Tag: #patientexperience

Chapter Three – Wednesday, May 1, 2024

Around midnight, we got the word that the plane had departed Fort Lauderdale International Airport for Cozumel. The ambulance arrived to get me. The paramedics came to my room to move me from the bed to the gurney for the drive. Fortunately, I was still hooked up to the IV, so I had constant pain meds running through my veins. I was not exactly sure what they gave me in Mexico, but most of the time I was not in extreme pain.  

At the airport, one of the most incredible things happened. A small, eight-passenger plane was waiting for us on the tarmac. The team introduced themselves to us very briefly and then huddled to discuss how best to get me out of the ambulance and into the small jet. They decided to roll me from side to side to side on the gurney to slide a “sling” underneath me. It was like a heavy-duty, rounded parachute that had handles. Once inside the sling, it was like a cocoon. Each man held a pair of handles. They slowly slid me off the gurney. I was terrified they were going to drop me or let my back touch the ground. That would have been excruciating or worse…paralyzing. I kept telling them to be careful from inside the cocoon, but my voice was so muffled from all the fabric I was surrounded by that they couldn’t hear me.

The thing about pain is it’s multifaceted. There was the pain you feel when something happened and the pain you anticipate. The pain itself is horrible, but the pain that was anticipated was relentless. It never let up. I was always on guard.

Fortunately, these guys had done this before. They were methodical and careful. They talked to each other the entire time directing their efforts for my benefit and dare I say comfort. They walked me toward the entrance to the plane and very carefully guided me hand-over-hand through the small door and up the stairs into the plane. They gently curved the sling to fit in the narrow aisle and lowered me onto a stretcher that covered several seats, my feet toward the back of the plane. I was essentially flying backwards. One man hung my IV from the overhead luggage rack with a wooden hanger and the catheter onto the stretcher below me. Leslie came in and sat down.

I was soon to learn their whole story. This was a volunteer organization called Hatzalah. It was a Jewish volunteer emergency medical service run on donations. They rescued people all over the world who had spinal injuries. Their website said, “They get the right people with the right training to where you are in the fastest possible time.”[1]

The first man I met was Simi. He was a NYC firefighter who survived 9/11. He spent 15 years overcoming survivors’ guilt and now dedicated his time to saving people like me. Captain Jamie was an anesthesiologist. He oversaw my pain management. The pilot was retired Israeli military. And Itzy was a jeweler from Brooklyn. Not totally sure what he did. I spent most of my time with Simi and kept a very close eye on Captain Jamie with the drugs. After a few Q&A rounds about my medical history, Jamie started the morphine, and we took off. Once in the air, Jamie reassessed me. Based upon my injury, he knew I was in a lot of pain. He recommended Ketamine. I’d never even heard of it, but Leslie seemed to know all about it. He said it was powerful. I said, “Bring it on!”

 Immediately after the first dose, I saw a brilliant array of colors. I felt happy and started telling funny stories, making things up about Simi and Captain Jamie being comics in the Borscht Belt of the Catskills. I had a whole routine. Then it started wearing off and I was back, lying on a stretcher on a private jet being flown from Cozumel to Florida because I had crushed a vertebra in my spine and could be paralyzed with any wrong movement.

So, I asked for more Ketamine, over and over again. Captain Jamie would only send me tripping periodically throughout the flight. But each time, I loved it and didn’t want it to end. I got funnier with each dose and was the star of my own comedy show. I had the final dose in time for the landing. After two hours in the air, we finally landed in Fort Lauderdale. But I still had to get to Miami to the Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital.  

Again, an ambulance was waiting for me on the tarmac. I hadn’t realized it, but the sling was still underneath me. The men again pulled up the sides, grabbed hold of the handles and slowly navigated the narrow space in the aisle, the door and stairs to get me off the plane. At this point, I was so drugged up, I could hardly keep a thought in my head, except one. If they dropped me or dragged me on the ground, I was going to die. Thank God they didn’t. Instead, they gently placed me down on a very hard metal surface. Rolled me from side to side to get the sling loose while the Miami paramedic laced me up into this very uncomfortable, gurney-like thing.  

Then chaos ensued.

            While the volunteer airplane men said their goodbyes, told me how funny I was and that they would always remember me, I was starting to really hurt again. This thing they laid me upon was horrible. It was hard and unyielding. I needed Leslie. But the paramedic told me he had to go inside with our passports to get cleared to re-enter the U.S. My sister was there. I thanked her for coming to my rescue and asked her to find Leslie and get my little suitcase that he had packed for this exact situation.

Leslie’s son, who lived with us, had driven an hour to meet us at the airport at 2 a.m. so that he could take our other suitcases home while we went on to the hospital by ambulance. My assumption was that Leslie would handle the passports, hand off the luggage and meet me in the ambulance.

Not so.

After much noise outside the ambulance that was still sitting on the tarmac, it turned out that the airplane volunteers talked Leslie into going home with his son and our luggage. He did not come back to tell me. He did not kiss me goodbye, he simply left.

I was shattered.

I was more than just strapped to the gurney; I was laced onto it. I could not move my arms, legs or head. I was screaming at the top of my lungs.

“Leslie!”

“Leslie! Where the fuck are you?”

“I can’t fucking move. And my back hurts!”

“Leslie!”

 I was beside myself, screaming in full panic mode and even worse, trying to move to get out of the contraption I was in.

The female paramedic sat on the bench seat next to me in the ambulance, trying to calm me down. She told me that Leslie had gone home to sleep. She said that he could barely even stand, so they all advised him not to get into the ambulance and instead go home to get some sleep.

I was furious. I was hurt. I was scared. And I was helpless.

Then it sunk in. He had abandoned me!

I had a broken spine. I was strapped to a gurney in an ambulance going to a hospital to have more pain inflicted on me. I was terrified. I was alone and Leslie had left me in this condition to fend for myself. I was crushed; devastated.

“I need drugs,” I said out of desperation to no one in particular. “Where’s my pocketbook?”

            Outside the ambulance door behind my head where I couldn’t see, I heard my sister.

            “I have your pocketbook, your suitcase and your passport,” she said.

            “Where’s Leslie?” I asked, hoping beyond hope that he hadn’t left me this way.

            “They made him go home,” she said.

            “What the fuck is wrong with them,” I started again. “How could he just leave me this way? He spent the entire fucking day packing and unpacking, further hurting his back. He refused to sleep and now that he was so exhausted, he left me? To sleep! WTF kind of bullshit was that?” I cried.

            “Give me my pocketbook,” I ordered.

            “No,” she said.

            “Give me my fucking bag!”

            “He said not to give it to you,” she said. “He’s afraid you will take more Xanax.”

            “He’s afraid!” I screamed. “He’s fucking afraid? Who the fuck is he to be afraid, Sleeping Beauty? I’m fucking afraid. My spine is crushed. I’m in pain, I’m freaked out that all the plans we discussed when we landed, he just threw out the window and left me to fend for myself, lying here completely helpless. Give me my fucking bag!”

She hesitated for one second to look at the paramedic at the same time as I managed to jerk what was left in the bottle of water I had in my hand and doused her with it. “Give me the fucking bag.”

Dripping from the water, she placed my pocketbook on me.  I tried to get into it through the straps of the gurney but couldn’t, so I asked the paramedic to help me. Miraculously, she did.

I generally keep Xanax with me when I travel, in case I have trouble sleeping. I usually only take a piece of a .25 mg tablet to help me fall asleep. When I’m under extreme stress, I take a half. This time, I popped the whole damn thing into my mouth and swallowed it with the drop of water I had left in the bottle. Within minutes I had calmed down from hysterical to just terrified and pissed.

***

We drove south to Miami via I-95. After an hour or so of trying to find a position that wasn’t excruciatingly painful, we finally arrived. It was 3 a.m.

I was expected. The head of neurosurgery and his assistant were there to greet me. I thanked them profusely as I was rushed into the Ryder Trauma Center where even more indignities occurred. They wanted to cut my clothes off. I refused. I wiggled out of them and was covered with an ugly hospital gown.

“Hospital rules,” the trauma nurse on my right said.

Meanwhile, on my left another nurse was drilling into my forearm trying to start another IV.

“Ooooouch!” I shouted.

“Didn’t get it,” she said. She tried again and I screamed.

“What the fuck are you doing to me?” I yelled.

“I can’t find a vein,” she said.

“Well stop trying!” I demanded. “You are hurting me. Can’t you see how black and blue I am from the IVs in Mexico?”

She tried one more time. I exploded

“Get her the fuck away from me!” I commanded. “She obviously has no idea what she is doing!”

While all this was happening with my left arm, someone was trying to put a neck brace on me. Someone else was hooking my legs up to things. A third nurse came in, took my right hand where there still was an IV in place from Mexico and announced that he had found a good vein underneath all the bruising.

I was desperate for more Xanax. But my sister had my pocketbook. Thinking of how she refused to give it to me the last time got my heart racing again. My blood pressure was already astronomically high and rising. All I wanted was to be put out of my misery. I didn’t care how they would do it. Just that they fucking would.

The first nurse came back and spoke right into my right ear. Very calmly, she said, “You are badly injured. You have to stop moving or you are going to make matters worse. You need to wear this neck brace.”  

I said, “I am in a lot of pain, and I am terrified. Until you give me something to knock me out, I cannot cooperate with you. My back hurt very badly and that idiot on my left stabbed me with what felt like a hammer and chisel three times in the same forearm with no result. I cannot take any more pain and that includes wearing the neck brace!”

The next thing I remembered was being in the Stanley Kubrick movie A Clockwork Orange. I had toothpicks holding my eyes open. My sister was standing next to me with wild grey hair and dark black circles around her eyes. I was strapped into some kind of metal hooped skirt that I kept pulling at while someone in the background kept telling me to “stop moving.”

The rest was a blur. I later read in the Trauma notes that the nurse did take pity on me and administered a push of Ativan in my IV to calm me down. That’s when they sent me for all sorts of tests. I had blood work done, X-rays of my chest and abdomen, CT scans of my entire body, including a scan of my brain and my legs, specifically to rule out blood clots because I had flown. I was aware of none of this. Hours later, the report stated, I went for an MRI. They scanned my brain, face, neck, cervical spine, chest, abdomen, pelvis, thoracic and lumbar spine, and liver. All of the MRI scans confirmed what the CT scans had said. I had a T4 compression fracture with retropulsion. In my delusion, the MRI I was in was the metal hooped skirt I thought I was wearing in the dream I had being in A Clockwork Orange.

I also learned that while I was waiting to be taken for the MRI, I was left in the hospital hallway for about two hours. The notes said that I was asleep and snoring. Before the MRI, they gave me an IV push of Xanax and Fentanyl to help with my late-onset claustrophobia. No wonder I had thought I was in a movie. I had no idea where I was or what was even happening to me. It is truly terrifying to think back on this. I was in a hospital hallway, alone, with a neck collar restraining my movement, unable to move due to extreme back pain in a semi-reclining position on a gurney, drugged out of my mind.    

Around 1 p.m. I woke up in a hospital room. My sister and Leslie were there.

“Nice of you to show up,” I slurred and sneered at Leslie.

He looked like shit, but I didn’t care. He left me and I would never forget that.

There were all kinds of things going on, many of which I couldn’t track. I was exhausted and very drugged, which was a good thing.

They told me I met the neurosurgeon, but I don’t remember. He explained what the MRI found and what had to be done. I couldn’t even remember his name even though it was written on the white board right in front of me.

What I do remember, mostly because I have a photo of it, was my ex-husband Alan brought my younger son Corey to see me. He had just finished his spring semester of college. I had them bring me sushi. I wanted sake but they said no. They left around 10 p.m.

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