EP 128 - The Friend at the End - Part VI cover art

EP 128 - The Friend at the End - Part VI

EP 128 - The Friend at the End - Part VI

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 As we ended the last episode, the doctor had told me to eat, and oh man, did I start eating. Looking back on it, I call it 'Healing in the Beehive," because they put me on a standard American diet loaded with carbohydrates and sugar. And I loved every bit of it. Cheeseburgers, tuna melt sandwiches, cookies, cake, pie a la mode. You name it. It was like going down a nostalgic memory lane of the favorite foods of my childhood. I stayed in the hospital for a total of ten days. They explained to me that I had suffered a massive stroke, but for some reason, call it grace, luck or both, the huge blood clot that had caused it found its resting place in my lower right cerebellum. Although that part of the brain is responsible for movement and balance, and the clot had destroyed a large portion of it, it landed in a place that did me no lasting harm, except for a very minor visual impairment. It wiped out a small portion of my left peripheral vision, which just happens to have been where I started seeing that light in the beginning that started the whole thing. During my stay in the hospital, it seemed like everyone who was taking care of me reminded me again and again of how lucky I had been. It was kind of funny because I really didn't have that much of a direct connection to my actual situation. I mean in my experience, I did have a day or two of being pretty out of it, but that's about it, I was pretty out of it. And then the next thing I knew, I felt fine. Of course, Sally knew what had really happened because she had lived through it. But in essence, I kind of slept through it. And if I hadn't been told how sick I'd been and how close to death I had actually come, I would never have known it. Anyway, during the hospital stay, it seemed like I was constantly presented with reminders of my situation . One night, for example, they brought me a piece of cherry pie ala mode, which was always one of my most favorite desserts, and I always get it with vanilla ice cream. Early on, that combination of cherry and vanilla had become a central part of my happy reward center. When I got to dessert and uncovered the plate, I saw that it had chocolate ice cream on the pie rather than vanilla. It was a bummer, but hey, I could handle it. "Oh," I said, somewhat disappointed as I looked at the plate. A doctor was in the room, just finishing up his quick exam of me. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Oh nothing," I replied. "It's just that they brought me the wrong ice cream. I like vanilla on my cherry pie and they brought me chocolate. It's no big deal." "Do you know where you are?" the doctor asked me, quizzically. "Sure," I replied, "I'm in the hospital." "You're in the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital of Neuroscience. You've had a massive stroke and you're in the intensive care unit," he corrected me. "And you know what? Most people get carried out of here or they get wheeled out. And it looks like you're going to just stand up and walk away from all this." He wasn't confrontational at all. He was very nice, but he was clearly making his point. "If I were you," he added, "I wouldn't be thinking too much about chocolate and vanilla anymore." He smiled at me and left the room. I got the message and took it in. It never hurts to be reminded of how fortunate you really are. Finally, my blood levels got to the right point and they decided to let me go. At the end, when I was ready to leave, I was sitting in my room and the head nurse came in to do some final paper work and say good-bye. Her name was Anna. She was in her late-forties and had come over from Russia about 20 years earlier. She saw me several times every day and we had become quite close. "You know, David, we have a folder here that we call the Hand of God Folder and that's where your file's going," she said as she was filling out a form. "It's for cases where a horrible tragedy could have happened, but for some reason it didn't. And we can't explain it. We don't know how these remarkable things happen. If we did we would certainly try to do it ourselves. But we can't. So –we have the Hand of God Folder…" She kept writing and then she looked up at me. "OK, we're done," she concluded. "Now, don't take this the wrong way. You're a very nice person and I'm glad we got to know each other. But I hope I never see you again." She paused for a moment and looked me in the eye. I felt intuitively that she was about to say something deeply meaningful or me, and as soon as she began talking, I knew I was right. "Look, you were here for ten days. I've been here for twelve years, and believe me, I've seen everything. And you really have no idea what happened here and, let alone what you've been spared from. "Let's just put it this way," she continued, "For the rest of your life, if you woke up every morning and before you did anything, you got down on your knees and thanked God for the miracle that happened here, you'd still be understating it....
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