This story begins about six months ago, when I was raking leaves, cleaning gutters, and just generally getting the house and yard ready for the winter to come. I didn’t exactly injure myself cleaning the gutters; it was as I was putting away the 24-ft. extension ladder, trying to hang it back on the hooks, that I lost control of the ladder, tried to regain control of the thing, planted my left foot wrong, twisted my hip wrong, twisted my shoulders wrong, and just generally did everything that I could have done wrong, wrong. At the time I thought, “I should have just jumped out of the way and let the (^&$@!!! thing drop, and then started over.”
As it happens: had I done that, I probably would not be here now.
As it happened then, I wound up with all kinds of weird bangs, bruises, sprains, and torsion injuries to my knees, hips, and shoulders, mostly. How badly banged-up was I? According to my diary, badly enough that I didn’t even feel up to writing and posting a review totally slagging TRON: ARSE, an idiotic movie that truly deserved every bit of invective I could sling at it. Yeah, I was in that much pain.
So what? Among other things my Dad was an athletic coach, of the old school variety, and I absorbed a lot of bad habits from him. You’re in pain? Put some ice on it! Rub some liniment on it! Tough it out! Tape it up and get back in the game! Later you can load up on Tylenol or ibuprofen, if you must.
Which is what I did, and for the most part it worked, but by mid-November it had become obvious that there was something seriously wrong with my right shoulder. It wasn’t healing. In fact, it was becoming worse, and even maximum dosages of ibuprofen weren’t doing the trick anymore.
Okay, enough of this stoic Spartan bulls**t. I called my clinic and made an appointment.
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My doctor immediately confirmed my own initial assessment—that I had done something to seriously bugger up my rotator cuff—but equally immediately noticed two things I hadn’t: that my hands and feet were becoming swollen, and that I was easily winded. As for the swelling, it had crept up on me so slowly that I didn’t really register it, and as for being easily winded: I’d just written that off to age. My doctor, thankfully, wasn’t willing to settle for such a dismissive explanation, and ordered up a battery of tests and diagnostic imaging. The X-rays found nothing.
The MRI of my right shoulder, on the other hand, found, just on the edge of the image, purely by accident...
“A what?”
“A pleural effusion. Most often it means you have either congestive heart failure or lung cancer.”
“Is there a third, more benign explanation?”
“Not really. It could mean you have a bad case of pneumonia, but you aren’t showing any other symptoms, and your blood work shows no evidence of an infection.
“Oh, by the way, it’s the large doses of ibuprofen that are causing the swelling in your hands and feet. Stop taking them now. It’s damaging your kidneys.”
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More tests and diagnostics followed. A CT scan. Another CT scan, to confirm the results of the first. An ultrasound of my aorta, to make sure it wasn’t about to pop. Lots and lots of blood and urine tests, to make sure my kidneys were recovering from the ibuprofen and my liver was still working as designed. An echocardiogram. They let me watch the monitor while they were doing it, and for some reason I kept thinking of Fantastic Voyage. Man, I loved that movie when I was 11 or 12 years old and remember talking the librarian at Llewellyn Library into letting me check out Isaac Asimov’s novel of it, even though it was shelved in the adult section of the library and I only had a J (for Juvenile) library card.
Years later I learned that Asimov didn’t originate the story, he’d only adapted a screenplay written by someone else. Also, he turned down the deal when first approached, because he’d thought it was stupid. It was only after his SF publisher leaned on him, telling him they’d recommended him for the job because they wanted him to have a big hit mainstream hardcover, that he relented—and then, years later, wrote Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain, to try to correct all the things he saw as crass stupidities in the original book.
Sigh. Of such things are SF careers made. Maybe I should write Wild Wild West II: Destination Ass.
Sidebar: The original 1966 movie is free on DailyMotion, in a really nice HD transfer. If you’re interested, you’ll find it at this link: Fantastic Voyage (1966) - Complete Film HD - video Dailymotion
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Through December, January, and into February, the diagnostic noose tightened. My heart was failing, rapidly. Basically, I was running on three chambers, while the fourth was just barely functional. In one memorable metaphor one doctor likened it to my rocketing down the highway at a hundred miles an hour on three brand new tires—and one patched and bald retread that might blow at any moment.
The final straw came on February 17th, when they attempted an angioplasty, and gave up the attempt because my arteries were too badly blocked to allow them to place any stents. I had four major blockages in my coronary arteries. Somehow, miraculously, a minor artery had enlarged, and it was carrying the load of keeping me alive. This left me with just one option, and it might be a longshot: open heart surgery, to create multiple bypasses. I went into surgery on the morning of March 13th.
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For the next part of the story, I can only relate what other people told me afterward, as I was sedated out of my mind for the next few days. Once they opened me up, they found that I was in worse condition than thought and that the operation was going to be more complicated and take longer than expected. After it was finished, I was in the ICU for days afterward, having hallucinations the likes of which I hope never to have again. When I finally cleared and regained consciousness, I actually had to ask the nurse if I really had survived the operation, and to reassure me that this wasn’t just another particularly cruel hallucination in which I was only imagining I was still alive.
And then I had to ask someone else, to verify that the nurse wasn’t part of my hallucination. I developed a whole new appreciation for the works of Philip K. Dick in those days. How do you know, really know, what reality is? Especially when your hallucinations are fully capable of carrying on a seemingly reasonable conversation with you?
After a few days in the ICU, I had stabilized well enough that they transferred me to a regular ward, and a few days after that, on March 20th, I was finally discharged to outpatient rehab.
§
People keep asking me how I feel. For the first few days, I felt as if I’d been the guest of honor at some particularly gory Mesoamerican sacrifice to a Sun God or something. After that, I felt as if I was a construct stitched together by a mad scientist—and not a first-rate mad scientist, either, but one who shopped at Crazy Igor’s House of Discount Cadaver Parts.
Eventually, I began to feel somewhat normal and human again. The pain in my left leg, where they harvested the veins used for the grafts, subsided from constant and throbbing to being manageable. I’ve regained my ability to walk, and more importantly, my ability to think clearly, although fatigue is still an issue. I’m doing PT twice a week and they tell me I’m making great progress, although I bet they tell that to all the reanimated corpses. One thing I hadn’t counted on, that is more of a nuisance than I thought, is that one of the conditions of my parole is I must wear a combination heart monitor and portable defibrillator 24x7, except when I’m in the shower. I have come to believe that this thing is God’s punishment for my writing the DataBra into Headcrash. I didn’t make that thing nearly uncomfortable enough, and neglected to make it connected by an umbilical cord to a control unit about the size, shape, and weight of a motorcycle battery—and then to make that umbilical just short enough to be a real nuisance.
Oh well, Another thing to add to Headcrash II: Destination Spleen, I suppose.
Still, it’s good to be alive, and it’s good to be back. Thank you for your kind wishes and support, and here’s to looking forward to my new life.
Upward and onward,
Bruce Bethke
