I Don't Wan't To Die. Pt:1

I don’t wanna die!

I don’t wanna die!

I don’t want to die!

Every now and then, I get overcome with this sudden sense of mortality. When we are young, we believe we are immortal; we partake in risky behaviour, we smoke, we jump off cliffs into the lake below, we hitchhike. And why not? We’re got our whole lives to look forward to… what could possibly go wrong now?

Life can go wrong.

We can walk across the street without looking both ways. We can step on a rusted nail. We can get strange diseases. We could have an allergic reaction to medication when the doctors were not aware of said allergy. We could flat-line during a routine open heart surgery. The last two on this list has happened to me.

From 1987 – 1989, I had Wolfe Parkinson White Syndrome. A condition that, while usually only affecting older men, graced me with it’s presence for the bulk of my Elementary school days. WPW is a heart condition that, basically, creates an irregular heart rate… mine often reaching 350 beats per minute.

Before the first anniversary of my first hospital visit, I had become a regular. Every two weeks or so, I would have an ‘episode’ and head to the emergency room to get it all fixed. Very nonchalant, I would excuse myself from my sleepover, my class, recess, and head to the hospital. The “Emerg” (slang for ‘Emergency’… for us in the know) nurses would fill out my paper work for me and call my mom down from the third floor (where she was a nurse). A bucket of ice water, an IV and possibly a few hours later, I would be on my way home… in most cases. I never thought it was weird that someone so young should be admitting themselves into “Emerg”. I did think it was odd of all the adults to be making such a fuss. I mean, really, we’ve been through this before. Several times. It’s beginning to become old hat.

Not that one time. A common medication used in treating irregular heartbeats is Verapamil; a medication I had taken in pill form for some time. On one of my first visits, they decided to hook up a bag of the stuff to my IV. I remember that, but nothing else. Apparently, within seconds of it reaching my system, I bolted upright and projectile vomited. Flopping back down into a convulsion or two, I let my eyes roll and continued vomiting. This is about the time my heart stopped. I was dying.

“Clear!”
“Nothing!
“Again… CLEAR!”
“Nothing”

My heart had stopped and was not starting again. I was not breathing. Nothing that was supposed to be happening was actually happening. The whole time, Mom was there. She was a nurse, she knew what was going on, but could not do anything. He baby was dying right in from of her, and she could do nothing.

“CLEAR!”
“Got it…. Heart rate returning to normal.”

A while later I woke up.

“Mom, my heart is feeling fine again, but I don’t feel well. Can we go home now?”