Detour from Normal (16 page)

To pass the time, I decided to play with Washington. Washington loves to fetch the wood—a ten-inch scrap of two-by-four from one of my forgotten projects. He especially loves to retrieve it from the pool. I opened the sliding glass door to the backyard and yelled the magic words, "Washington, get the wood..." Washington raced outside to the grass and froze in a pointer stance—his crazed eyes locked on mine, one paw in the air, and his tail perfectly parallel to the ground—eager for me to find the wood and throw it.

Washington had been raised to follow orders but was bred to disobey constructively and protect his blind owner in the event of danger. He'd never had an opportunity to disobey constructively, however, having not made it to that part of his training. So he steadfastly waited for a command before doing anything. I found the wood and tossed it in the pool. Washington rushed to the pool's edge and ground to a halt. He then sat, his entire body quivering in anticipation, and waited for the command to fetch. "OK!" I yelled, and Washington leaped into the pool. He was always like that. He'd sit for the longest time or sometimes pace around the pool, looking from the wood floating in it to me and awaiting the command, which I invariably gave.

Initially at Pinecrest I'd thought I might have lost all my emotions, not just the negative ones. That caused me to wonder,
what's left when you have no emotions?
I concluded it was choice. Even without emotions, people could still make bad choices. That was my explanation for people not changing, like Carlos, after interacting with me. Otherwise I just couldn't figure out why everyone wasn't becoming like me. I
decided to try something with Washington: I let him have a choice. The next time I threw the wood in the pool, I didn't say OK; I just sat and did nothing. I didn't speak, I didn't move, and I showed no emotion whatsoever that he might interpret as OK. I just sat placidly and stared at him. I let him choose to get the wood on his own. It wasn't long before he figured it out.

Washington had always been dedicated in regard to taking orders, and now I had freed him to make his own decisions. Though I could sense that it gave him great joy, he was still very hesitant to disobey. It was hilarious watching him struggle through the painful process of breaking rules. I laughed at him like a madman, which probably wasn't doing me any favors with anyone who could hear me. One thing I forgot to mention about losing your negative emotions: you lose your inhibition as well and laugh from the heart—really letting it all out.

The more I played with Washington, the more emotionally connected I felt toward him. It was as if I understood his language or, more appropriately, his body language for the first time: once imperceptible cues were suddenly as obvious as shouting. It became apparent that as Washington became more comfortable with his new freedom, he was taunting me. He'd bring the wood to me, hold it where I could grab it, and then pull it away a few inches when I tried. Eventually he'd let me have it, or he'd just drop it and back away. When I'd throw it into the pool, he'd occasionally pretend he was going to jump, then he'd pause and give me a silly look. I recognized for the first time that Washington was a clown, and that realization led me to laugh even more.

Spent from playing with and laughing at Washington, I decided to go upstairs and lie down. I clicked down the thermostat a few degrees, took off my shoes, turned on the ceiling fan, and plopped down on a real bed.
Our queen-sized bed is nothing fancy—we actually got it used from a friend who was upgrading. It was ten years old then, and that had probably been ten years ago. Recently, however, Beth had put a three-inch slab of memory foam atop the mattress. That brought new life to the dying bed. After lying on a thin foam slab for the previous few days, it felt like heaven. I doubted I would be able to sleep, but I just wanted to lie there in the cool breeze of the ceiling fan and relax in the comfort of my own home as the air conditioning worked overtime to reach a perfect temperature. I closed my eyes and began to daydream of wonderful possibilities.

Sometime later I heard the unmistakable sound of a Cummins diesel-powered truck entering the neighborhood. As it shifted through its gears, its pistons clattered louder and louder until finally it seemed it must be right in front of my home. Then, with a hiss of air brakes, the engine slowed to an idle. A few moments later, my front door opened momentarily and then closed. I heard the shuffle of feet and the sound of voices trailing off downstairs. Unable to ignore the odd sounds, I got up from the bed, opened the bedroom door, and went downstairs. I opened the front door to see what was going on and, to my surprise, there was a full-sized fire truck idling not more than fifty feet away.

My first thought was that something had happened to Beth. It hadn't been that long ago that she'd thrown her back out and was unable to move without excruciating pain. The paramedics had come, loaded her onto a gurney, and off to the hospital we went. Another time she'd had a TIA—transient ischemic attack—and collapsed into my arms as we left a movie theater. That time I had literally carried her into the hospital myself. I quickly ran back into the house and toward the family room.

What I saw next I couldn't initially grasp. Standing in the room was my sister-in-law; my best friend, Tim; Beth; and four firemen. As
I skidded to a halt, all of them stared at me. It didn't take a genius to realize that this wasn't about Beth at all—it was about me. It turned out that Beth had called Tim, worried about my many odd behaviors. He told her that if she was afraid something was going to happen with me, she should call the fire department. In our area, the big truck always responds first, and then the ambulance follows if it's needed.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"You need to go to the emergency room to get another blood test," Beth's sister, Kim, explained.

"What are you talking about? I've had gallons of blood tested."

"We want you to go to Scottsdale Samaritan to get some more blood tests done," said Beth.

The truth was that Beth feared I had an infection, abscess, or some other abnormality in my brain that was making me act differently. Besides recommending that she call the fire department, Tim had suggested that she take me to Scottsdale Samaritan, where they have an excellent neurology department. For some reason they didn't think I would go along with seeing a neurologist, so they agreed to convince me that I needed more blood work instead.

"I'm not getting any more blood work. I've asked people to test for adrenaline, and no one will do it. I'm just a patient and nobody listens to me. Any other blood tests I've had have been a waste of time. Everything shows my blood is just fine."

"You have to go," pleaded Kim. "There's something wrong with you."

"Well, aside from having difficulty sleeping, I feel just fine. Unless someone is going to help with that, I don't see the point."

The debate wasn't going anywhere, so I changed tactics and tried to convince the firemen that I was OK. I spoke with them for about ten
minutes. They asked me classic paramedic questions, shined a penlight in my eyes, and conversed among themselves and then with the others in my home. Soon, to my relief, they hefted their gear and walked single file out the front door and back to their truck.

After the firemen departed, the battle resumed. No one could provide a sound reason to have more blood tested, but it became apparent that if I didn't agree, things were only going to worsen. In the end I would likely be taken by force either to a hospital or a place like the one I'd gotten out of just over an hour earlier.

"OK," I finally said, agreeing to the blood test.

Kim and Tim accompanied us to support in any way they could. There was no formal plan beyond showing up at Scottsdale Samaritan and crossing fingers that a doctor with perfect neurological credentials would be on duty. Not surprisingly, it didn't work out that way. At 6:00 p.m. I was admitted like any other patient—with the exception that everyone was told I was manic and informed of my AMA (against medical advice) release from Pinecrest less than two hours earlier. Beth asked for a neuro consult right away, and the ER doctor refused.

Nearly all we did for the next nine hours was wait. They did take my blood pressure: 166/93. Not only was that much higher than my healthy normal of 120/70, but it's considered "stage two" hypertension (high blood pressure) and normally requires treatment or medication. No one batted an eye at the blood pressure reading. Beth recounted the entire story, from my admission to Desert Hope to my AMA release from Pinecrest, to everyone she could to no avail, and I asked at least four people if they could test me for adrenaline: the ER doctor, a nurse, a nurse's aide, and even a phlebotomist, a specialist who draws blood for a living. They all ignored me. After three hours—at 9:00 p.m.—I was
asked to take a standard urine test. No one ever did a blood test or any other test on me that evening, and we never heard any results from the urine test.

In fact, there is a blood test for adrenaline. It's called a catecholamine test. It measures the amounts of the hormones epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine, and dopamine in the blood. The adrenal glands produce large amounts of catecholamines in reaction to various forms of stress. Catecholamines increase heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and mental alertness. They also reduce blood flow to the skin and increase it to major organs such as the heart, brain, and kidneys. There is also a twenty-four-hour urine test for catecholamine, which is more accurate than the blood test.

Over the next few hours, I was shuttled from one room to another. Few people asked me anything and those who did were very uneasy. It was completely the opposite of my experiences at Desert Hope, where everyone seemed genuinely interested in my well-being. Here everyone seemed hostile and on edge. As the evening progressed, Beth began to run out of steam. No one would help her, and she was worn out from all of her desperate actions throughout the day.

At 11:00 p.m. I turned to Tim. "Could you call a cab for the both of us?" I asked him in a quiet voice so no one would hear. "If I leave, Beth
will leave. She's beat. She's going to collapse if she doesn't get some rest." Tim didn't respond. I spoke more loudly only six inches from his face and still got no response. It was different than being ignored; he'd blocked me completely—as if he'd gone deaf and blind. Tim and I went back over twenty years. We'd worked side by side for long hours in foreign countries and started a business venture together; we'd played sports, shared hobbies, went to lunch, and talked on a regular basis. Now he showed no reaction to me whatsoever. I wondered if he was possessed. More and more it seemed that everyone around me was like that. Nothing I said or did seemed to register. I had no ID, money, credit cards, or phone, having only gotten out of Pinecrest hours before, or I would have gotten a cab on my own. It was soon 11:30 p.m. and we were still waiting to see one more person: the social worker.

"Beth, this is ridiculous. Why are we waiting for a social worker? Don't you remember the social worker at Pinecrest a few days ago? What is a social worker going to tell us? You need to get home and get some rest. Let's get out of here. It's a waste of time," I pleaded.

Beth seemed irrational. "We have to see the social worker," she insisted. "They told me she'd be with us shortly, as soon as she's finished with her other patient."

Before long it was 12:30 a.m.—a new day, May 22—and there was still no sign of the social worker. Beth was all but catatonic by then. I'd never seen her so depleted. She could no longer focus or carry on a normal conversation. I, on the other hand, was used to not sleeping and felt perfectly fine, though irritated by the entire situation.

"Beth, we need to get out of here. A social worker isn't going to do anything for us. It's twelve thirty. We've been here over six hours. Let's go home."

"No, we need to wait," Beth mumbled weakly.

"Come on, Beth, let's go. We can just walk out. No one will even notice." I attempted to stand her up from the chair she was sitting on. Shockingly, she grabbed onto it with both hands and became rigid. I reconsidered that decision and instead coaxed her from the chair to the bed where she might at least get some rest. After helping her to lie down, I lifted her head to adjust the pillow and she suddenly jerked.