desarraigo

February 23, 2004 - a night to be remembered. A woman, no - a girl, only a week before having bared herself physically and emotionally to the man she thought she loved is sitting in bed eating brownies. Earlier in the day she was at her friend's house eating Greek honey from a monastery and complaining about how her sinuses were blocked up. Her friend suggested that she clear her sinuses with hot steam. Several hours later she would completely get over her cold - due to experiencing severe physical and emotional shock. Having boiling water in a bowl in front of you while you're sitting on the edge of your bed with a towel over your head is - in retrospect- a very stupid idea. Needless to say - the bowl of boiling water was somehow spilled into said girls lap.

So I did what I could - I was wearing pyjama pants and quickly shucked them off - running half naked to the bathroom. I turned the shower on and thought "yeah, I can do this - I'll stand in the shower and cool these burns off and I'll sleep on it and be fine". It wasn't until I heard Niall's voice in the other room on the phone with emergency services: "Hi, yes, my girlfriend burnt her vagina!" (I really didn't) The operator's response: "Was it intentional?". Seriously? Actually? By this time I was basically hyperventilating and my heart rate was starting to go through the roof. I sat on the toilet and Niall came in to turn the shower off. Emerg was on their way. And I had scalds on my inner thighs - and they were stinging like hell, and I was half naked, for maybe the second time in my life in front of this man - who I sort of lived with. In a few hours my "shame" or whatever you like to call it would be semi-permanently removed from me.

Three minutes later there was a knock at the door. And a man came in, and the part I most vividly remember is how he looked at me, in the tiny bathroom illuminated by a red Japanese lantern which cast a pink pallor over everything, with so much concern in his eyes and began talking to keep me from going tachycardic. His name was Mike. He assessed my situation - he wasn't with the ambulance - he was with one of the Emerg. 4x4's that responds immediately to these situations. He took out a paper blanket spread it over my lower half and dumped basically a liter of cool saline over it in the next 5 minutes while we waited for the ambulance, albeit gently. He held my hand.

I walked up the stairs and out the door to the ambulance - making jokes the whole way - that's how in shock I was. And I remember the burning sensation, it was horrible and wouldn't go away - yet it wasn't the worst pain in my life. But perhaps the body forgets. The worst part was they couldn't do anything for me - they couldn't give me anything until I got to the hospital. But they stayed and held my hand and talked. They assured me that I wasn't an idiot although I really felt like one - I struggled with that for a while afterwards.

They saw me naked in every sense of the word. Once I got to the hospital they had to leave for their next call - I think I felt separation anxiety. So then I got catheterized (convenient) and had an IV drip of fentanyl (woot woot). Let's just say it was a very interesting 2.5 weeks at Sunnybrook Women's College Hospital. I had my own room - it had a view of the helipad. It was a learning experience. One I'll never forget.

It's interesting how my relationship with Niall was bookended by visits to the hospital via Ambulance. It's also funny/queer that both of my paramedics names were Mike. The second time I took an ambulance was when I lived with Niall and my best friend Skye. There was a long day at work followed by eggs benedict at Fran's, I'm not really sure to this day whether it was actually food poisoning or just heat stroke or something, but by 9pm that night I was feeling horrible. Coming back from a bookstore by streetcar was a dangerous ordeal - I felt nauseous. I assumed it was just me reacting to the heat of the day and the smells of the streetcar but by the time I got home I was ready to expel the contents of my stomach. So I did. More than several times over the course of the night. By 2am I was incredibly dehydrated and couldn't keep water down - no matter how thirsty I was, I kept throwing up water. Finally I gave in and called Telehealth and they told me that I had to visit a doctor within the next 4 hours. Even when my stomach was empty it was trying to empty itself and the cramps were getting so bad that my abdominal muscles hurt for the next few days. I felt so nauseous that I could hardly get up from a curled up position on our couch. So I dialled 911. Niall just kind of gave me a look of disbelief and was like "Seriously?". It was late August and Toronto was in a heatwave so I was only wearing a shirt and tiny shorts, he kept telling me to put some pants on but I was too far gone.

And that's how I met the second Mike. This one I remember more clearly - I had some sort of confusing attachment to him for the next few days. A crush, I suppose. He had blonde hair in a ponytail and was just great. He held my hand and a bucket for me, offered to carry me down our stairs, but again I walked. We made hilarious smalltalk in the ambulance - I was charming even as I was feeling like shit. He couldn't get the IV in. I guess I was too dehydrated. He tried 3 times - but we were in a moving ambulance. Got to the hospital and I felt sick again, he got me a sick bag and stayed with me while I went through the motions. (Niall was skulking in the background) At one point I was dry heaving so hard that it brought tears to my eyes continuously so I was technically crying. He smoothed my hair away from my face and wiped away my tears. It was totally the stuff romance novels are made of. He was reluctant to leave, but he did, and the nurse finally found a vein and the sweet delicious saline dripped into me and it felt like nothing else in this world.

So yeah - those were my two experiences with paramedics - I was lucky enough to be at least semi-cogent during both of them, and each time I was stunned at how great these people were, truly a rare breed of human among us.