Contemplating the Meaning of Life from the Emergency Room

The walls are a mixture of dull cream and a yellowing tan. The kind of yellowing that makes one wonder if it was nicotine stained, or if it was just a poor decorative choice. Blue couches line the walls and center of the artificially lit room. The constant buzz of the bright lights gets irksome, but at least the wall art are photos of bright flowers.

The room is 2/3 full. Back in April when I had to go to the ER two times in two weeks, only a handful or less of people were here. Many of the patients wait gracefully, sitting and staring or looking at their phones. Many are elderly, waiting with their rapidly aging sons or daughters. Two men are alone. One young woman, aside from myself, is alone. In the end, we are all alone, are we not?

Despite my blood pressure swinging wildly and my heart pounding out of my chest, I can find some strange solace being here amongst the ill.

A woman is being wheeled in by her teenage daughter. Suddenly, she slips into half consciousness, and melts onto the floor. The nurses swarm her. They ask her questions. Is she conscious? Can she move? A stretcher is wheeled in, and three people gently lift her onto the gurney. They wheel her away with her teenage daughter fretting behind.

It frightened me; this woman’s experience. A stark reminder that people do get very sick, and people do die every day.

The waiting room never got totally quiet during the ordeal. People watched, but a few people kept chatting. How could they? How could they just carry on? But, life goes on. Conversations continue. Moments of terror become nothing but memory.

Still, I feel both unsettled and at peace. A strange feeling. Unsettled by the fact that one day I will die, but brought to peace that somehow we are all here together. Gratitude holds me over, keeps me feeling intermittent waves of peace. Living in the moment, no matter how awful, keeps me grounded. Yet there’s always a healthy dose of fear lurking in the wake. Radical acceptance is all I can do. I am here, now. This is where I am. This is what will be.

I get a room after 2.5 hours. It is yellowing and dusty, even less appealing than the waiting room. A nurse hooks me up to a pulse oximeter and blood pressure cuff. She explains that despite beds lining the ER corridors, they’re not that busy. After the other regional hospital closed, this is their new normal - though she laments not having better equipment. They’re low on supplies but getting by. This is one of the better hospitals in the country. She sticks several stickers onto my chest and attaches electrodes. Heart monitoring is something I get anytime I’m in the ER.

I listen to sounds outside of my closed door. Chatting, laughing, concerned voices on cell phones. Yet here I lay, with a resting heart rate of 107, and a feel of crawling skin, headache, nausea, anxiety, muscle pains, weakness, and fatigue. Despite many of these symptoms being more my chronic normal, something isn’t quite right.

I text my family. My mother, my cousin, and my husband. The doctor comes in. He listens to my symptoms, orders lab work and fluids, and promptly leaves. An hour and a half passes.

Eventually, they draw my blood and begin my fluids. Another hour or hour and a half wait. The TV in my room is broken, and because I cannot bend my arms being hooked up to all the equipment, I cannot play the games I brought to pass the time. I call my mother and chat idly as my lab results trickle in.

My white blood cell count is elevated. My thyroid hormones are slightly out of balance - overactive. A few other labs come in out of range. All in all, they believe it’s an adverse reaction to the prednisone I took for an asthma exacerbation over the weekend. I was also dehydrated, which impacts my condition direly in respect to symptomology. After 6.5 long hours, I am going to be discharged. However, they desperately need my room. Would it be alright if I sat in a chair in the ER hallway while I wait for the paperwork?

In the chair, I witness more of humanity. The narrow halls are lined with stretchers full of patients. Some are ones I’d seen before in the waiting room; others were new faces.

Unfortunately, they placed me in the heart of the action. I had to get up five times before requesting a new seat. For normal people, standing suddenly to move out of the way is no issue. However, due to my postural orthostatic tachycardia, standing abruptly is the worst thing I can do for my condition. My heart rate skyrockets, and I’m at high risk for fainting. Thankfully after I spoke up, the tech was able to move me to a less busy intersection.

All in all, in this experience I found enlightenment. Everything was okay, despite my feeling that I was dying when I first sat in the ER with a 127 resting heart rate and a 147/94 blood pressure. Funny enough, life goes on. It is going on; and if I’m not careful, I’ll miss it. That would be the true unfortunate death.