My first allergic reaction took place when I was 22 years old. In May of 1980 I'd separated from my first husband after five and a half years together. Our relationship was extraordinarily unhealthy, although I truly didn't realize it at the time. Back then, you see, we didn't much discuss the various forms of abuse that people can foist upon each other. Certainly not to children. It was considered unhealthy, even dangerous, and unsavory to talk about it. I was sixteen when I met the man, and
unbeknownst to me, had been raised to be a ready target for a particular type of predator. His type.
Why is this relevant?
When a person who's spent 25% of their life under the control of a profoundly expert manipulator is separated from that controller, odd things can happen. Instead of feeling joyously freed, their existence is shattered. It takes time and adjustment for them to understand how to live alone, by and for themselves, apart from the control of another. Often they feel nothing at all. Only emptiness. Nothingness.
The condition is common among newly released hostages and prisoners of war as well. Those who have never experienced it or studied it can scorn this state of being, and scorn the person trying to recover from it. While I understand their scepticism, I don't always tolerate it in silence.
There is no gentle way to say this: Their attitude is born of ignorance and hubris, and I'm sorry to see such a lack of empathy for people who have been so deeply damaged. There's an assumption that *They* would never succumb to what they perceive as weakness. My own experience tells me the opposite is often true.
I'm trying to explain the state of mind, and the state of emotion, I was in when my initial, extreme allergic reaction took place. Physical health and emotional health influence each other so strongly that the onset and outcome of physical health crises are completely altered when there's also a lack of emotional health.
Here's how it all went down.
As children, my brother and sister and I were always getting strep throat and taking penicillin for it. One fine day, as a young adult, I got one of my last cases of strep. I took my penicillin. They didn't give me a long enough course of antibiotics - as usual - and I relapsed and had to take them all over again.
On the very last day, just after taking the very last pill, I started itching. I noticed a red lump on my arm.
Weird.
It didn't look at all like a mosquito bite. Maybe a spider bite?
I went to the store and got some Raid. I sprayed in every high and low corner of my old Chicago apartment.
Hmmm. Thing was...I didn't see a single spider. Or mosquito or anything else that might bite.
And the itching was getting fierce.
Really really bad. Maddening.
More lumps were forming. And red rashes.
I called a friend. This friend, J, was my co-worker at the post office, and understood medical things, and was a sweet guy. Totally
unexcitable, and he spoke with the slowest drawl I'd ever heard from a northerner.
To top it all off he had a car. I had no car at the time - I gave the husband everything in our divorce - so I wanted my friend to drive me to the ER.
Since I would normally have taken the bus, he figured out it was something very bad.
And it was.
When we got to Walter Reed ER in downtown Chicago, the one doctor on duty wasn't sure what to do. He was young and unformed, green. The admitting nurse, much more experienced in emergency medicine, took one look and said, --Oh, allergic reaction.
The doc was confused, though, because one symptom was this: I'd made these brilliant red circular disks, like silver dollars, on every joint where I had arthritis.
This was bizarre. He thought maybe it was some sort of arthritis attack.
And he
really didn't want to disturb the *real* doctor, the "on-call," who'd been on duty too long and was exhausted and catnapping somewhere upstairs.
They didn't let my friend in the ER with me. Things were very different back then. Sort of...hostile, to patients and their friends in the ER.
I was sitting on a bed in a little cubicle that was enclosed with a curtain on a rod that they could never quite shut all the way. I couldn't see the whole ER but I saw part of it through the sliver in the curtains. This ER was enormous, endless, with a concrete floor, an industrial warehouse look to it. It was so huge the staff had
walkie-talkies to communicate from one end of the ER to another.
I quietly sat on the bed and slowly scratched myself bloody, watching these white and blue and red lumps grow on me with a sort of detached interest. Curious, those red coins on my joints.
The doc would come see me every 10 minutes or so. He'd check my vital signs, look around at the things happening to me, stroke his clean-
shaven chin as if he had a goatee, frown, and say,
Hmmm.
Then he'd turn around and leave and close the little curtain...almost...
It was a quiet night in the ER. Sunday night, I think.
A guy came in who'd been in an accident, maybe hit by a car.
I saw him through the little crack in the curtains. He was on a gurney. A couple of nurses and the doctor were hovering over him, hushed and serious.
His head wasn't right. But he was talking.
I was fascinated.
His head was caved in on one side like a basketball someone had stepped on.
But he was talking. How in the world could he talk?
I strained my ears. Was he saying, --Tell my wife I love her, tell my kids too, tell my parents I forgive them for that time they...
I heard the doc ask, --
BP?-- and a nurse say, --54 over 30 and dropping.
They really weren't doing anything with him any more. Just standing there watching him.
It sounded like he was describing a car accident. Some guy was going this way and hit him...
then he was quiet and they were too and they wheeled him away somewhere. Slowly. No rush any more.
The doc came back and looked at me and frowned and said,
Hmmm.
He turned around and almost closed the curtain. I could see him nearby at an upright table, almost like a lectern, with this enormous book on it. Imagine the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary, and double it. The book was anchored to the
lectern by a long and sturdy brass chain.
He opened the book and flipped through the pages, one by one. Looking. Looking.
I looked at the things happening on my skin. The lumps were growing into little blue-white volcanoes. Perfect cones the size of walnuts or bigger. They itched and hurt and I scratched and bled. I had several on each arm and leg, my left ear, my face, a particularly large one on the first finger of my left hand. The rashes were everywhere too, lots on my stomach and back. I was very small then and very limber and felt lucky I could reach every bit of my back to scratch it.
Everywhere I scratched, it left a red stripe. Any place on me that wasn't solid red, or white-blue, I had zebra stripes from head to toe.
The perfect red circles over my joints hadn't changed.
My friend J was allowed in for a brief visit. He told me not to scratch, that I was making it worse. I said, Ha! I don't believe that. How ridiculous! Ignorant. An old wives' tale. We quarreled, jokingly, and asked the doc to come settle our dispute. He said, Huh? all startled, and didn't smile, and said absentmindedly, --No, it's okay to scratch, try not to bleed though-- and left.
Haha I won!
They made J go back into the waiting room.
The doctor came back in and took my vitals and looked at me and stroked his chin and said,
Hmmm.
He almost closed the little curtain, and went back to the Big Book. He flipped pages, one by one.
Another patient came in the door. It was a woman in labor. I'd never been anywhere remotely near such a thing before, never learned much about childbirth. This was way before they had Pregnancy Friendly areas and attitudes in hospitals, and they weren't being very nice to her.
In my humble opinion.
She would scream. The doctor and two nurses gathered around her. They'd all look between her legs and say, --Push!-- and she would scream this bloodcurdling scream. I heard words that were strange to me - dilated, crowning. They ordered her to breathe in and out, in and out. They were very irritated at her, they spoke sharply and impatiently, all nasty and rude.
Finally when she screamed again one nurse said, --Oh, cut it OUT!-- in great scorn. --I'm not dealing with this shit anymore,-- she announced to the air, stalking away in fury. They wheeled the lady away somewhere.
The doctor did his thing and checked on me,
hmmm, went back out and flipped pages again, running his finger rapidly down each page before turning it.
Ah! Something new and interesting. The palms of my hands had turned bright red like the circles on my joints, pure brilliant red, like thinned arterial blood. Very pretty color. Eye catching.
Quite.
The blue-white volcano on my left forefinger was still growing. The finger was swollen way past sausage size, almost 3" wide. It was so huge it stuck out sideways from my hand, like a new limb all its own. The knuckle ached and I wondered if the bone would break.
As I watched it, very very slowly, the skin on top of the finger started to part.
This was particularly interesting. It was splitting wide open. Like a sausage overcooked.
But it wasn't splitting in a straight line really, it was more like interlaced fingers or threads pulling apart. Not tidy. Not how I'd thought a finger splitting open would look like.
By now, around four hours had passed. My eyes were swollen almost shut and leaking fluids and different kinds of goop everywhere, some yellow, some clear, some red. My ears were brilliant red and puffed all huge, standing away from my head at right angles like the guy in Mad Magazine. I had little beads of blood covering me from head to toe, scratching the skin off then absently cleaning pieces of skin from under my fingernails, wondering if itching could make a person go literally insane because I was concerned I might just start screaming like the pregnant lady and never be able to stop.
Instead, I asked them to bring my friend in.
He came. I was very tired but I concentrated hard because I wanted to tell him important things. If I didn't make it I wanted him to tell my family I loved them, and make sure the ex didn't come to the funeral. Have it be a regular one with an open casket if they could make me look okay, because people need to say *Goodbye* sometimes; but after that, cremate me.
He gave me a look and rolled his eyes and drawled, --
God, k, don't be so melodramatic,-- and grinned, and left, almost-closing the curtain behind him.
He walked up to the doctor, who was standing at the lectern flipping the pages in the Big Book, running his finger down the pages, still searching for an answer.
J said, --Hey.
The doctor looked up, startled.
My friend gently grasped the doctor's shirtfront in his fist and said very slowly, very quietly, --Look. If you don't know what the hell to do, get someone down here who does. Right now. Right now. I mean that.
The doctor looked at him and was quiet and then he said, Okay.
He went to the phone and made a call but I couldn't hear what he said.
A few minutes later, this man came in the room. He had curly light brown hair and a lantern jaw and high cheekbones and green eyes. A white shirt and a necktie, completely undone. Expensive gray flannel slacks. Sneakers. Back then, no one ever wore sneakers with good clothes, ever. I was amazed at his audacity.
He was one of the most handsome men I've ever seen in my life, to this day.
I grinned and thought, --Oh, so they sent an angel to save me. Nice.
He exuded competence from every pore.
I felt relief wash over me like a warm bath, like sunshine, like a rainbow.
He came in, shook my bloody hand, looked around, asked a couple questions. I couldn't talk very well any more. I told him how bad my throat and chest felt. --How does it hurt?
--Like an elephant is stepping on my chest.
He went to the newbie doc and said, with some impatience, --This is a classic case of delayed
anaphylaxis. Give her x
cc's of epinephrine and x
cc's of
Benadryl...
and he walked away.
And they did. There was a sudden change in atmosphere, a sense of purpose and direction. The two main nurses got busy and bustle-y, going in cabinets, prepping syringes, taking my
BP again and leaving the cuff on this time.
By now, around five hours had passed. They told me the shots would put me to sleep.
But they didn't for quite a while. I had to go to the bathroom, to poop, and I couldn't walk or anything, so the two nurses had to wheel me in to the bathroom and basically do most everything for me, and I was completely puzzled as to why I didn't feel all humiliated. They kept gossiping over my head the entire time, almost as if I weren't even there; and I thought perhaps that was why, and was grateful to them for being the way they were.
About fifteen minutes after the shots, I was hardly itching at all any more. The swellings were going way down. The red marks were fading. My finger stopped splitting open. And suddenly I was overwhelmed with sleepiness and I lay down and passed out.
A couple hours later, I woke up. It was morning. Everyone I knew was gone. There were different doctors and nurses and a hum of human activity instead of that eerie early-hour stillness. The new staff came in to talk to me, these people all interested and curious instead of impatient or bored. I was sent home with all sorts of instructions and follow-up appointments and told I'd probably need to rest for a few days, and they were right.
My friend J took me home and made sure I was safely inside. Just before I went to sleep in my very own bed, I thought about this: I had been sitting in that ER between a man who was dying, and a woman who was bringing forth new life. Death on one side, life on the other. I sat there in the middle, watching my body come unglued before my very own eyes.
That sort of experience is often life-changing, thought provoking, inspiring.
And still, I didn't feel one thing. I felt nothing inside. Nothing at all.
