Emergency Landing - Part 1

In the middle of the night I come to an abrupt halt. My breathing is ragged, my heart rate is beating at an extremely slow place. I feel it. I do not look at my FitBit as I know I could go into panic mode. I struggle to breathe lying down. I call 811, a health care line. I can barely talk. A kind of insanity has taken over my brain. 811 would have an answer for me if I tell them I have been sick for at least two weeks and my internist, whom I had seen on a regularly scheduled visit, had said I had a virus and it would take 6-8 weeks to recover as he had had it himself. No worries, it just takes time.

811 had no answers but the nurse on duty said very slowly, several times, "Call 911, emergency" "Call 911, emergency". I remember thinking I didn't want to bother them with my trivial emergency. But feeling desperate, I do so.

Within 5 minutes a fire truck shows up and two young cheerful fire fighters bang and clatter into my apartment, wiring me up to their equipment assuring me they are trying to locate an ambulance - many aspects of our health care system here, with a doctor as premier of the province! - is a complete and utter disaster. Finally an ambulance shows up and I am carted downstairs. Our elevator, in a seniors' building, is too small to handle a stretcher.

I spend an inordinate amount of time in the ambulance in the parking lot getting hooked up to all sorts of machines while paramedics telegraph my vitals ahead to the hospital. It doesn't sound good. I look at myself remotely from overhead. I tend to do this when stressed and confused. I find a woman in a pair of men's pjs, partially covered by a 1000 year old hoodie which she uses as a robe, now opened to accommodate the wires plastering her body, and on her feet a pair of worn brown slippers. She clutches her cellphone and her wallet in one fist. No one has told her to pack a bag, locate her purse. She might as well be naked, or a laughing stock.

Its 5 o'clock in the morning now as evidenced by a clock in the ambulance. Too early to call anyone. And what would I say? "I made a mistake? Get me off this ambulance?"

I think of the book I have half read. The Netflix series I am half way through. I think of my bestie Helen who left a book half read before she succumbed to the glioblastoma that squeezed the life out of her. 

So this is how I die, I thought. Ridiculously, in an ambulance in a parking lot, in my old pjs, in my shabby old comfie LLBean hoodie 3 sizes too big for me, old weary slippers on my feet, desperately needing a haircut and someone to hold her hand.