“May I Please Get a Decent Cup of Coffee? Stat!”
Scenic train rides from Seattle through Glacier National Park are supposed to be peaceful—even meditative. You gaze out at the mountains as you sip coffee on the observation deck, wishing you had brought your binoculars from your sleeping compartment because that moving mass in the bushes resembles Sasquatch. What you don’t envision is your partner suddenly spiking a fever high enough to boil linguine—and then, in a plot twist, her temperature plummets into hypothermia territory.
Don’t get me started about the incessant diarrhea that poor woman had to endure.
What in the heck?
When the train reached our final destination in Chicago a few days later, Deborah looked like she’d been through a war she couldn’t remember fighting. The deep-dish pizza and architecture boat tour were out; the ER was in. After about 5 minutes of a medical team assessing Deborah’s delirium and diarrhea, the ER doc ordered a private room on the Critical Response floor and called in an infectious disease specialist.
What in the hell?!
During the next five days, Deborah’s dad, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew carried on with our shared vacation plans while I kept watch as my girlfriend fell in and out of lucid states of consciousness, hitting the call button for the nurse, who seemed to vanish every time I blinked, all while experiencing the gnawing sense that I might need to memorize the entire Merck Manual as I struggled to understand the rationale behind some of the things the medical team did (and didn’t do).
My sister, Julie, was the thread keeping me tethered to sanity during this fever dream of a hospital stay. Every day, I’d call her to download the latest lab results, as if I were reporting from a war zone, giving her the blow-by-blow account of what the doctors planned for the day. Thankfully, she has an educated, common-sense radar that can spot a bad idea from a mile away, and more than once she helped me talk Deborah’s care team out of invasive procedures that seemed to come out of left field; as if Deb’s body wasn’t already busy trying to survive the main event!
My general disdain for our broken healthcare system didn’t just deepen during this ordeal; it took root. Julie, in her steady way, helped me navigate the madness without completely losing my mind.
Hospitals, I learned, run on two things: caffeine and interruptions. You can’t get either of them on your own terms. If the beeping machines don’t wake you, the hourly “just one more blood draw” will. Deb’s room was like a 24-hour diner. Doctors appeared like head cooks—sweeping in, tossing off cryptic orders, and disappearing before you could ask for clarification. Nurses popped in with the timing of waitresses who know you’ve already been seated for twenty minutes, yet still need “just a second, hun” before they can take your order. The only thing missing was someone yelling “Order up!” over the intercom. And hello—did the hospital not get the memo that coffee served in styrofoam is toxic?
Good grief.
Just when I thought the chaos reached a tipping point, my 10-pound Maltipoo and constant companion, Vinny, joined the patient roster. Whether it was sympathy symptoms, days of being jostled about on an Amtrak train, or the idiotic decision I made to change up his food one day before travel, he developed his own cycle of diarrhea and vomiting.
WTAF?
My days became a nursemaid’s nightmare: hours spent with Deborah under the glow of fluorescent lights, helping her walk to the bathroom as she towed a stainless steel pole of IVs and beeping monitors attached to a wobbly base with wheels that seemed to brake at the least opportune moments. I’d stand and wait for Deb to finish, so I could “witness” her bowel movements and report my findings to the on-dookie, er…on-duty nurse.
I couldn’t wait to delete the poop photos piling up in my iPhone.
When I wasn’t on human poo duty, I was taking Vinny on short walks through the streets of Lake View East as a consolation prize for his mostly boring hours in the hospital. During our walks, he left his bodily fluids as a kind of tribute to the pigeons whose droppings already took up an unbelievable amount of sidewalk real estate.
Day after day, Deborah floated between clarity and someplace else entirely, sometimes asking reasonable questions about her care, other times murmuring about things I couldn’t see or hear, but that were apparently very real to her.
My power naps in a recliner that reclined about as much as an airplane seat were often cut short when Deborah would jolt awake, eyes wide, and urgently demand that I hurry and feed the kittens. According to her, they were starving—screaming louder than the heart monitor—and my negligence was the only thing standing between them and some horrid doom.
She was referring to the kittens she fosters when she’s not on vacation. In her fevered mind, I was the worst pet parent, ignoring an imaginary litter while she lay there, tethered to medical equipment I wanted to karate kick because of the incessant beeping that punctured my eardrums anytime one of her IV bags neared completion. I would reassure her that I was on my way to feed the boisterous baby felines, step out of the room while biting my lip in an attempt not to burst into tears as I witnessed my girlfriend descend deeper into a place I couldn’t accompany her.
Once I gained my composure, I would reenter the room and declare that the kittens were happily fed. Deborah had either returned to the world of deep slumber or would celebrate with me by smiling and muttering something about how happy they sounded now. At which point, I would again bite my lip and turn to gaze out the window toward Lake Michigan, praying for a miracle.
I learned quickly that when the body’s in crisis, the mind takes some pretty interesting detours and wanders into strange neighborhoods. My job was to somehow transform into an advocate octopi—one foot in her reality, one in poor Vinny’s, and one in mine, all while keeping the family updated and both eyes on those damn beeping monitors.
I have no idea how parents with more than one child manage to stay sane. I could barely keep up with one delirious grown woman and a fragile puppy, both with enough diarrhea to qualify me for an honorary nursing degree I never wanted.
One afternoon, Deborah’s heart rate skyrocketed over 200 beats per minute. Seconds later, a crash cart and eight people in scrubs rolled in like a Formula 1 pit crew—instead of tires, they were swapping in wires, leads, and syringes. One of the physicians dropped to her knees beside Deb’s bed, plunging an emergency serum into her IV with the kind of focus usually reserved for bomb diffusers in thriller movies. Meanwhile, seven others buzzed around her, clipping leads and calling out numbers as if they were all reenacting a day in the New York Stock Exchange. I stood in the corner, tears stinging my eyes, terrified yet in awe by the choreography of it all. Poor Vinny jumped from his recliner, stood on his back legs, and wrapped his front paws tightly around my left knee—the way he does when loud, unruly dogs he doesn’t know enter the dog park—shifting nervously, ears back, his tiny frame trembling as if even he understood that something precious was at stake.
Come on! How much more of this can she take?
After the smoke cleared and Deborah was stable and sleeping, I had myself a full-on come-to-Jesus meeting with Jesus. I mean, the guy’s got a track record of raising the dead, spitting in dirt to bring sight to the blind, and feeding thousands with what basically amounted to a single Lunchable. So why, in the name of heaven, couldn’t he nurse Deborah back to health? And what was taking so damn long?
Christ almighty! Enough already!
I think Vinny felt slightly slighted by all the attention going to Deb. Though his own diarrhea made him as delicate as the lace doilies my great grandmother used to knit, he was determined to sniff everything during our walks, pausing longer than usual in his lurching, high-backed poop position before each of his sidewalk “incidents”—giving pigeons and passersbys ample time to judge us both. I’d smile and shrug at the annoyed residents of Lake View East, waving my poop bag so they knew I wasn’t going to leave Vinny’s droppings in the urban wild.
After Vinny finished his business, we’d limp our exhausted bodies back to the hospital to hang with Deb as she “tip-toed through the tulips” in her mind (a reference my sister humorously expressed one day when she called to inquire about Deb’s status).
What a vacation this has turned out to be.
By the fourth hospital day, Deborah finally started to turn a corner. Though I can’t fully credit my cursing at Jesus as the reason for her improvement, I’m convinced he only hops to it when I get sideways with him, so....
By Day 6, Deborah was stable enough to be discharged from the hospital. We stepped out into the Chicago air—hot, thick, yet oddly reassuring. Vinny trotted alongside Deb’s wheelchair as we made our way to our Uber, looking slightly dejected, as if his illness had been a performance piece I hadn’t properly appreciated. I picked him up and gave him snuggles, whispering, “I’m sorry, Boo Boo Chicken. Thank you for being such a good sport through all of this.” He gave me the customary doodle side-eye, and I knew we were good.
Here’s what I took away from this experience: being by a loved one’s side during a hospital stay isn’t just about keeping one tired eye open so you can avert a medical faux pas; it’s about assuring them that you care enough to forfeit fun so they don’t feel alone in their nightmare reality.
I also realized that hospitals may fix you, but they rarely heal you. Healing needs silence and sleep, not just someone rearranging the pillows for you when you can’t lift your head or reassuring you when you can’t silence screaming kittens.
Today, I’m happy to report that Deborah is on the mend. She has a new lease on life after that frightening adventure. Vinny, too, it seems.
Me? I’m just happy to have quiet mornings with coffee strong enough to wake the dead and served in a ceramic mug that doesn’t taste of antiseptic and despair.
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