Hotel Illness (The Black Crowes)

Thursday, December 18, 2008-11:30 A.M.

What if you were about to die but didn't know it? Just didn't have a clue?

That's where I was last week, on Tuesday night. I was hanging out at Danny Liberto's open mic at the Otter Lodge and hanging around with friends, doing some comedy, having a whiskey and living my life. And I had a swollen foot.

It was no big deal. It didn't hurt. I'd had some leg problems going back to Halloween, but I was getting around. I thought it was fallen arches. I had fallen arches before, and you recover. You do the stretching exercises, put some arch supports in your shoes, and away you go.

I'm diabetic, so foot care is always right in the forefront. My wife said "You need to get that looked at." I needed to make an appointment to see my doctor anyway, as I had prescriptions that he didn't want to renew until he saw me again. I got one that very morning.

When I arrived, he looked at the foot, and after I described my month-long leg pain, he decided that I was in danger of having a blood clot. I was sent hustling over to the ultrasound department at Rochester General Hospital, where I was born 42 years ago, and the ultrasound showed that indeed, I had a blood clot in my left leg that was restricting blood flow and causing my left foot to swell.

Blood clots are tricky things, I've learned. They float up and down the leg, sometimes they get stuck, and sometimes they go right to the lungs and give you what's called a pulmonary embolism. That's a bad thing. The lungs actually protect clots from going to the brain, but sometimes they do, and that's called a stroke.

I was admitted immediately.

My wife joined me, and before I knew it, I was in a wheelchair and going through hospital admissions. The woman who checked me in, Luda, was an older lady and very nice. After talking for a while, she recognized me. She had come to a show at the Comix Cafe (my old home club) on a Sunday night, they sat in the front, and I picked on her husband. After looking at the photographs on her office wall, the whole night came back to me; it was a Sunday, they sat to the left of the stage, so my right looking out to the audience, and her husband had his chair turned away, which is why I gave him grief to begin with. I thought, "what are the odds?" Well, I was in my hometown, where I've worked steadily for ten years or more, so I guess the odds were pretty good.

I was wheeled into a room on the fourth floor, into the area they call 4200. I was in a shared room with another patient, a gentleman named Rick who was recovering from back surgery. Rick had a lot of visitors, and long story short, his daughter Lisa recognized my voice from behind the curtain that separated us as we had worked together in the research department of WCMF radio about 15 years ago. We laughed and caught up, and that was two episodes of being recognized in the short span of just an hour or two.

I was due to start treatment Wednesday night with an intravenous drip of a drug called Heparin, which is a blood thinner. The young lady, whose name escapes me, had to put the IV into my left arm, and apparently I have rhino skin or something, because she had a hell of a time getting the needle through my dermis, and then the vein kept "jumping" or "rolling" and she couldn't get the IV in.

I've never been good with medical procedures and I hate needles (I'd be the lousiest junkie ever...."Does heroin come in a pill?") and while the nurse dug and dug into my arm, I started going into traumatic shock. I know, because I've gone into shock before...the symptoms are basic. First, there's the feeling of nausea. Next, there's the cold sweat. Finally, shortness of breath takes over. The nurse removed the needle and they elevated my legs and instructed me to breathe. That's how worked-over I was, they had to remind me to breathe. If you have to be reminded to breath, some hellacious shit is happening to you.

Once I was back to normal, she tried again, and this attempt was far more successful. I ate dinner and sent my wife home with a list of some personal items I would need for my hospital stay; a book I'm reading ("Anansi Boys" by Neil Gaiman), a sudoku book, underwear (to help maintain some sense of modesty under the hospital's gowns, who are designed for no one's comfort or pleasure) and personal items. I chatted with Rick through the curtain, as he was on some sort of steroids and was having trouble falling asleep. I had my own problems; I'd never been hospitalized before, much less for a "deep vein thrombosis," and a description of it as "going in through the groin area" did nothing for my customer confidence. They brought me water in a Styrofoam cup, and after I drank the water, I nervously inscribed the cup with a ballpoint pen, writing down my wife and daughter's names, a quote from Winston Churchill's "we shall fight them in the fields, we shall defend our island" speech, song lyrics, and joke that I wrote for Mitch Hedberg that he died before he could consider using. I was scheduled for my procedure at 8:00 A.M., and drifted off to sleep around midnight.

The next morning, a barrage of nurses, doctors, food service workers and the like started invading the room, quashing any thoughts I had of sleeping in. They woke me at 7 A.M., an hour before my procedure. Well, like in show business, very little in the hospital starts on time. I went to the procedure about quarter to twelve, only shy of four hours later from the scheduled time. I didn't mind, because any delay of a needle in my groin was fine with me.

I was rolled down to the room where such procedures are done, and they flopped me onto an operating table, face down. I joked around with the team that was working on me, and to my surprise, they did not have to go into my groin, but rather, through the back of my knee and down near my ankle. I'm not going to pretend to be any sort of medical professional, but basically, the procedure was to blast the clot with anticoagulant and then soak the pieces with anticoagulant, hoping to dissolve them. Long story short, the procedure went so well, instead of sending me to intensive care for monitoring (the original plan), I was sent back to the recovery room in 4200. The only problem was that they had given away my bed. I wound up in a private room, where I spent the next four and half days.

Pamela came to visit me, bringing me all the things I would need for my stay, including my laptop. The hospital had wireless Internet (thank God) and daily newspaper delivery to the rooms on request. Honestly, it was like being in a hotel they way they took care of me. I met a great number of people, all who were exceptional in their care of me, including Kristina, Brandi, Robert, Julie, Jessica S., Mallory, Sarah and Alex. Everyone was amazing, and no one ever left my room without asking me if there was anything I needed or that they could get for me.

I sleep with a CPAP machine because I have sleep apnea, and someone from Respiratory Services showed up every day to make sure that things were working properly. Someone from Nutrition came and went over the daily menu with me, and explained to me that if there was something on the menu I didn't like, that I could call and get something switched around, and if I was still hungry, there was room service available until 8:00 P.M. I decided that their menu (customized to my diabetic profile) was nutritionally balanced enough that I didn't want to mess with it, and never took them up on their room service offer. Pam brought me some Combos pretzel snacks at my request, because the one rap on hospital food that I have is everything is very soft and there's no variation in texture. I guess if my client base had an average age somewhere between 65 and deceased, I'd slop out the creamed corn, too.

I was released on Tuesday afternoon after the Coumadin I was receiving hit the proper level, and I was excited to be going home. All day on Tuesday and Wednesday, I was weak as a kitten, my muscles protesting due to their inactivity for almost a week. I think I'll be back to full fighting strength this weekend, when I have two gigs close to home, but I had to cancel my Western Canada trip for January that I was very much looking forward to, because I have to go to a blood lab twice a week as they monitor my anticoagulants and make sure that the concentration is therapeutic enough to make a difference, but not so effective that I bleed to death when I nick myself shaving.

I have a feeling it's going to be a long, cold winter as I adjust to this new wrinkle in my health profile, but I'm glad to be alive and I've started catching up on lost time, putting up Christmas cards here at the apartment, fishing the small artificial tree down from the attic, and getting ready to enjoy the holiday season.

Thanks to everyone who checked in on me while I was languishing in the hospital, to everyone on my health care staff (don't forget to come and see me at the Comedy Club in Webster [www.thecomedyclub.us] on December 26th and 27th), and I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season!

Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY