I spent the day in the ER yesterday.

It began like this. At 4 AM, I awoke to excruciating pain in my left calf. The left gastrocnemius was in total spasm, tied up in a knot so tight, I thought it would rupture the muscle. I'm writhing and silently screaming, and trying to levitate off the bed, or to just whack my leg off at the bear-trap I've somehow stumbled into in my sleep. I get the knot almost kneaded out when another spasm hits. I get that one mostly kneaded out, too, then get up to go to the bathroom.

On the way to the loo, I find that somehow, I've awoken on a cruise ship deck. I'm rolling from side to side, dizzy to the point of losing conciousness. I sit on the toilet, but nearly fall off, again, so dizzy I'm about to pass out. I imagine I'm Elvis, dying on the crapper, and will myself off, up, and back to bed.

I go back to bed, but I'm way too sacred to go back to sleep. I'm sure I may not wake up again, ever, and I imagine being eaten by Bridget Jones' wild dogs.

I get up around 5:30. I still feel weird and dizzy, and my hands have a fine tremor. My leg feels as if someone hit it with a sledgehammer, or as if I had run a marathon the day before. Both legs feel as if they might seize up at any moment.

I have to stick around home for Harvard online registration beginning at 8 AM, otherwise, I'd have called the ambulance right then, and been off to the ER.

Eight o'clock comes, I get online, and pounce on the two courses I must have next semester, Advanced Fiction, taught by Dennis Lehane, and an editing course. After that, I hang out, trying to see if I'll return to normal.

I don't, so I call my doctor. She's out sick, along with six other docs in her practice. Either they've got something really serious and contagious, or they're staging a sickout. In case it's the former, I decline the opportunity to have an appointment with the one remaining doc in her group, the one who's going to get sick next, and is therefore a repository of all things contagious.

I head over to Mt. Auburn hospital, and go to the walk-in clinic. Everyone is there for flu shots, so I'm in quickly. (Must tell more about guy holding the two-masted sail boat model, who has the tissue in the eye problem. Also the staple in the eye problem.)

As soon as the triage nurse hears my symptoms, she plops me into a wheelchair, and motors me down to the ER as fast as she can push me, saying they don't treat anything to do with the heart or possible blood clots in the walk-in clinic. HEY! Wait a minute! Heart? When did this become about the HEART!?

She wheels me into the waiting room for the ER, and I'm promptly pushed away from the intake desk by the intake nurse. She turns me away from her desk, so I'm facing the back wall and some empty chairs. Now I understand how Mom must feel in her chair.

There's a television on, playing first, "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire," now hosted by Meredith Viera. A guy who has four jobs in order to make ends meet loses with only $1000, after MV tells him if there's anyone she'd like to see win, it's him. More people lose early, after phoning a friend on the stupiest questions I've ever heard. Maybe I should give it a go. Of course they'd wheel out the Nobel Laureate questions if I got on!

Then it's time for soap operas, "All My Children," and "One Life to Live." You can tell how long I was sitting there by what's on. It's up way too loud.

I'm becoming more and more alarmed as I sit there. What began as a simple visit to my own doctor for what I'd hoped would be a simple blood test looking at electrolytes, has now blown up into an ER visit, in case it's a blood clot or a heart attack! Are they kidding? I'm neurotic enough about my health as it is without their helpful input.

I sit there imaging what it could be. I remember my mother's first stroke, and how there were no signs of it coming. She just woke up one morning and couldn't tell Dad he'd forgotten to let the water out of the bathtub. I envision having a stroke of my own, only mine affects me physically. Like Bridget Jones' singleton nightmare, no one finds me, and I'm eaten by the wild dogs who break down the door to get at the ever-ripening aroma of me.

I finally gain entry to the magic palace, behind the quietly shooshing automatic doors. Thankfully no loud TVs live here, but it's certainly a clean, well-lighted place, if ever there was one.

They make me strip and put on the lovely "johnnie gown," and then I get up on the gurney.

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More later, as must get some real work done now.

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© 2003 m. lucas