My Third Memorable Fainting Experience

      In 1979, I was living in a small town in the Canadian Rockies.  I was working in a cedar mill.  My wife was in university in Vancouver working toward her teaching license.  I would often take my mandolin over to the little house in town that Earl rented and we would play music together.

    Late one evening after we had played out, Earl mentioned to me that the fuel oil tank that sat beside the house was sinking into the ground and that he needed to somehow lift it up and put some blocks under one side of it.  I told him that the mill where I worked had a big jack that it used on its big loader.  I figured I could borrow the jack bring it over and we could jack up the fuel oil tank and set it right.

    It was agreed that was what we would do, so the next Friday I borrowed the big 20 inch chunk of steel that was the jack.  Saturday afternoon, I took it over to Earl’s and we jacked up the tank, and slide a concrete block under the low side, to level it again.  I put the jack back into my truck, said goodbye to Earl, and drove the jack back over to the mill.

  Once through the mill yard, I backed the truck right up to the door of the storage shed.  When I got out of the truck I carefully avoided the wet puddles in the ice because I was wearing my canvas running shoes.  I grabbed both handles of the heavy metal jack and in one motion I hefted it out of the truck, swung it around to inside the shed door, and lowered the full weight of it onto the thick boards of the shed porch, and the big toe of my right foot.  

    “Damn,” I thought, “this is not a good thing.”

              I lifted the jack off of my toe, sat down on the porch, and took off my shoe and my sock.  The nail was already discolored but at least my foot wasn’t bleeding.  I put my sock and shoe back on and drove home.

    Saturday night was hell.  My toe hurt like crazy,  I finally gave up watching television and decided to just go to bed, but that made the pain even worse, without any distractions, there was nothing but the painful throbbing of my big toe.  I must have dozed off a few times during that long, long, painful night, and eventually morning came.

    “I’ve got to get myself down to the hospital, and get some relief from this throbbing toe,” I decided.

            As soon as it was 8:00, I awkwardly drove down to the hospital and limped over to the admissions desk.  The doctor was there and came over to take a look.   When I finally got my shoe and sock off.  

    “Ooh,” he remarked, as he examined the purple/black nail of my big toe. 

            “We’ll have to make a hole in the nail to relieve the pressure.  We can burn through it with a wire.”  Then he instructed me to go over into a little kitchen, just down the hall.

    “Burn a hole in my nail with a wire?”, I thought dubiously, as I limped over to the kitchen.

    The doctor, accompanied by a nurse, had me sit down beside the small kitchen table.

    “Just prop your foot up there on the table.” Then the doctor showed me a paperclip he held in his hand.  “This will work just fine.” 

    With his surgical hands he unbent the paperclip, then turned on the stove.  He held the paperclip with a pair of pliers and lowered it to the red-hot stove element.  I was aware of nothing but the glowing end of the paperclip and watched with fascination as it was directed toward my blackish toenail.                                          

            I felt no additional pain as the glowing end of the paperclip burned its way through my nail and the dark blood began to spurt out from beneath my toenail.

    The nurse was busy wiping and cleaning my toe, when I notice that the panorama of my vision was quickly diminishing.  “I think I am going to faint,” I warned.

    “No, you are fine,” replied the doctor.

    “No, really,  I faint a lot, and I think I am going to faint.”

    At this point the nurse said something about my blood pressure dropping fast.  I don’t even remember how she knew that, but my vision by this time, was had been reduced to just a small circle and I felt myself fall forward.  I could feel the nurse straining to keep me in the chair and the doctor grabbed my other arm to support me.

    I was only half conscious, but I heard the doctor tell the nurse that they should take me to the empty room by the check-in desk.  The two of them, one on each side of me holding me up, half dragged me down the hall toward the hospital room.

    I wasn’t able to help much on this journey, but as we were working our way down the hall, through my fog, I looked up into one of the rooms we were passing, and there looking back at me was one of the high school teachers, visiting their son who had a broken arm.  

    “Damn,”  I thought, “I wonder what he is thinking; seeing me being dragged through the hospital, like a drunk on a Sunday morning”. 

    I was placed on a bed in the dark room, and slowly I was able to rejoin the world.

You can se my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Beautiful Homecoming

     Yesterday we spent a very long day of shopping and medical appointments up in Prince George.   That always makes for an exhausting, seemingly never-ending, drive home.  Al least yesterday, the boredom of the trip home was somewhat alleviated by spotting a total of six black bears grazing on the new grass along the edges of the highway.  Nevertheless, as we finally reached McBride and our road, I was very tired.

    When I turned into our driveway and looked down toward the house, I must say, my spirits were lifted.  Just seeing the evening sun highlighting the all of the light-green hues of the newly foliated spring trees, rejuvenated me.  As soon as I got the car parked in the carport, I walked up the driveway to photograph the colorful scene.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

My Second Memorable Episode of Fainting

      In elementary school I was a tall, strong, athletic kid who excelled in most sports.  I had won the 100 yard dash in my age class for the whole city of Evansville when I was in the 6th grade.  When teams were chosen in gym class or at recess, I was always among the first chosen.

    One morning when I was in the seventh grade, we were all lined up inside the gymnasium by the door, waiting as each one of us would be called to go outside and climb aboard the mobile X-ray unit, which was a bus that had been customized to house an X-ray machine.  We were being X-rayed for tuberculosis.

    I knew that X-rays didn’t hurt, but as I entered the unit, I caught a whiff of that hospital smell and something in the dark recesses of my brain shuttered.  I did as I was told, I removed my shirt and pressed my chest against the cold glass of machine, but then, down I went.

    Slowly my consciousness began to reappear, as nurses were scrambling to pick me up from the floor and sticking ammonia soaked cotton balls in my face.  I was helped down from the bus in front of all my friends and classmates, who were straining and stretching to catch a glimpse of the excitement.

    How embarrassing.  Big strong me, passing out while being X-rayed.  Even the wimpy and weak kids who always got picked on, managed to get X-rayed without hitting the floor.  What’s wrong with me?

    Luckily, I made it through high school without any fainting,  although there were several times at the dentists when I came close.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Playing In The Barn: My Hand Slips

     The photo above shows my uncle standing in the barn, decades after my misadventure.  It also shows some of the things I mentioned yesterday:  The bushel baskets, the tomato boxes, and most important for this story- -the ladder going up to the second floor ( its behind and above the tomato boxes).  Now, here’s what happened:

        Neal and I were chasing each other around up, down and around through the barn.  I think I was probably an Indian that day.  I always loved being an Indian.  I scrambled and weaved around the tomato planter on the ground floor, with Neal in hot pursuit, I reached the fixed ladder and rapidly climbed toward our fort in the bushel baskets on the second floor.

          As I quickly scrambled up the homemade wooden ladder, my hand missed the rung above me and backward I went, and down I tumbled, fortunately missing everything except for the floor.  As I fell, I put my left arm out to cushion my fall as I hit the wooden plank floor.

        Once horizontal on the floor, I glanced at my left hand and noticed a newly acquired abrupt jog in my forearm’s normal shape.   Even with my lack of medical knowledge, it obvious that my left arm was broken just above the wrist.

    Neal helped me to my Grandmother’s house, where my mother was called.  A temporary splint was made from a sturdy piece of cardboard to cradle my arm, and I was then driven to the hospital. 

            At the hospital, I didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t long before they placed a mask over my nose and mouth, told me to take deep breathes and start counting backwards from 100, as the doctor administered the ether. 

        When I woke up, there was a big chunk of plaster entombing my left arm halfway up to my upper arm, keeping it in a “L” shape, bent at my elbow.  I had broken one bone and fracture another in my forearm.  The next day at school everyone was surprised at my new acquisition and eager to sign their names on my cast, a custom I had never heard of.

It had always been a hassle lugging around my books and my trombone back and forth to school on the school bus, and now having the cast on my arm, certainly didn’t make the situation any easier, but I accepted my fate and eagerly waited for the month and a half for the cast to be removed.  Finally, my sentence had been served and I was driven to the hospital to get the now grungy-looking cast removed.

I sat in the hospital room and the doctor came over with a skill saw looking piece of equipment and when he saw the distress in my eyes, he explained that the saw would just cut through the plaster and because the blade just moved back and forth, even if it touched my skin, I would not be hurt.

As he turned on the saw, and it started vibrating through the plaster, a strange feeling began coming over me.  My head felt woozy.  My field of vision started narrowing around the edges, and became smaller and smaller.  I fell forward out of the chair, and to the doctor’s surprise, I lay sprawled out on the floor in front of him.

As I returned to the world, I found myself being helped back into the chair by some nurses and the doctor and was told to bend down, with my head between my knees.  

“You can’t faint, if your head is lower than your knees.” the doctor said.

A dab of ammonia soaked cotton was thrust toward me and I was told to smell it.  The vapors scoured out my nasal passages, and did a very effective job of waking me up.  

My brain, slowly got back up to speed, and I tried to digest what I had just experienced.  “So that is what fainting is”, I thought.  I had seen plenty of movies and television shows where people fainted, and now I had experienced it for myself.  I didn’t really care for it.

“That was strange,”  the doctor told me, “The saw wouldn’t hurt you,” and it didn’t, but something deep inside me had overcome reality, and down I went. 

        It would not be the last time in my life when “down I went.”

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

My Misadventure Playing In My Grandfather's Barn

 This is something that happened in 1957.

    The first day of school of my sixth grade year was only a half day.  Since we had the afternoon off, my best friend Neal and I were eager to make the most of this last breath of summer vacation so we  were running, chasing, and combating with each other in my grandfather’s barn.  It was a magnificent place, large and cavernous, but full of nooks and crannies for forts and our secret hideouts.

    Sliding open the large central barn door, we entered a dark cathedral-like area, accented with narrow shafts of sunlight slicing down from cracks in the siding.  (Photo below) 

            For the most part, the ground level floor was full of old farm equipment, except for the far end where there stood a mountain made of bales of straw.

    Once through the big sliding door, to the left a steep narrow stairway led down to the cobwebby unused stables in the basement.  It was empty except for the old manure-spreader, a hay rake, and the ancient old hand-cranked International tractor. 

    Just inside the barn door we could see the second level floors running along both sides of the barn’s interior.  To get up there, one could dash through the small doorway on the right, through the old workshop, then scramble up the twisty steps to a small upper room which was stacked high with old furniture.   (Photo at the very bottom of the page)

    From there, you had several choices:  You could shinny down the ropes back to the ground floor or you could scamper along the second floor open storage area, then jump across and down, to the bales of straw.  If you were brave, you had yet another choice, you could climb up to a third floor platform that spanned high across the ground level to the other side of the barn, skirting along  the un-railed ledge, then climb down to the second level platform that ran along the left side of the barn.

    This second floor area on the left side of the barn, was full of stacked bushel baskets and tomato boxes.  It was where we had hollowed out one of our hideouts.  This second floor on the left, could also be accessed from the ground floor by way of a fixed wooded ladder that ran up the wall.

    The barn which was full of excitement and possibilities, but for a 10 year old, it was also frocked with potential danger.  Jumping down to the bales of straw below, gingerly walking across the hand-hewn wooden beams above the plough and planter, or running along the naked edge of the second or third floor platforms, all had deadly possibilities, but through my eyes at the time, the barn was just a wonderful backdrop for adventure.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan

      This memoir covers an eventful month, followed by a difficult time period in the life of Susannah Cahalan, who, when this happened, was a healthy 24 year old young woman who worked as a reporter for the New York Post newspaper. 

             One day in 2009, she woke up and noticed two red dots on a vein which ran down her arm.  Susannah wasn’t normally a worrier, but she was concerned, thinking that the dots might be the result of bedbugs, but after a search of her apartment, she found no evidence of bedbugs, but nevertheless, she called an exterminator, but he too found no evidence of any bedbugs in her New York apartment.  However, Susannah couldn’t let go of the thought of bedbugs, and demanded that the exterminator fumigate her apartment.

        While still overly concerned by the thought of bedbugs, she experience a white-hot flash similar to what someone suffering from a migraine might have.   This was then followed by flu-like symptoms.  She began to think some sort of pathogen had invaded her body.  

            While her flu symptoms and headache came and went, Susannah noticed that she had begun being overly suspicious of her boyfriend, and even began snooping into his computer to read old emails from his previous girlfriend.   She realized that this was something she would have never done before.  Her headache returned and she began experiencing pins and needles in her arm, which lasted days.

    Susannah’s personality began to change.  She began to obsess about small things, and became paranoid of some people, thinking they were trying to harm her.  Knowing that something wasn’t right, she went to her doctor, who could find nothing, and suspected she was drinking too much, but had her take an MRI, which showed nothing except a small enlargement in a few lymph nodes in her neck.  This made the doctor suggest maybe she had Mono.  Finally having a diagnosis gave Susannah some relief.  

    While dining with her boyfriend before going to a concert.  Susannah became sickened with just the sight of the food she had ordered. At the concert she became dizzy and queasy   It felt like her legs could no longer support her weight.

    Her blood test came back saying she tested negative for Mona.  She began experiencing sleepless nights, and her work at the newspaper began to suffer.  Walking to work in the morning, colorful billboards began to hurt her eyes.  They seemed brighter than she had ever seen them.  She began to cry at everything, thinking her boyfriend didn’t love her, and she was bad at her job.  Her behavior became erratic,  She seemed to be having a some kind of breakdown.

    One night, Susannah’s grunts, low moans, and grinding teeth woke Stephen, her boyfriend.  When he turned over to see what was wrong, he found her sitting up, eyes wide opened, dilated, and unseeing.  Her arms shot out in front of him, and her eyes rolled back, as her body stiffened, and she began gasping for air.  Blood and foam spurted from her mouth through her clenched teeth.  She was having a seizure and the next thing she knew she woke up in the hospital.

    In the hospital more symptoms developed, her usual patience, kindness, and courteousness disappeared, she screamed to get out.  She became very paranoid, blaming people of ridiculous things.  She thought the people she saw on the TV screen were spying on her.  

           Her behavior become more bizarre and abnormal.  Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her.  Was she epileptic, a manic depressive, there was no solid evidence of what might be causing this abrupt change in Susannah’s personality.  She went from one doctor to another, until finally she was seen by a doctor who was exploring auto-immune infections in the brain.

    At one point, he ask her to draw a clock on a piece of paper.  When he saw that she put all of the clock’s numbers on just the right side of the clock she drew, he knew that the right side of her brain was inflamed.  A brain biopsy confirmed she had a rare form of encephalitis and he began to do the slow work that would hopefully bring Susannah back to the personality and life that she once had.

            It was a very long and difficult struggle for Susannah to get her personality back.  Her old friends were shocked at seeing how much she had changed by the encephalitis.   She could barely talk and certainly couldn’t concentrate on anything.   She had lost all of her confidence.   

            When she began researching for this book, she was horrified to see herself in the videos that had been taken of her, in the hospital.   It was like seeing a completely different person.   

           This book, and then a movie based on it, did much to publicize the auto-immune infection and make doctors recognize the symptoms of the extremely rare brain infection.    For me, the book reinforced how a person’s whole personality is dependent on the brain.  

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Showers at Dusk

     We had rain showers off and on all day yesterday.  That is typical Spring weather in the Robson Valley, and certainly welcome, after weeks of no moisture.   The showers continued into the night. 

    When I carried Kona outside for her final pee, the sky was dark, except for an area of light over the Cariboo Mountains.  That light nicely silhouetted  the chaos of clouds and showers falling on the mountains.  

    I have always found it interesting how quickly my feeling toward rain changes.  During those very dry weeks, I was desperately hoping for showe

rs, but after a day of getting them, I was edgy and ready to move on to sunshine and blue skies.

You can take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca