Bleeder (15 page)

As if weighted down with ice floes, the sable river slugs on. Steadily, it slaps the rocks below me with a sound like a low and mournful moan. I breathe in the night and breathe out a cold mist that plumes before me and disappears as fading vapor in the moonlit sky. The winter chills my lungs, chaps my lips, and stings my nose and ears—freezing off all feeling.

EARS

M
ARCH 1994.
P
OLLEN MISTS THROUGH THE AIR
. A
PINCH OF GREEN
dusts cars, flours the trees, and sifts upon the college lawn, only made airborne again when a strong breeze unsettles it. Allergic to it, my ears are strangled by fluid. I hear the world as if in a large vacuum, and the noise sounds thick and distant, while speech in a crowded room is impossible to discern. Voices have the low cadence of an immutable rumble.

When I phone Chapel Hill, the Hemophilia Center sets up an appointment with an ear, nose, and throat specialist. A week passes. Then, with my clogged ears, my leaky nose, and my watering eyes, I drive through the springtime rain from Wilmington to Chapel Hill to see this ear, nose, and throat specialist. Dr. Cameron whips into the room where I wait (and have been waiting for two hours) and he introduces himself while rooting around my ears, nose, and throat with a funneled penlight. He pushes back his slick-black hair and as he begins to speak, I can tell that Dr. Cameron is all about speed.

“You’re clogged up good,” he says, reassuring me that I’ve come to the right place for repair. He squirts a numbing spray into my nostrils and then forces a probe through me so he can view whatever it is he needs to see. “Adenoids,” he says, the scope retreating from my nose and leaving my nostril stinging. “Your adenoids are swollen.”

“Not good?” I massage my nose stem, wiggling it around to soothe the ache.

“Nope. Not good at all.”

The doctor skirts through my chart, grimaces his mouth, and grunts underneath his breath. Then he sighs and addresses me.

“Usually we just take them out, but here,” he points to the chart I can’t see, “it says you have hemophilia
and
that you’re HIV positive. Wow! That’s gotta hurt. Are you mild or severe?” he asks, continuing to read.

“Severe,” I say, understanding that his question concerns my hemophilia. “The severest,” I add. “Less than 1 percent clotting.”

“Know what your counts are?”

This I pair with HIV, it being a virus most concerned with numbers and counting. “Low,” I say. “The lowest.”

“Hmmm,” he thinks. “If we go in and remove those adenoids, we risk bleeding
and
we risk infection.”

“What are the odds that the fluid in my ear will disappear and that I can hear again?” I laugh halfheartedly.

“Not that good. Maybe by late summer, perhaps fall . . . but the problem there is that it, too, can become infected. We need to get that fluid out of there and keep it out.” He wheels a stool to my beside, sliding on it as he rolls toward me. “What do you think about tubes?” I shrug indifferently. “We can pop some tubes in your ears to equalize the pressure and allow your ears to drain. We use it all the time on little kids and it works fine.”

“So, why don’t you use it on adults?”

“Sometimes we do. But the tubes only last four, five years and usually by adulthood, the problems are more permanent than when you’re a kid.” He looks to the wall, the clock. “I think it’s the best option for you. Whattaya think?”

“How will it work? Will it hurt?” I am uncomfortable at a procedure seldom done on adults.

“Won’t hurt a bit. You’ll be out to the world under anesthesia. It’ll be a day procedure. You’ll come in early, get your factor of course, and we’ll pop those tubes in, one in each ear. When you wake, we’ll monitor you a bit, then you’ll go home. You’ll need someone to drive you and I don’t think
I’d plan anything for the next day because you may still be groggy from the anesthesia, but otherwise, it’s a piece of cake.”

“Okay, then. Let’s do it.”

Several weeks later, I arrive at the hospital to have my tubes inserted. As I slip into an operation gown, Dr. Cameron rushes into the room, and he pumps my hand, slaps me on the back, and assures me that it’s going to be a cakewalk. “You’ll be done before you know it.”

When I am laid out on the operation table, my heart palpitates with fear. Not since childhood have I had an operation, and I am nervous. An orderly positions me on the table while a nurse begins the IV drip, which contains my factor as well as the anesthesia.

“Now count back from ten,” she advises as I watch the medicine flow through the tubing. I count ten, nine, eight in rapid succession, and she tells me to slow down, that I’m going too fast. I laugh. She laughs. I laugh again, but louder and more silly. I try to count again but keep laughing. My heavy eyes roll in my head as loose marbles, and soon they no longer catch light.

When I come to in the recovery room, I swivel my head around to take in the surroundings and then lazily raise a hand to my ears where I feel gauze packed tight against them. Inside they itch. A nurse notices me and shuffles over to take my blood pressure, my pulse, my temperature.

“The operation went fine,” she says. “You’ll be hearing again in no time,” she adds with a smile.

I nod my head in understanding, return her smile, but when they bring in my mom and she asks questions about my bleeding ears, I start to doubt the surgery’s success.

“That’s an awful lot of blood,” she says, scrunching up her face with concern. “Is he supposed to bleeding like that? You were giving him his factor during the operation, weren’t you? Was it not enough?”

“Give it time,” Dr. Cameron responds. “It’ll heal. Just give him his factor every day for the next five days, and that bleeding will stop. He’ll be good as new.”

In three weeks when I return for my postoperative checkup, I suspect problems. Despite my constant factoring to stop it, blood still oozes from my left
ear canal, and the Q-tip reddens when I gently probe. Additionally, it hurts and I can’t hear. I wait to see what the specialist has to say.

The fast man enters, flips through my chart lightning quick.

“How’s the recovery going?” he asks.

“Not sure.” I point to my left ear. “Still bleeding.”

“Let’s take a look.” He wheels his stool over, shines his probe into my ear, and declares that my tube has been dislodged. “We need to pop one back in there,” he announces as he begins giving orders, directing the nurses to gather things together. “Is anybody up here with you today?” he asks, spinning around to me.

“My girlfriend. She’s waiting in the lobby.” I pitched today’s visit to Kaitlin as a day-trip to Chapel Hill, where I’d make a quick stop at Ear, Nose, and Throat, and where we could then have the rest of the afternoon to do as we wished. But now things are changing.

“That’s good,” Dr. Cameron says. “You may not feel like driving after this. Some patients get a little woozy from the numbing drops I’ll have to give you.”

“My truck’s a manual, though. She can’t drive that.”

The doctor pauses, the first hesitation I’ve known him to take. “Well,” he resumes, “we can either do it today, or have you come back another time. My thinking is you need to have it done now. We do this kind of thing all the time, so there shouldn’t be any complications. So, what do you think?”

“Well . . .” I pause, feeling as if I’m on a game show. “I guess let’s go for it. You’re the doctor.”

“All right, then.”

“Is it gonna hurt?” I’m thinking about pain: all the pain of my unordinary life. Pain lingers in my elbow, in my legs, in my ankles. Pain stays in my heart. But I try to keep it out of my head.

“You’ll feel a little discomfort,” the doctor says. “But that’s it.” This is the newest catch phrase of the medical profession—“a little discomfort”—and I realize that it’s going to hurt like hell. But I want to hear again. “Here’s the drops to ease the pain,” Dr. Cameron says as he drips them into my ear. They slip down my canal and burn, and sting, and wet my inner ear, but, alas, they do not work. I feel everything.

Dr. Cameron forces a metal spike into my left ear, and I can do nothing to mute my childish cries. I squirm. I squeal. I bite my lips between my teeth and dig my fingernails into the vinyl chair. I fear that Dr. Cameron is going to pierce my eardrum and drive it through my brain, quieting me forever.

“Almost there,” he says as my feet kick wildly, my head restrained by a nurse.

“Almost there,” he repeats. “Almost, almost.” Pain. Pain. “Okayyyy . . . Got it.” The sharp, intolerable hurt subsides and is replaced by a dull throb thumping in my head.

“The tube’s back in,” Dr. Cameron says, sliding off his gloves.

He gives me some more drops—a lot of good they are going to do—and after making another appointment for two weeks later, I am ushered on my way. Dr. Cameron weaves around me, wishes me a good recovery, and exits into another patient’s room. And as I leave, I feel woozy, like Dr. Cameron thought I might.

I wobble into the lobby where Kaitlin waits for me.

“What took you so long?” she asks, rising from her chair. “It’s almost one o’clock and you’ve been back there since ten.”

I attempt to answer, but the world carousels me. Kaitlin grabs my arm.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

And then my barfing begins.

I totter toward a trash can, and my insides pour into it. When I stop, I waver drunkenly, and I notice that the waiting room audience watches me, perhaps hoping that their visit will go a little better than mine. An elderly lady whispers, “Oh my stars,” and I smile to her. I am worse than drunk; I am sick and drunk. Then, as if choreographed, nurses encircle me and I am quickly coddled away in a coronation of white.

“Let’s get you in back,” one of them says, guiding my arms, and I give into my dizzy lean and allow them to help me.

Away from the waiting area and in the patient room corridor, I stop. “I have to throw up again,” I say, and a green pan is shoved to me. Mouth agape, insides rivering out of me, I wretch uncontrollably in the open door of another patient’s room. The man’s eyes widen as he looks on, and when I have a break, I give him hope. “Yours’ll go better,” I say before I am pulled down the hall.

The nurses return me to the room I just left. “It’s the drops,” one of them says, spreading the white paper across the bed. “They’ve gotten inside his ear.”

“Oh, child,” the other nurse responds. “I hope not.” She looks at her watch as I begin to vomit again. “Gonna be a long day if you’re right.”

I lean up to catch my breath and regain my senses, but everything continues to spin, so I tilt my head back toward the green pan the nurse holds. She yells to another nurse. “I need a clean one. This one’s filling up.” I rest, hurl again, rest, hurl, rest, hurl.

Soon the nurses have an assembly line set up for my barfing. Nurse 1 passes a clean pan to Nurse 2 who holds this underneath my vomit. Nurse 2 then hands her full pan to Nurse 3 who disappears and returns with another green pan that she gives to Nurse 1. This continues while my stomach muscles grow taut. I feel as if I’ve been doing crunches for half an hour, as if I am ribbing my stomach like those Bowflex men on the commercials. My head dizzies and my mouth tastes like regurgitation, while my insides spill and splash into that little green pan Nurse 2 holds. Oh, I am sick.

At six, the nurse assembly line slows, for I have slowed. I rest between bouts, while the nurses dally around me, consult their watches, and hold onto their pans. Dr. Cameron presses into my room. He gazes at the clock, taps his foot. Nearby, Kaitlin flips through a magazine. The hallway outside has quieted; the rustle of charts and the rush of nurses is replaced by the calm of an ending workday. I am the last patient.

“What time are you being picked up?” Dr. Cameron asks Kaitlin.

“My parents should be here within the hour,” she answers. “They live just outside of Raleigh.” Understanding that I won’t be able to drive until the drops evaporate from my inner ear—which may take several more hours—Kaitlin has called for a ride. She is to drive her parents’ car, while her father will steer my manual behind us. It seems we thought of calling my parents, who live two hours away, but I hardly remember. I have not been any help in the planning of my evacuation.

Dr. Cameron looks around the office, then to the clock. “Well, we’re almost done here, and this building’s about to be locked tight for the night.” Dr. Cameron fires quick glances from Kaitlin to me to a nurse. “We’re going
to shuttle you to the main hospital, where you can wait for your ride and where you’ll be closer to help should anything worsen.” I understand that I am about to be moved. I understand, too, that Dr. Cameron fails to specify who is to help me should I worsen, but, as if reading my thoughts, he adds, “But that’s not going to happen. You’ll be fine as soon as those drops dry up.” He darts his eyes to me, to Kaitlin, and then to his pit-crew nurses. “Is he ready to be moved?”

“That suppository ain’t done much good. He’s still throwing up every fifteen to twenty minutes,” Nurse 2 says.