and had already finished physical therapy earlier that morning. 

Physical therapy was always intense and very taxing. Afterward, his therapists liked for him to sit in his wheelchair for about an hour before getting back in bed. 

That morning, following therapy, Joey scooted himself around the hallway before returning to his room. When I arrived, he had been in his wheelchair for quite some time.

We were in Joey’s room when he mentioned he wasn’t feeling well. A tech, who was also in the room with us, heard him and tried to find his nurse but couldn’t. 

The tech took Joey’s temperature, and it was normal. She suggested that maybe he was worn out from the morning and probably needed to get into bed. He was feeling nauseous, so she gave him a pill to dissolve under his tongue. 

Cue Bump Number Three

Twenty minutes later and still not feeling well, Joey said he felt like he was going to pass out. I saw the tech preoccupied with something. Joey seemed concerned and said, “I don’t think any oxygen is coming out.” 

There were two oxygen bottles, one in the back of his wheelchair and another between me and Joey. The tech checked one of the oxygen tanks and said, “It’s half full. You don’t feel any coming out?” 

Joey looked at the bottle between us; it had oxygen. But Joey was attached to the bottle in the back of the wheelchair. Mind you, he had been using it all morning for physical therapy, his cruise around the hall, and while he sat in his wheelchair.

He took his oxygen mask, held it to his ear, and couldn’t hear anything. He insisted that no oxygen was coming out to which the tech replied, “Oh, I was looking at the wrong bottle!” The oxygen bottle in the back of the wheelchair was empty.

She seemed panicked and popped her head out of the room, still looking for Joey’s nurse. I looked around the room, trying to spot the button that I remembered seeing in the ICU. You know, the one that calls out a code over the intercom, signaling for help. I figured the tech would use it. But there was no such button.

Cue the Chaos

At that moment, fear ran through my body. Joey looked me square in the eyes and said, “I’m gonna pass out hard.” I looked at the tech and asked, “Shouldn’t you get someone?” The nurse at the station across from our room was preoccupied and didn’t notice the tech’s attempts to get her attention. Just then, Joey’s head fell back, and his body started convulsing. I ran to the door and yelled, “Where the hell is everybody?!”

Finally, the nurse at the station looks up. The tech hollered something to her, and she called out over the intercom. It brought staff members and the respiratory team to Joey’s room. They bagged him and tended to him for quite a while. He regained consciousness and was placed in bed. The staff saw me upset and tried convincing me to wait somewhere else. “I’m fine,” I told them. I wasn’t about to go anywhere.  But truth be told, I was not fine.

Following that incident, we were asked to give a report on what had happened to some company liaison. I made sure to inform her of the other “bumps” we had encountered as well. As I was giving my report to her, my frustration became evident as I cried as I spoke. “We have gone through so much to get to this point. We didn’t come this far just to have some stupid mistake mess it all up.”

“It was like a tornado, sometimes hitting one house, while sparing another…”

I’m not sure she understood just how much we had been through. I don’t think anyone could fully understand, not having gone through it themselves. Unfortunately, I knew some who had experienced it. Sadly, none of them made it as far as we did. Sadly, my own father would be added to that list the following year.

I had become well acquainted with the unpredictability and grief this virus could cause. It was like a tornado, sometimes hitting one house while sparing another, sometimes leaving irreparable damage, altering families’ lives forever. 

Our lives changed in ways I couldn’t have imagined. And our journey wasn’t over yet; we still had a long road ahead. But we were better than when we started.

… to be continued.

(Missed any chapters in this series? You can find them all here.)