My Dying Blood

One of the first things you notice is that music dies.

If music is an expression of sound and silence, and in our particularly North American way divided into repetitive tones and predictable timing, it dies when your hemoglobin/red blood cell count reaches around 80.

It seems the brain doesn't like to process fast things, things relying on quick thinking, things relying on reactions and timing. So music goes, relegated to the back of the brain in the form of an abstract concept. I can hardly understand what it is to play in a band. I can listen to music, but not from an emotional state. Just from a distance. Country sounds like metal sounds like techno.

So music dies. Buddy Holly notwithstanding.

Like one doctor said on my last stay,

"It's like that movie, Apollo 13. When they lose their oxygen tanks and the guy has to put up the sign on the controls so he won't push them. Then he calls Houston and says, 'We're getting kind of punchy up here,' it's like that."

You walk less. More time in bed. You talk slower. Ideas, concepts, all process in bits and chunks, sometimes trailing off into nothing.

Day 1 Hemoglobin count. 150. This is high and healthy. Lots of red blood cells still supplying oxygen to my body.

Day 2. 129? It's dying off. Eleven points isn't bad.

Day 3. 110. 19 points in a single day? Have I ever hemolized this badly? No. I don't remember this.

And so forth. Until I reach 70. Then they transfuse. Cardiac arrest can happen under 60.

I remember having a blood count close to 60 last time... walk five feet to the bathroom, return to my bed. Wait a half an hour for my heart rate to go down. Feel my jugular pulsate with the effort, chest heaves, vision clouds in at the edges every time my chest squeezes my heart to maintain oxygen in the body.

My dying blood. What would normally make for a great My Chemical Romance song title is actually medical truth.

When they transfuse, it's unnerving. 50mg of Benadryl first, to prevent adverse reactions to the blood. And two tylenol. Benadryl knocks you out, sometimes literally. The bathroom is history - you're pissing in a bottle by your bed. And the effort of standing up is coupled with the feeling of your knees buckling and head spinning.

A nurse walks in with bag, redder and thicker than it should be. She hangs it on the IV pole. Printed on the order is,

"INCOMPATIBLE - TRANSFUSE WITH EXTREME CAUTION."

Nurses transfuse in teams of two, checking and double checking the blood order against my wristbands.

They start the IV, and I watch the blood creep down the medical tubing. Someone's blood. Who knows. It takes three hours a bag, 250ml of someone's blood, keeping me alive. I begin to think in metaphors.

I get the blood, two bags at a time.

I instantly hemolize them. My urine looks like cola.

These things happen, right? People have medical conditions all the time. I'm not being punished. I don't think. Am I? I'm not. I can't be. No, stop thinking. You're thinking too much. These things happen... these things happen. This is a good hospital system, you're in good hands. You have good family. Why am I trying to kill myself? Do I move around? Drink more water? What am I doing wrong? Ask about different medications? My God, that's a lot of steroids. I'm not being punished... I'm not. I'm not. I'm not...

I'm transfused for close to 16 units of blood over the course of my stay... the human body only holds about twenty. As I write this, I still live on someone else's blood.

If I was a Jehovah's Witness, I'd be dead. Or apostate. What a strange thought.

They'll continue to feed blood into me until my surgery.