Don't Leave Me This Way: Or When I Get Back on My Feet You'll Be Sorry Read Free

them.
    They bounce the rod off your femur to make sure the placement is correct. It hurts like hell. You groan.
    The assistant asks, “Are you comfortable?”
    “Well,” you say, “I’d be more comfortable in a Barcalounger.”
    “Better pump up the painkillers.”
    They snake the rod all the way up to your brain and talk in little whispers about what they see.
    “Hey,” you say, “how’s the fishing? Catch anything yet?”
    Then they snake it back out again and the nurse applies pressure to the entry site. She tells you it’s a deep puncture wound and she puts heavy pressure on your groin for at least five minutes so the blood can clot.
    You make a mental note to remind your family members not to get an angiogram if they can possibly avoid it.
    After all that effort to stay awake, you can’t really sleep when they send you back to the intensive care unit (ICU). Which is actually fortunate since you have to be completely still for eight hours. They sandbag your right leg to prevent movement.
    Eventually they unsandbag you and you sleep a deep, black sleep. You have a weird dream about how to become a better person by letting someone staple your head.
    When you wake up you need to remain completely still and perpendicular for eight hours. It’s quite a feat drinking from a straw without lifting your head.
    After the surgery, you feel as though you’ll explode from the pressure to urinate. After having a rod in your groin, you can’t go on your own. Put a fountainhead on your stomach and you’d rival any Disney display.

Half a Clock
    Your mother tells you that Edie is having a hard time. Edie was in a bridge club with your mother for thirty years, and your mother mentions that Edie is having a hard time. You think to yourself, I should really stop in and see Edie.
    MORNING SNAPS INTO PLACE and someone tells you to wake up and the doctors are gathered in front of your bed and they congratulate you. You were very perceptive: You have in fact had a stroke. Then they tell you the angio shows no evidence of an AVM. They feel “perplexed” as to what your condition might be.
    One of the doctors—your dad says later that he’s very famous—tells you that you should think of your brain’s large and small blood vessels as having berries on them. Then he says he has no idea what that means, since an AVM is no longer a possibility. He promises the team will keep you posted when they know what’s going to happen next.
    “Unless my brain beats you to it!” you warn them.
    Somber faces on Jim, your brother John, and your dad. Here is one of the leading radiologists in the country shrugging, saying he doesn’t know what you have. Everyone’s quiet. Lots of questions. No answers.
    You stare at the doctors. They leave. One of the nurses stays behind.
    You tell your husband you’re a little disappointed that you don’t have an AVM, because you wanted a definite diagnosis and you could use some hard information. You must be starting to cry because the nurse wipes the left side of your face. The nurse says you should be relieved that you didn’t have an AVM, since treatment is difficult and can be fatal.
You’re going to be a better person.
    SO. YOU DON’T HAVE AN AVM. What do you have? Whatever it is, it apparently involves having berries on the brain. Unless you’re in a strawberry patch , you think to yourself, berries on the brain does not sound like what you want.
    The next morning another doctor describes your brain vessels as “sausagelike.”
    “If we’re not talking about the morning menu,” you say, “sausage doesn’t sound good.”
    You begin to wonder whether the doctors are hungry and looking forward to breakfast. Next, they’ll be cracking an egg in a basin and saying, “This is your brain, and this is your brain hemorrhaging,” as they scramble the contents.
     
    YOU HAVE BEEN IN INTENSIVE CARE for approximately a week. People come and go and you keep getting medication and time shudders and