A couple of weeks ago my back seized up on me in the middle of teaching my fifth period Algebra II class.
My back had been bothering me for a week or so, but I had been ignoring it and going about my usual daily routine (my daily routine lately consisting of a great deal of stress and very little exercise). Well, I guess benign neglect wasn't the course of treatment that my spine needed, and in retaliation all of the muscles in my lower back conspired to give me a much larger hint that something was wrong - and quite suddenly I could hardly move at all.
I got though the rest of the class mostly by sitting in a chair in front and pretty much ignoring my students (who were thankfully working on worksheets that day and ignoring me as well). Sadly, I'm not sure too many of them really noticed much of a difference - I think they just enjoyed a longer than usual break between my jabbering away at them. Then during lunch I arranged some quick coverage for my last two classes, and next period I spent a long 10 minutes hobbling my way down to the parking lot, walking in little tiny old man steps, so I could drive back home. The next day I woke up early, called for a substitute, crawled (literally) into my office to shoot off some emails to get some fellow teachers to run off some worksheets for me, and then I crawled back into bed to go back to sleep.
So far, this had been a fairly ordinary "my back went out and I called in sick" sort of day. Nothing too unusual - it's the sort of thing I've gone through maybe every 2 or 3 years when my stress level gets high and I don't take care of myself. However, a few hours later is when things got weird.
After another few hours of sleep, I decided to get up and get something to eat. I painfully hauled my way to my feet, then staggered from wall to wall into the living room/kitchen area. About a minute after getting to my feet, I started feeling really nauseous. You know, that "Oh God, am I going to hurl or what?" feeling. So I scooted into the bathroom, took my seat, and picked up the garbage can and put it in my lap because I wasn't sure which end was going to erupt (or if anything was going to happen at all).
I was not a happy camper.
Next thing I know, I'm sort of waking up and pretty disoriented. I'm also down on the floor, and I couldn't really remember getting there. Over the next minute or notice that I have little pieces of teeth in my mouth, and that I'm drenched in sweat. I'm also bleeding from my forehead in a spot where I'm starting to develop a knot the size of a quarter, but I didn't figure that out until a few minutes later when I hauled myself up to look in the mirror over the sink.
Despite all of this, nothing really hurt that much. In retrospect, I guess I must have been out long enough to get past the "Oh shit, that really hurt" time period - which in retrospect seems kind of disturbing.
In other words, I had just passed out alone in my apartment, and I wasn't really sure why. This was getting to be some pretty scary shit.
The next thing I did is I called my doctor. I talked to a nurse on call and she suggested that I call an ambulance, because even though it may seem kind of silly to call an ambulance when I wasn't sure I was all that hurt, I did pass out and this is the kind of thing that they are there for. So, I gingerly put on some street clothes (it wasn't easy to do without bending over, but I really didn't want to go out in my jammies), hobbled into the living room to unlock my door, called 911, and collapsed on the couch by the door to wait for help.
The ambulance got there pretty fast, and the next thing I know four paramedics/firemen/whatever are swarming into my house. I guess it must have been a slow day. Anyway, they wouldn't let me move, even though earlier I had to walk to the door to unlock it so they could get in (I shudder to think what would have happened if hadn't done that). Because of my head wound (such as it was), they insisted on immobilizing my neck in a brace and strapping me to a plastic board. It seemed like an exercise in overkill, but at that point I wasn't in much of a mood to argue. So for the next half hour or so I was pretty much 200 pounds of meat strapped to a slab.
Between the four of them they managed to haul me though the door and carry me down the stairs to the ambulance. Going down the stairs was fun, because my body wanted to slide off the board, and only the straps kept me on it. Don't ask me what the ambulance looked like, because I didn't see it. My head was strapped down to the board they carried me on, and all I saw was sky (it was cloudy, but bright), and the ceiling of the ambulance (it was nondescript).
This was my only ambulance ride in my life, and I don't even know what kind of ambulance I was in (sigh).
The ride to the hospital was smooth enough (no siren), but I felt every bump because I was riding on a big plastic board. During the ride the EMT stuck a needle in my arm and stuck 4 little heart monitor things on various parts of my chest (and my chest hair). I got to watch my heart beat on the monitor, which was probably the highlight of the trip since I couldn't see much of anything else.
One nice thing about going to the ER in an ambulance is you don't have to wait in chairs. They took me straight to a hospital bed. As it turns out, I spent a lot of time that day waiting around in that bed, but at least I was comfortable.
In the hospital they attached four more heart monitor thingies to my chest hair (I mean my chest), poked and prodded me a bit, had me pee in a jug (which is really weird since I have a life time of training not to pee in the bed), and I think they took some blood too. They also gave me a shot of morphine - which is pretty good stuff and made me feel quite a bit more relaxed.
They also gave me a shot which was supposed to help my nausea - although I wasn't really that nauseous anymore. I forget what this stuff was called, but it really disagreed with me. After 30 seconds or so I felt kind of weird, than after another minute or two I started kind of wigging out, like I was having a panic attack. After I got their attention they put something else in to counteract the symptoms, and I quickly felt better, but I hope I never run into that drug again (which might be less likely if I could remember what the hell it was called).
Anyway, they basically monitored me for a few hours, gave me a prescription for the good stuff (muscle relaxants and vicodin), gave me lunch, and sent me on my way. I then paid my co-payment ($100 bucks - not including the co payment on the ambulance bill which I haven't gotten yet), and called a cab to go home. That afternoon I picked up my drugs at Walgreen's and the next day I was back at school again.
So, here's the question begged by this whole adventure: Why the hell did I pass out?
Well, the doctor said that nausea can cause all the blood to flow to the stomach region, and if you have a slow heartbeat for some reason this could cause you to pass out. Also, she mentioned that some people pass out when they poop,.but I'm holding a position of denial on that possibility, because that affliction just sounds way too damn silly - plus it has never really been an issue for me before.
I watched the heart monitor quite a bit while I was in the ER (there wasn't much else to do), and it seemed to me like my heart was beating pretty slowly. While I was there in bed lying on my back not moving, I saw it vary between 45 and 55 beats per minute. However, since I hadn't moved for something like 20 hours or so I guess there wasn't much reason for it to beat any faster.
Later, I looked up slow heartbeat on the Internet (self-diagnosing medical ailments based on websites is a really a bad habit - but it's a hard thing not to do), and it looked like about the only thing they can do for a slow heartbeat is put you on a pacemaker. That sounds way too serious to me, so I'm deciding that my slow heartbeat isn't really that serious, and I just need to get back on my exercise program. Maybe in the distant future I'll be one of those guys staying as far away from the microwave as possible, but not today.
Anyway, a couple weeks after my adventure, my back is still a little stiff but the pain is far from crippling. I pretty much stopped taking the drugs after 3 or 4 days, and I now have a nice little stash tucked away in case my back seizes up in the future. So physically, I'm well on my way to recovery.
Psychologically, I'm still kind of freaked out. I don't like the idea of passing out on my bathroom floor - especially when I live alone. It's scary, and it has the potential to really hurt. Even now I still have a couple of days to wait before I can see the dentist about my chipped teeth, and I was bruised and scraped in a number of places that took a while for me to find after the fact. I'm also very cautious now when I stand up and when I go to the bathroom, and I don't really want to have that level of paranoia about everyday activities.
In any case, it's summer now, and I have lots of time to recover - and not just get better, but get healthier. It wasn't a big priority a couple of weeks ago - but it is now. This summer is going to be about getting in shape and lowering my stress level. And maybe figuring that that should be a priority was the reason for the whole adventure in the first place.