What I Learned When I Almost Died - Chris Licht [28]
Can’t wait to get back, I told him, which wasn’t true. I could wait, quite a bit longer. I added it was so annoying that the TV in my hospital room didn’t carry MSNBC so I could watch my show and not miss an important thing. In other words: Jeff, I am practically not sick and the network is absolutely uppermost in my mind, not this pool of blood coating my brain.
Zucker read this for what it was: nonsense.
We’ve all heard people say nothing is more important than health. But when they say that, it’s more reflex than belief, and they often secretly think you’re malingering.
Zucker is different. Years ago, he had come close to dying from colon cancer. He had made the journey I was now making. He knew no job matters all that much, work is only what you do. He knew physical well-being is the prime directive.
He leaned in.
“Nothing is more important,” he said. “Don’t worry about anything. We’ve got it covered. We’ve got you covered.”
Okay, I said.
He apparently didn’t think he’d gotten through.
“Chris.”
Pause.
“There’s nothing more important.”
He is a wise man. He helped me let go—let go of work—even more than I had.
The worst day, other than the first, was the Friday two days later. As Jenny sat with me, I tried to say something. What came out was a kind of linguistic Cobb salad. Everything was there, but all tossed. “Bed, outside, window.” Something like that.
Jenny could tell by my face that I knew my words were gibberish but she could also tell I couldn’t self-correct. Did this herald a re-bleeding? Was this the anticipated spasm in advance of a stroke? Is this the descent?
I had had a bad night. Since the first day, nurses had been coming every hour or two and leading me through those familiar neurological tests designed to catch brain deterioration as early as possible, so the hospital could swing into action. Shrug your shoulders. Stick out your tongue. Close your eyes as tight as you can. I always passed.
“Who is the president of the United States?” a nurse said during one visit.
“You know,” I said, joking, “we really don’t know because we haven’t seen his birth certificate.”
Ha.
The tests did not cease at night, so my sleep was broken and battered, and on this Friday morning I had been surly. They had given me a drug and it had knocked me out, until I awoke speaking in tongues to Jenny.
She went in search of a nurse who quickly determined the villain was the drug, not my brain. But most of the time in the ICU, thoughts of a re-bleed or sudden dysfunction hovered over the bed. Any minute I expected my vision would blur or my tongue would mangle a word. Why else would they be testing me constantly? I had had no warning in the back of the Escalade that morning. It seemed reasonable I’d get no warning the second time.
A re-bleed was not the only open question either.
Would there be brain surgery?
If an aneurysm was found during the coming second cerebral angiogram, my head would probably be opened up, though I didn’t know that was Dr. Deshmukh’s likely remedy. I only knew what he had said, that he’d go in and get it. Dad, however, knew brain surgery was a real possibility and he was worried, not because George Washington didn’t know what it was doing, but because brain surgery is inherently delicate.
But at least it’s definitive. Aneurysm found, aneurysm remedied. Case closed. Go in peace, my son.
Not finding one, though, would leave an eternal mystery. Why had I bled? It would be like a game of Clue in which no murder suspect was ever found in any room with any weapon. Dad actually preferred this scenario, though, because he did not want a surgical expeditionary force walking around in my head.
On Wednesday, May 5, one week to the day after I had arrived in the emergency room, I was again wheeled to the cerebral angiogram suite. Once again they cut into my leg, ran the catheter, shot the dye, scanned the scans.
Once again,