I'm Scheduling My Breakdown
I've decided to post-pone a long overdue mid-life crisis or mental breakdown until I can really put the energy it deserves into it. I simply don't have the time for it right now, and so I will have to pencil it in later. I also don't think I will ever be able to change careers. It doesn't seem to be in the stars for me. Even if I'm "off", I'm still "on".

Tuesday, my stepson, Wesley, came over to help work on the ever on going library repairs, after he'd been off on Monday, sick in bed with fever and chills. His wife'd told me they'd had a party over the weekend and some kids had been there. Halfway into it, they'd found out the kids were sick. She'd been upset because their 1 year old baby'd been exposed. She figured Wesley was catching whatever they had, (nausea, vomiting and diarrhea with fever).

I told him stay away! but, by Tuesday, he felt better, until that evening , when he left our house and he and his family went to Wal-Mart. While he was there, he started having severe muscle spasms in his neck and it got so bad, it was pulling his head and mouth to one side and his gaze upward. He couldn't change it. Of course it altered his gait and ability to swallow. (Some would argue just having to go to Wal-Mart would cause this.)


Still, think either of them thought to call us? A doctor? Nope. Stubborn and filled with testosterone that reeks saying "I can fix this, I just need to rest." he tried to sleep, and when the spasms were too bad, he took 2 over the counter sleeping pills, "Unisoms", which seemed to help a little.

On Wed. morning, Wesley woke up with no more spasms, but still not feeling exactly right. Still, he came back over to our house and never said a word about the night before.

Around noon, he sent me to the hardware store that is located six blocks away, to pick up some stain and brushes. I was checking out when he called me to ask what the signs of lead poisoning were. He told me how his neck was really tense and mouth was salivating and his tongue was really bothering him because of the salivating, and how it did it at Wal-Mart the night before. I told him it didn't sound like lead poisoning and I was heading home now, but to get out of the library and get in fresh air. He already had.

When I walked into the house and found him sitting in the den, his head was leaning over to his right with his ear on his shoulder and his mouth all tight like he was biting down hard on something.

I asked him about the kids that he'd been around over the weekend and their symptoms and he said he didn't really pay any attention to them.

We tried a few things to get his neck muscles to relax but they only continued to worsen. At one point I went a couple of rooms away and called Wesley's father and told him I felt that I needed to take Wesley to the hospital and knew Wesley wasn't wanting to go. His father said he wouldn't get off until 7:00 pm to be able to help the battle. I told him to talk to him, but I knew I was taking him, one way or another, if he didn't improve. I walked back to Wesley, to give him the phone, and by now, I noticed his gaze was upward at all times and both of his index fingers were flexed tightly, his lips were pursed outwards severely and to the right, along with his tongue, which was then starting to turn kind of blue. He talked to his father and his speech was more slurred than the 2 minutes before. We were losing ground rapidly. I started gathering my keys and bag back up and securing the puppy.

When he got done talking to his dad, I told Wesley that we were going to the hospital. To tell the truth, I was afraid he'd been exposed and caught meningitis and possibly exposed the baby to it.

Wesley wanted to lay on the floor to try and straighten out because by now his back was beginning to bow backwards in a severe lordosis and his gait was getting even worse. His gaze was fixed upwards and everything was becoming rigid.

I quickly changed from shorts to jeans and got him up and out to the porch. getting him down the 4 steps and into the truck was another story, however, but we made it.

Wesley held his head with his hands and seemed to briefly improve on the 0.8 miles to the emergency room at the hospital I used to work at. Because of that, I felt comfortable enough to park in the parking garage across the street on the 1st floor instead of pulling up at the doors. (Looking back on it, not one of my more brilliant moves).

The minute we got him out of the truck, he instantly whipped over almost backwards almost like a contortionist. It was so bad that his head only lacked about 12-16" from touching his butt. It looked like a demonic possession. His gaze was fixed upwards, lips and tongue pushed outwardly and to the right again, and no matter how he fought against it, jerking with all his might, he couldn't beat it. I almost couldn't get him out of the garage and across the street, into the ER. The whole time he was perfusly sweating and red as a crawfish.

Once we did get into the ER, a security guard helped us get him into a chair and Wesley had a hard time keeping his head from striking the wall behind him.

Like me, the triage nurses felt like it was meningitis and slapped a mask on him to protect others from becoming exposed to it, then whisked him to the back just as a severe spasm hit that left him with only the top of his head and the back of his thighs on t6he stretcher touching. You could have rolled a basketball under him and it wouldn't have touched. By this time, his airway was beginning to be compromised. A doctor and 3 nurses were working frantically on him, getting an IV started, drugs pushed. Thank goodness the Valium IV pushes started helping the muscles relax some.

Tests were done, labs drawn, blood cultures drawn, MRIs with and without contrast performed, EEGs, doctors that specialized in neurology and infectious medicine saw him...heck, for that matter, every doctor, literally, EVERY doctor in the hospital came by to see him because he was so rare. Finally, a diagnosis was made...tetanus, commonly known as "lockjaw". The doctors told me that if I'd waited one more hour to bring him in, we'd have lost him. They really didn't have to tell me that though. I knew we were in trouble. That boy was losing ground and fast...in minutes, before my very eyes.

The next news flash was that there was only half of the life saving antitoxin, "Tetanus IgG" in the city. They would have to locate and possibly fly in the other half.

Everyone was stunned on that one. Isn't that a kicker?! How could a city, just ravaged by a hurricane, crawling with a population of immigrant workers doing construction in a polluted area of devastation, knowing somebody is just bound to get a rusty nail or a piece of wood stuck in them, etc., and that the immigrant workers likely haven't been real keen on their immunizations or the availability where they came from...and it's been six months of all of this...How could a city NOT have at least one dose of the antitoxin?! According to documentation, there have only been 48 recorded cases of tetanus in the United States since 1987.

So it was touch and go every 2 hours with the spasms returning, requiring the treatment to be managed until the other half of the "Tetanus IgG" could be obtained ang given to pull all the poisons out of his system. Then he would need to be monitored very closely to allow the time for the antitoxin to filter his blood, which didn't come until the next night at around 10pm.

In the meantime, the doctors proceeded to try and investigate which of Wesley's many little nicks and scraps he'd encounted over the past month or so could've been the source of entry for the tetanus. His fingers are covered with tiny little cuts and he's had numerous little splinters, (most of which he's simply picked out himself with the tip of his pocket knife blade). Then there are the untold hundreds of scratches and scrapes from running through the woods in Mississippi where he and his wife have family, or when goofing off around the creek, and there is the gardening. In this family, there is always the gardening. It seems that tetanus usually affects farmers and may lay dormant in the ground for up to 40 years!

Wesley could not come up with a single injury that was festering or harboring any signs of infection. he could, however, remember one on his right elbow that had been larger than most, and that when he'd struck it against a door or wall a few weeks ago, he noticed it was scabbed over. He had a splinter in a finger at present. Neither of them were red, nor swollen, nor draining, nor scabbed now. It remains a mystery. Doctors remained puzzled but convinced they were on the right track, and pressed forward with his treatment.

For 2 days, Wesley stayed on gurney in the ER because there were no ICU or telemetry beds available. Whe he got stable enough, the doctor finally agreed to down grade him to a med-surg bed and he finally got to sleep in a hospital bed and away from the beeping of the monitors of all the other patients in the ER...and I got out of the chair next to him. Instead, he got moved into a private room, a nice quiet room.

As Wesley improved, he missed his baby and wife more and more though and became more and more stir-crazy. On day 3, he begged the neurologist to let him go home, and the doctor agreed only because I'd worked with him for so many years, and because Wesley'd stabilized enough. But it was with a solomn promise to keep him relaxed over the weekend and to watch him like a hawk...to give him the meds prescribed at the first sign of a tremor and to "haul his ass back to the hospital at the first sign of any funny business", and to follow up with the neurologist in 2 weeks. I promised.

What a ride this journey has been. What a journey my entire LIFE has been!

Think I'm going to schedule my mental breakdown or a life crisis for June 8, 2014. No particular significance for that date. That is why I have chosen it. I've worked for it. I deserve it. I've earned it.