It was one year ago today when my mother received a call from John at work. He was not feeling well. He had a terrible headache and blurred vision. In fact, later he would report that he could not see at all briefly. My mom drove to NFCU and picked him up and they went to see his doctor. John's doctor was out but another doctor saw him. John's blood pressure and pulse were extremely elevated, enough so that the doctor called the ambulance to take John immediately to the hospital.
When the ambulance came, the EMTs asked John and my mom which hospital he wanted to go to. When they said Fairfax, the ambulance drive said, "Are you sure?" In hindsight, we now know why the ambulance driver questioned us. Apparently Fairfax hospital is home to horror stories about poor care and substandard treatment. It used to be considered a great hospital and there are still certain wings of the hospital that are well known for their care. However, John's condition did not fall into the category that would provide him with award winning care. In fact, it was just the opposite.
John was admitted to the hospital and my mother called to tell me. I decided to knock out my bike workout and then drive up to see John in the hospital. I was concerned about his health but based on past experience, I thought he would bounce back as usual. In fact, less than a year earlier, John had been sick and was admitted to the hospital. He was throwing up and had some other symptoms. The doctors ran a multitude of tests but never did figure out why he was so sick. John eventually just got better. But one of the tests revealed that John had a tumor on his kidney. One of the doctors commented that it was good he got sick because it allowed the doctors to make this discovery. Shortly after John had recovered from his sickness, he had a follow up with a specialist and in the summer of 2014, he had surgery to remove the tumor from his kidney. A few weeks after renal cancer surgery, John was back at work. He always seemed to recover well and go on being John. He just had one more story to add to his list of health care encounters. Now he was a cancer survivor.
After driving up to NOVA in the I95 traffic, I arrived at the hospital and got the full page of directions from the lobby information desk on how to get to the hospital room. John was on the seventh floor of tower 1 in the neuroscience intensive care unit. The directions included several stair cases as well as multiple elevators and corridors. I finally made it up to John's room. John was very happy to see me although he was in a great deal of pain. His headache was relentless. He was constantly asking us to move the pillow around to try to relieve the pain in his head. The best words that describe how John felt are "absolutely miserable." John has put up with lots of painful surgeries throughout his life as well as broken bones from falling. But this was probably the worst he had felt as an adult in a long time.
I stayed with John and some of my other family members for a while. We visited and tried to make John as comfortable as possible. The nursing staff came in and out occasionally to take John's vitals and to tend to him. At this point, John did not really have a diagnosis. The hospital staff said that he "might" have meningitis. But no one was really sure. I took a dinner break and then after a while, I went back to my Mom's house to go to bed. My plan was to knock out my run the next morning and then go back to the hospital. I had trouble sleeping. I was a bundle of nerves. But the next morning, I got up and ran 19 miles before refueling and going back to the hospital. John was the same. Still miserable. Still no definitive diagnosis from the doctors. I stayed through the afternoon while my mom went home to take a nap.
After spending the rest of the evening at the hospital, I again went back to my mom's house and went to bed. I again did not sleep well. But in the morning, I did my bike ride. I did 5 hours on the bike trail before returning to the hospital. In hindsight, if I had known that we would be losing my brother, I would not have bothered with my workouts. But I thought John would be OK. He always got better. That was just what he did.
After spending the afternoon and early evening at the hospital with no changes in John's condition or diagnosis, I went back to home to RVA so I could return to work the next day. It was a tiring weekend but I knew that in a day or two, John would improve and start getting back to his normal self. That's what I thought of course. As we all know, I was very wrong.
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