When last we left things, I was in the Critical Care Unit in a New Jersey hospital having been diagnosed with Legionnaires Disease. I had been admitted Sunday, and by Tuesday evening I was not making much progress. Because of the severe congestion in my lungs, lying down at any angle, however slight, was painful and made it even harder to breathe, so I sat propped upright in a chair day and night.

Up to this point in my life, I had never spent even one night in a hospital outside the week I was born. A few years back I had a couple of minor surgeries (thanks to my genetically-induced varicose veins!) but they were both out-patient, and I was home by dinner. When I was sixteen, I had my tonsils and adenoids out, and because I would be under general anesthesia, it was originally doctor-mandated that I spend the night before going home. Nope, an hour after I got out of recovery, my ENT doc came to check on me and found me pushing my IV around the hallway singing “Rolling, rolling, rolling, keep that IV rolling, boy my throat is swollen, it’s raw hide!!!” He quickly determined there was no need to keep me over and and mom took me home an hour later.

I share this because the nights in the hospital were some of the most unbearable hours of my life. Don’t misunderstand me; the whole ordeal with Legionnaires was grave and terrible, but the nighttime was all the more terrible. For one, the time passed at an excruciatingly slow speed. Why? Because I was unable to sleep… at all. I kid you not, I did not sleep more than a minute here and there for the first five days I was in the CCU. The reasons for this are twofold. First, when you have a fever as high and for as long as I had  – remember, I’d been super sick for 6 days prior to even going to the ER –  a tremendous amount of lactic acid builds up in your body. But you are unable to expel that acid because you’re bedridden because you’re oxygen levels are tanking because you… just… can’t… breathe. So by now my acid levels were extremely high (levels that could cause seizures) As a result, my entire body was in excruciating pain from the buildup – every joint, bone, and muscle ached. I remember asking pretty-please for pain or sleep medication, but my nurses compassionately explained they couldn’t give me anything that might suppress my breathing.

The second reason I couldn’t sleep at all (as if total body pain wasn’t enough) was the obvious: I could not breathe. I’ll elaborate. When you can’t breathe – the number one basic need to sustain life – your body goes into a kind of fight-or-flight mode, like you are on the verge of drowning at all times, so your whole system does everything it can to stay afloat and breathing. You just can’t get your body to let down and relax.  It didn’t matter that I had a breathing machine helping me to breathe, or that I was hooked up to multiple heart and lung monitors that would send in the medical cavalry had something gone sideways. Somewhere deep in my body’s psyche, it believed that if I slept, I’d stop breathing and I’d die. And at night you’re supposed to sleep since you have no visitors to talk to you, no sunny view out the window to distract you, and no way to escape the pain and fatigue in your body. So I would close my eyes, concentrate on breathing in and out and eventually resort to singing Broadway musical numbers in my head to the rhythm of the breathing machine. I would then open my eyes, convinced it had been at least an hour or two, only to find heartbreak at the fact that only 15 minutes had passed. I could not imagine a world in which I could feel any worse, but my imagination was about to grow through experience.

At 4:06 am Wednesday morning, June 7, 2017, I felt my body start to close in on itself. The best way I can describe it is that through all this my body had been holding on, but now I felt that grip begin to loosen. And for the first time a thought entered my mind: I might not beat this.

I held out until a more reasonable hour of 6 am to text my sister (she was staying at my Aunt Julie’s house 15 minutes away). I texted that I was feeling just a wee bit worse (y’know, keeping it casual) and asked if she might come in a little earlier than at 10 am as she had planned. Brenda was dressed and standing chairside in my hospital room by 7 am, in time to meet the day nursing staff as it arrived.

In the CCU, nurses work 12-hour shifts, and the seven o’clock hour is the change over. The past three days I’d had a lot of the same nurses cycling in and out of the day and night shifts, and it was nice to see a familiar face each time and know they were already up to speed. But this morning, the worst day of my life, I would have a new nurse. And by new, I meant new to me, but this nurse was anything but new. Her name was Claudette, and I swear she had walked right out of the 1950’s. She didn’t wear scrubs; she wore the classic white knee-length nurse’s dress, complete with white nylons and white lace-up shoes (we would come to find out that only on the request of her superiors a few years earlier did she stop wearing the white nurse hat). We would also learn in the first few minutes of introduction that Claudette was just days from retirement. I will admit, I was concerned about the level of care I was going to get from an “old-school” nurse who was already out the door on her career. But there, on my worst day, the Lord sent me an angel in Claudette – but I don’t mean an angel like sweet and gentle. Oh no, she was an angel like Gabriel who spent the next 12 hours of her shift kicking butt and taking names on my behalf.

Claudette was up to speed on my case before she even walked into my room. And when I told her I felt I was getting worse, she was ON IT. Before 8 am she had the respiratory doc there confirming that my lungs were crackling badly and I was wheezing worse with every breath. Next came the mobile X-ray team – who confirmed the scans showed my lungs now almost completely full of fluid. When the Legionnaires docs came in, after they consulted with my hospitalist and Claudette, they decided it was time to “throw everything at me” and hope something, anything, would help this reverse course. But before they could do that Claudette explained to me they needed to put in a picc line. A what line?!

All my life I have had rubber/rolling veins. Only the vampires – er, phlebotomists – at Kaiser who do nothing but draw blood all day every day could get it on the first or second try. But since I had been admitted, after so many hours my veins would roll or collapse, and by Wednesday my veins had rolled on my forth IV. They sent in their top nurse (they said she could stand in the doorway of a patient’s room and simply throw the needle at them and get a perfect IV line) After three tries, she failed and was so distraught she apologized for causing me more pain while I was so sick. But now they would have to put in a central line or they would not be able to administer the live-saving drugs or fluids I needed. So they would have to go into my arm and thread a long flexible tube into a large vein that would run from my elbow to my armpit. Sound painful? Yup. And I was awake the whole time. But worse than that I was forced to life flat on my back, on my lungs, in terrible pain, fighting just to breathe. But when the line was in they could begin their everything-but-the-kitchen-sink medical treatment.

First, in addition to the antibiotics,  I was given steroids aimed at reducing the swelling in my lungs. They then gave me a huge dose of Lasix – a drug that drains the body of any extra fluids (like that in my lungs) And to quote Claudette, it would make me “pee like a racehorse.”  They also started giving me twice daily shots in my stomach of something that would prevent blood clots since I was wasn’t walking (and each of these shots gave me lovely huge purple bruises that lasted weeks after my hospitalization). So now that I had mega doses of antibiotics, anti-coagulants, steroids, and Lasix coursing through my body, they were worried it would put too much of a strain on or damage my kidneys. So while I have never been close to being diabetic, they started me on shots of insulin to give my kidneys a break. A few hours went by and I was doing my best impression of a racehorse, but my breathing, however, got worse! So they were worried that in addition to the Legionnaires I might have a pulmonary embolism. So a team was sent in to ultrasound the deep veins in my legs (a very painful procedure even when you are healthy, but again, I had to lie down flat on my swollen lungs). Thankfully my veins were good and there were no clots. It was the only good news I would get that day.

Through all these procedures and tests, Claudette stood over me like a sentinel making sure everything was sterile and I was okay. Moreover, we could tell by the way the doctors and techs consulted with her that she commanded a helluva lot of respect. But for me Claudette solidified herself as my bona fide hero later that afternoon. After lunchtime another medical team came to my door, I almost cried at the sight of them. I was already in such a desperate state of health and any more poking, prodding, or pressure would be beyond torture. Well, I had no idea what they were there to do to me, but apparently Claudette did. And before they could cross the threshold of my room Claudette, in her stern New Jersey accent, said, “Absolutely not!! She’s been through enough today! Tomorrow!” And she shut the door on them. They really need to make a Nurse Claudette action figure… and let her wear the darn nurse hat!

So it was now Wednesday afternoon, and all the torture of the procedures and tests were over. It was back to a waiting game – waiting for something, anything, to make a difference. For the rest of the afternoon, I just sat there in my chair, eyes closed, and used whatever I had left in me to breathe. Brenda sat across from me, reading a few interesting articles out loud, texting a few close friends about my latest update, and eventually loading up a few Netflix comedy specials on her iPhone for us to watch. I don’t think I heard a single joke because when I wasn’t completely focused on breathing I was consumed with these two thoughts:

1) I’m probably not gonna beat this.
2) At what point do we inform family they might want to get on a plane to come say their goodbyes?

I opened my eyes and looked over at Brenda. She was looking down watching the show on her phone and chuckling. Her smile is one of my favorite smiles on the planet. I am sorry you have to be here, Brenda, instead of in Manhattan visiting Columbia University (her alma mater), or experiencing the Ground Zero Memorial right where Uncle Jeff’s office was and you worked those summers. But I am so thankful that you are here. If you know Brenda, she is somewhat the opposite of me. Yes, she can be as loud and as goofy as the next person – c’mon, she has every dancing Hamster toy known to man lining the windowsills of her 7th grade English classroom –  but her natural state is a laid back introvert reading a book somewhere. Except for the moments of fear she had at my coughing fits in the ER, she had been calm through all this, confident in the doctors’ care, and had always kept things light. I looked over at her again as this time a joke made her laugh out loud. No, not today. I will wait to talk to her about informing the family in the morning. Why upset her sooner than I had to? And especially not while Jim Gaffigan was doing his “Hot Pockets” routine.

I would come to find out much later that Claudette informed Brenda first thing that morning how critical things were, and if I got any worse they would have to intubate me (something they had not told me). So Brenda knew more than I did. She knew the next 12 hours would determine which way this was ultimately gonna go, and she kept it to herself, was calm and steady. But now I’m thinking she was the one who really needed to watch those comedy shows.

As nighttime descended, so did my fears. Before I could even ask, Brenda stated outright that she wasn’t going anywhere (“You’re not asking me, Gretchen; I’m TELLING you: I’m staying the night!”). Since I was in my chair, there was a perfectly good bed for her to sleep in. I was so overwhelmed with relief that I wouldn’t have to spend another unbearable night alone that I cried. Well… I would have cried if not for the facts that 1) I couldn’t breathe and 2) the Lasix had drained me of all my fluids.

So Brenda stayed overnight with me at the hospital and that became its own comedy show. When someone entered the room, there was the privacy curtain, then there was the bed, then next to the bed all the medical monitors and machines, and finally on the other side of all that is where I sat in my chair (often a new tech would not see me at first on the other side of the machines) The first night Brenda stayed over, a tech came in the middle of the night to check the liquid oxygen levels and administer one of my many shots. It was dark and they naturally headed for the person in the bed. My sister woke up just in time to point at me saying, “She’s the patient! She gets the shot!” Well, when I was on as much medication and machines as I was, I had a lot of nurses coming in to check the machines, and/or give me a shot. By the end of the night this became the routine: Brenda would be asleep in the bed, the curtain would pull back, and before the tech got near the bed, her arm would shoot out from under the blankets, point in my direction, and you’d hear a muffled, “Her!” By the early morning, I swear she did this without even waking up.

I still didn’t sleep at all that night, but having Brenda there in the room with me eased my anxiety. I was reminded of the nights when we were kids in our family cabin in Tahoe (when we had to share a room) Her snoring would always keep me awake and I would constantly bark at her to roll over. But in my hospital room that night, the sound of her snoring was the most comforting sound there was.

Thursday morning began to dawn and we all knew that it was D-Day for me. I looked at the clock, it was those early hours like the day before and the anguish of my unchanged reality begin to set in. Every breath I took was still just as difficult and painful as the one before it and the one before it. But as the sky began to lighten, something in my body slowly did as well. I didn’t know what but I knew that somewhere in me, something was feeling… better.

Between my labored breaths, I took inventory. What was it? And after a few moments I realized what had changed… I had no fever. The fever cycles had finally broken! And the constant excruciating pain that came with them was finally subsiding! The nurse would explain later the Lasix not only helped drain the extra fluid in my body but also helped flush out some of the lactic acid. But early that Thursday morning I didn’t care what the medical explanation was. All I knew was that the downward slide of my health (and possibly my life) had been stopped, my body had begun to get its grip back, and it was holding on tightly. I knew I would pull through this. Apparently the Lord still had plans for me on this earth, but, whatever those plans were, they would have to wait until I would get my lungs and health back online. Yes, it could be a long-haul recovery, and yes, I would certainly have to come off the road for a bit, but by God’s amazing grace I was still here.

As was Brenda, snoring away in the bed next to me.