WARNING! Seems as though warning signs are everywhere. So much so that they aren’t taken seriously. But I have a warning and perhaps sharing a recent event will be helpful so someone reading this. I could have died on Saturday, March 27. I didn’t, but it was touch and go. This is a medical thing and having no medical training I won’t even apologize for my obvious lack of proper terms or conclusions. I know what happened. I had visited a doctor about a sore on my leg that just wouldn’t cure itself. It looked inflamed, swollen and had little irregular red lines radiating around the area. Not a big problem. The doctor wrote a prescription for a drug named Augmentin. Saturday I opened the bottle and was amazed at the size of the pills. They were huge. Swallowing large pills has never been easy for me, but these were necessary and with great determination I began the process. I did it all wrong! First I cut this football-sized monster in half. Inserted both haves into my mouth with a sizeable gulp of water. They laid there like two split logs, going no place. Obviously, they needed empowerment (force) so I created a gurgling waterfall effect giving them little choice but to home in on the esophagus. WARNING! You’ve heard it before. They went down the wrong pipe. Having been cut, they were ragged and stuck somewhere along the route, cutting off my air supply and the body’s reaction was quick. It’s hard to remember but an onset of severe coughing was coupled with hotness, weakness, and a growing fear. Watching me, Karen knew that I was in big trouble and I remember mouthing her to “stay calm, I need you to stay calm.” She picked up the phone and prepared to call 911, and the last thing that I remember saying was “call 911!” Not an easy thing for any tough man to say. I did not pass out although I can’t remember. I realized the firemen came, Karen says within five minutes. In quick order the ER arrived and loaded me in. I do remember a flurry of activity as they cut away my clothes and took vitals, assessed the situation and did whatever those people do. I remember the barking of commands and application of tubes and so on. My left lung collapsed as I continued to gasp for air. They suctioned and retrieved one piece of the pill and the other was retrieved in the emergency room. I was out of it all. I became aware that I was in the ICU with hurried activity all around, lots of needles, monitoring apparatus and the whole thing. It was Saturday night. Perhaps four hours after inhaling the Augmentin football. I was alive. I was heavily drugged but unquestionably alive. It was an accident that didn’t have to happen. I was careless. I should have known. I should have been more methodical and called on my intuitive awareness of consequences. And that’s why I’m telling this story. Of course, this couldn’t happen to you and let’s hope that it never does. But there is danger in simple things that we do every day. Taking a pill is a no-brainer unless you copy my thoughtless formula. That’s the end of the story, yet there are some trailer thoughts. I was in intensive care Saturday night, Monday, Tuesday and shipped out to a regular ward on Tuesday at midnight and discharged at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, March 31. Why so long in ICU? Because of uncertainty, because of everyone’s fear of liability exposures and because of mixed signals. They failed to follow through on my routine heart medication and because of an old rhythm problem, the monitors spiked and they started down a new path. The doctors scheduled a CT brain scan in case oxygen deprivation had scrambled things up. They scheduled a swallow observation test and later recommended that I enter their swallow rehabilitation program as an outpatient. I mention these examples only to make a couple of observations. – Hospitals are not safe places. Care is coupled with dangers. – Testing mechanisms are really profit centers and their use is encouraged. – Attending doctors depend on the floor nurses as dispatchers, to gather test results, track the doctor down at his practice, get new orders and move the patient to the next level. Which is probably another test of some kind. Without the nurses, a patient might hang about in limbo indefinitely. – If you need rest, check into a Motel 6. ICU will come in for lung x-rays at 4 a.m. The blood person can appear anytime between midnight to 5 a.m. The nebulizer guy is there every four hours. It never stops. And it is never quiet or dark. – If you think that you’ll reach the next level toward some action or discharge in an automatic fashion, it won’t happen. Without an advocate (family member) your case floats slowly forward until you’re in the way. Maybe they really don’t want you to hurry away. – Medicare is floating in dollars and the hospitals are strapped. Having said all this, the medical teams and individuals saved another poor soul last week. They do it every day. I take this very personal because this time it was all about me. I wasn’t ready to check out and they gave me another shot. I am lucky and very grateful. 911 is the world’s best phone number.
Bill Moody, “Annandale’s roving snowbird and master of leisure activities,” is one of a handful of senior writers contributing to this column. He spent most of his career working at IBM and Control Data. He also worked as a consultant and published one business book in the early 1990s. A graduate of the University of Florida, he served six years in the U.S. Air Force, He is married to Karen Sommers.
