The Pelvic Sonogram

Each time I was taken from my room for a test, Dad became nervous about the transfer of my body. He knew how much help I needed to get around, and he was afraid I was going to get dropped or hurt. He would warn the transporter, “she has ataxia.” That was an understatement. I made everyone nervous – the nurses, the transporters, the technicians who ran the tests, anyone who had to deal with me getting around. When Dad said I was ataxic, they didn’t really get it until I had to be moved.
Part of the pelvic sonogram procedure included drinking a lot of water to fill my bladder beforehand. The sonogram had two parts: an external, full bladder part and an internal empty bladder part. They stick a probe up there so they can see the ovaries. This didn’t bother me. My problems were in the simple things and started with emptying my bladder.
After the full bladder portion, the technician left me alone with the bedpan. It sounds simple, pee in the bedpan. But I was so ataxic and the rails weren’t up on the gurney. I got some pee into the bedpan and some not into the bedpan, and as I pulled the pan out from under me I spilled it and fell off the gurney. The bedpan didn’t fall off the gurney, I DID. Three anxious nurses jumped through the curtain to check on me, “Are You Okay!?” I was fine, unhurt, but I cried anyway. We finished the sonogram, but the fall had to be reported.
Later that day when the doctors came around the attending doctor said, “I heard you had a fall.” “OH JEEZ, DOES EVERYONE HAVE TO KNOW,” I said. We all laughed. Falling in the hospital is different than falling at home, you aren’t supposed to do it. Outside every room I stayed in at Stanford was an orange sticker that read “FALL PRECAUTIONS” and pictured a stick figure falling backwards down a flight of stairs.
As it turned out, I didn’t have poly-cystic ovaries. They just looked weird on the CAT scan.

IV

I had at least a dozen IV’s put into my arms over the course of my three-week sojourn to the Mother Ship. An IV can be used to draw blood or to give intravenous drugs or fluids. One MRI technician called it a “port.” I thought that was a good name for it. An IV is only supposed to stay in for four days (or less if you pull it out because it is driving you crazy). I preferred to be stabbed again than deal with the soreness of an old IV. They got extra sore because I was always banging them into stuff.
When a new IV is going to be put in, the first thing the nurse has to do is go to the store room and collect a bunch of individually wrapped packages containing all the rigging for your arm including the clean-up gear for the blood that leaks out. A needle coated in a plastic tube is inserted into the vein, the nurse looks for “blood return” to make sure it is in the vein, the needle is removed and the plastic tube remains in the vein. The IV gadget is attached to the plastic tube. Now that it’s all hooked up, it gets flushed with saline and a sticker is put on with the date (so it won’t stay in longer than four days). Now you have a port into your body. How convenient.
During my stay in the hospital, I became stunned with all the waste created. Each piece of tubing, each connector to join pieces of tubing, the next piece of tubing, each needle with its own big fancy plastic cap, each spinal tap kit, each pill they give you, every little sterile wipee for a few drips of blood, each snack on the hospital food tray, everything comes in its own package, individually wrapped and sometimes more than once. Of course it’s all necessary for preventing infection, but it is mind boggling to think of all the empty packages, stuff used only once. I am just one patient in one hospital. Where does it go? I felt a little guilty for contributing to the pile of debris.

The Black Oil

It probably came out of the swamp or from outer space, somewhere damp and fertile with moss. It came out of its wrapper and seeped into my brain.
Dr. Handsome let me know ahead of time that an infectious disease doctor would come and ask some questions looking for the source of the virus that caused A.D.E.M. They were pretty sure the source would never be found because it had been so long since I initially got sick. My immune system had most likely dispatched the virus by this time.
She came to my bedside. She had questions. It could have been anything. Here is a list of possible exposures that we came up with:

• Herbicides – I used them at work because I work for a weed scientist.
• Pesticides – I used them at work to kill little animals.
• Game meat – In Montana, people hunt. Not so much for trophies, but for food. I ate antelope, deer, elk, moose, bear, mountain sheep, mountain goat, geese, pheasant, and probably others I’m forgetting.
• Freshwater fish – I fished with friends and ate up the fish.
• Animals I had contact with – cows, sheep, horses, prairie dogs, cats, dogs, all the game animals I was around when friends were hunting.
• Insects – mosquito bites, tick bites (I’ve had a lot of both) in CA, NV, SD, MT. I work outside, sitting on the ground, there are all kinds of tiny animals.
• Arthropod bourne viruses – The tiny animals can carry viruses.
• Soils – I spent a month processing soil samples in Sidney, MT about three months before I got sick. I had to grind up the clods in a soil grinder. The dust was in every crevice of my body, so if there was something in the soil, it could have easily gotten into me.
• Solvents – I use all kinds of nasty stuff for art projects, and there were plenty at work too.
• Metals – I was around the guys in the shop at work when they were welding.
• Dusty old sheds – I went into a lot of these at work because that is where equipment is stored. In addition to equipment there are mice, dead mice, birds, dead birds, dust, spiders and microbes. Hanta virus may have haunted me.
• Air – All the millions and billions of viruses that are floating around everyday that anyone can breathe in.

I thought of these myself:

• I eat stuff off the ground.
• I don’t use the paper seat covers in public restrooms.
• I’m an Earth creature, a mammal. As part of the animal kingdom I like to crawl around outside, roll in leaves, sniff stuff and pick stuff up.
  
  I’ve never been afraid of “germs” or lived in fear of them. I’ve never been a person who washed their hands a lot. I’m still not afraid of germs. It may have only taken one breath of air or one bite of food for this virus to get into my system. Dr. Handsome said it works like a lock and key. Somehow I happened to encounter the right key for my lock. It takes just the right virus to cross the blood brain barrier, and it could have been anything, even just a cold. I asked if I should do anything differently when I was better and back in Montana. He said no, the chances are so slim. I guess the chance of getting A.D.E.M. once is quite slim, twice would be very slim.
  How did I get this? Mom thinks it came from global warming. She aligns my disease with melting icecaps, hurricanes, El Niño, she thinks it traveled from the tropics to get into my brain. I prefer to think the virus came from outer space. Perhaps it was the Black Oil from the X-Files, an alien virus.