Dodging the Bullet

About 2 weeks ago now, I was playing "daddy-daughter softball" with my 9-year-old daughter. This is, of course, turns out to be less about 9 year olds having fun than it is about a bunch of fat, middle-aged dads pretending to play for the Mets while their daughters wander obliviously around the field smelling the dandelions.

I trotted out on field like the pro I just KNEW I had been in some previous life, and took my place playing second base, girding my loins and slapping my fist in my glove, hungry for the "big play." :)

One cute little girl dribbled a grounder past the pitcher, and I ran up on it like the final game of the World Series depended on my speed and overall athletic prowess. As I picked up the ball, I stood up to throw, and realized a tad too late that I had been running on wet grass... with sneakers. As this thought made its' way... slowly... across the synapses of my brain, my feet... both of them... continued straight out in front of me, in one of those slow-motion "Oh-Crap" moments when you realize that your body is not doing what your mind thinks it is. I got great hang time while I hung there... mid-air... kind of like the coyote before he disappears in a cloud down to the canyon floor below.

OK, so I didn't fall to the canyon 200 stories below... OK, so it was only a little over 2 feet... but I landed flat on my back, which complete broke ribs 7 & 8 on my right side. I writhed around in pain for a minute, wondering if I would EVER be able to draw breath again, when several of the dads helped me up. My wife judiciously waited to see if I was OK before she began giggling.

Not only was that embarrassing in the extreme, but it seriously bruised my machismo-laced self image. I got back up, brushed myself off, and determined to "play through the pain." I think now I had transitioned from professional baseball in my mind to professional football, but I digress.

My next chance to redeem myself came when I came up to bat... now, this was SLOW-pitch softball, mind you. I was going to hit it CLEAR outta the park. Redeem myself. Prove that I'm a manly man. Three GLORIOUSLY unsuccessful swings and misses later, I checked my aluminum bat with the utmost scrutiny to see if there somehow had been a hole strategically placed in it as a practical joke. No such luck. Of course, a number of little girls... including my own daughter, who had never played softball before that day in her LIFE... got solid hits.

When I got up to bat again, I decided to throttle back my enthusiasm a bit, and connected enough with the ball to dribble a grounder past the pitcher... and ran like my life depended on it. Picture a Sumu wrestler trying to do the 50-yard dash. It took 15 seconds for the waves in my blubber to stop rolling when I reached 2nd base.

When the next little girl dribbled another base hit, I sprinted for 3rd... only to find that our ex-Bishop's little 9 year old had wandered obliviously into the baseline... and stopped. Not wanting to put his little flower into the ICU by running her over, I nimbly stepped out to the left to kind of "dance" around her. Again, the realization that I was running on wet grass with sneakers darted across the few remaining synapses of my brain as my left foot shot out from under me, forcing me into the splits. OK, THAT one was excruciating. Again, my wife and all the other dads ran out to see what kind of damage I had done to myself, and 2 dads had to practically carry me to the sidelines. One of them helpfully advised that I might want to "sit a few innings out." My leg wouldn't straighten.. at all... and wouldn't bend. Several of the parents there mused out loud as to whether someone had captured all this for later upload to YouTube. I was NOT amused.

So, the result of my foray into the world of athletics after a 30+ year absence was... 1 pulled hamstring, 2 completely broken ribs, and 1 seriously bruised ego.

I lived on Percocets for the next week and a half, and the pain kept getting worse and worse. At first it was mainly my leg. Then my leg started healing, and the ribs started becoming more and more painful until it was difficult to breathe...it just hurt too much. So, on Tuesday of this week, I broke down and went into the ER (where I usually transport patients, so I know them all by name), and had an X-ray taken. The ER, by the way, is $439 just to walk through the door, I found out.

The cute little PA that came in to see me asked what was wrong, and I said, "I think Ribs 7 & 8 are cracked." She gave me that condescending "you're-so-cute" look, and asked me why I thought that. I rattled off the medical signs and symptoms, and told her that I had had broken ribs before. After a Percocet had mellowed me a bit, I had the X-ray taken... which cost me $657. No, I don't have insurance, so I carefully track these things.

After a couple of hours of waiting, the PA came in, and said, "You're scary accurate. It was ribs 7 & 8, and they're complete breaks." I smiled with vindication. And then she shattered my world. A very serious look crossed her face.

"Your X-ray came back abnormal. The radiologist found a shadow on your right lower lobe."

She showed me on the computer monitor where the shadow was... and kept trying to reassure me that it "could be nothing." But she also had to admit that it could be bad. Very bad. She told me that the radiologist suggested that I have a follow-up in "3-6 months." I remember the whole thing being rather surreal... almost as if it weren't happening to me, but to someone else.

I don't remember much of what happened after that... I do remember telling Tracy... again it was surreal... like it was someone else... how could this be happening to ME? I remember going through the motions of going home, trying to get some work done but not being able to concentrate, and then going online and doing research. I didn't come up with anything encouraging.

I called and made an appointment with my doctor, since it didn't make ANY sense to wait 3-6 months for something as potentially lethal as lung cancer. I also called the hospital and asked them to prepare a copy of the x-rays and the final report from the radiologist. I picked the films and the report up bright and early the next day... and read the report out loud;

"Impressions: Density in the right lower lung. Advise PA and Lateral chest radiographs with nipple markers in place to evaluate this region and exclude lung abnormality. Lung abnormality could be due to numerous etiologies to include neoplasm."

The last part stopped me cold in my tracks: "to include neoplasm." Neoplasm is med-speak for cancer.

I went through the rest of the day in a fog... not being able to think clearly about much of anything... but about what the end would be like. Will I suffer? What about my children? How will Tracy make it without me? Am I ready to die? I have so much to do... how long will I be able to function? Where will I be buried? HOW will I be buried? We have no insurance. Tracy had the good sense not to get too rattled until she had more definitive information... I wasn't so rational. I was scared spitless. All of a sudden, my ribs didn't hurt so much anymore.

I wept. I worried. I paced. And I researched. I pretended to work. I pretended to function. I pretended to not want anyone to know, but quickly realized that I didn't have the emotional strength to go through this alone.

I went to my appointment with the doctor, hoping for good news. She didn't offer any. What she did do was to write me a script for another confirmation x-ray at another imaging center. We went straight from the doctor's office to the imaging center, and they took me right in. The x-ray, BTW, cost us a whopping $78... after the hospital had charged us $657 for the same thing. But I digress.

The X-rays and the radiologist's Final Report were due the next morning. Due to rampant miscommunications, however, I didn't reach my doctor until the next afternoon, when they cheerfully reported to my everlasting relief that... the X-rays were normal.

The experience left me changed... at least for now... until the stresses of life shove it to the back of my mind again. I'll never forget that feeling of knowing that I could be dying... and the hopelessness and terror that accompanied that news. It has made me appreciate life that much more.

Now... in a couple of hours, when my heart actually resumes beating, I'll probably go celebrate dodging the biggest bullet of my life so far... hopefully by having a healthy salad somewhere.