Transcribed from the El Cajon Fire 911 Emergency archives; 11:21 AM, June 30th, 2003.
Operator #342: “This is 911, what is your emergency?”
Caller: “It’s my wife. She has stopped breathing! Please send the paramedics right now, please!”
Ten Minutes earlier, 11:11 AM.
It’s so nice to have a Sunday off, I thought to myself as my wife “B—” and I lounge watching mindless television, drinking coffee, and catching up on small talk. “I don’t think I’ve had a Sunday off for at least six months”, I say.
“I know. It’s really nice isn’t it? We should have gone to church, though,” she scolds.
“True, but I’m really enjoying not having to go anywhere”, I answer.
I work as a family entertainer, so I’m usually working every weekend, performing as a magician, balloon man, or stilt walker at some kind of a party somewhere—especially the week before the July 4th holiday. My wife and I had celebrated our 18th anniversary that year and our four children were all home that morning along, with a family friend who had spent the night with my daughter Jessie. Normally I’d have already been off working by that time. However, that particular Sunday morning I had no jobs scheduled, so we were enjoying a quiet morning in our king sized bed.
Operator #342: “Your wife is not breathing, sir?”
Caller: “No. I think she’s dead! Can you please send the paramedics right now, please?”
Operator: “They are on their way sir. I do have your address, but I need to know, is it a house or an apartment?”
10:19 AM
B stands up to go to the bathroom. She starts to step towards the doorway when her body tenses up completely; like she is clenching—not just her fist—but her whole being. She stands straight up, her body stiffens, and then she falls backward like a cartoon character hitting cockeyed on the bed and bouncing sideways, wedging between the bed and nightstand.
“B? Hey B! Is something wrong sweetheart?”
No answer.
I scramble out of bed as fast as I can, grab her stiff body, and try to pull her off the nightstand and on to the floor. Before I get her to the floor, though, she suddenly relaxes completely.
When she goes completely limp and urinates all over both of us—I know that she is gone.
“What’s your name sir?”
“Dune”
“Okay, listen Dune; have you ever taken any CPR training in the past?”
“Uh . . . I took a class when I was in the seventh grade.”
That was twenty nine years ago.
“Good, now here’s what I want you to do…”
As I move to her side I yell, “Hey kids, the paramedics are on the way. When they get here, send them back into my bedroom!” Holding the phone with my left shoulder I start the chest compressions. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—breathe once, breathe twice. I think to myself, I guess things haven’t changed that much in all these years. I remember being taught to do seven chest compressions then one breath.
“Dune, the paramedics are on the way, just keep up the good work.”
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—breathe once, breathe twice. She’s dead, I’m thinking to myself. B’s dead. She’s not coming back. I felt her go. Where are those fucking paramedics? After all these false alarms, is this really it?
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—breathe once, breathe twice. Come on B, you can do it. . . Come back to us.
“Good work, Dune. Just keep it up. They’re on the way”
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, etc. etc. I don’t even notice that none of the kids had heard me yell earlier. I’m still alone.
Lather, rinse, repeat. . . .Over and over again. I don’t know how many times I counted and breathed, but it seemed like at least a hundred sets.
One, two, three, four, five—suddenly the room is filled with paramedics, dressed in bright yellow outfits, carrying equipment in every hand. Six paramedics flood into our bedroom and go to work. I have to jump on and over the bed just to get out of their way.
“They’re here operator, thank you. . .”
“Good work, Dune. You did a great job.”
Call ends at 11:29 AM.
The first paramedic in the room takes over doing the chest compressions, while the second paramedic gets the breathing bulb-apparatus started. A third man cuts off B’s nightgown and applies the gel for the defibrillator all over her chest and around, under, and all over the hands of the first responder. Another paramedic begins injecting multiple medications, a fifth is on the walkie-talkie to the hospital, and the sixth prepares the defibrillator. Finally we hear the words, “Clear!” Then, POW!
More heart compressions, more medication, more assisted breathing, and once more comes the call, “Clear!” POW! Thump. After multiple injections, the fifth time this same process is repeated, with the same result, “Clear!” POW! Thump. “No pulse—no respiration.”
I’d seen this same scene on television multiple times, but when B’s body arched off the ground and then bounced back to the floor limp and lifeless, I felt every shock.
I look at my seventeen year old son, “J—-“, who had been standing next to me since the firemen arrived, and we exchange knowing glances. We don’t say a word, but we both are thinking that there’s no use anymore. She’s gone. J’s eyes are wide and moist with tears.
The call rings out one more time, “Clear!” POW! Another powerful jolt of electricity shoots through B’s body, and she lands with another thump on the floor. One more time, there is no sign of life. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen– “Clear!” POW! Thump.
“I have a pulse,” calls out one of the lifesavers! “Respiration also! Okay, let’s get her to the hospital.”
Another kind of energy shoots through my whole being this time. Maybe . . . just maybe, but I didn’t let myself even start to hope yet. That would be too painful. This is probably the final blow.
They packed up their stuff as quickly as possible, strapped her to a gurney and worked their way out of the bedroom to the waiting ambulance. Maybe twenty minutes had passed since the original 911 call.
“You guys stay here, and I’ll let you know when I find something out at the hospital.” I hear the words coming out of my mouth, as I hug each of my children one at a time; my daughter also had a friend spending the night (hell of a night for a sleepover). “You got it J?” I ask—both of us knowing that I was asking him to take care of our family for me. He nods. We’ve all been through this routine so many times before. “Here’s some money, I’ll drive myself to the hospital.”
*************
Trips to the hospital, unfortunately, were nothing new for B and our family. She had been suffering from depression, anxiety, and debilitating back pain since my daughter was born. There was little doubt that for the past ten years or so she had been completely addicted to pain medication (Oxycontin, Soma, Ultram, Xanax, Morphine, and about twenty other kinds of pills as well). Her doctors had her on so much medication that she was completely high and numb all of the time. This is a partial list of what our family had been through in the previous ten years; She had six operations on her back, was being treated by seven different specialists, been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, degenerative bone disease, and has been on so much medication that I had checked her into a local mental hospital four different times (as well as another “rehab” hospital, and so many other ER’s it’s not even funny). Every time they would put her right back on the same pain medication as soon as she got out of lockdown, and I let them do it. I thought they were doing their jobs and taking care of her, but what we were all really doing was enabling her to keep using multiple drugs…legally—through her medically trained pushers.
One time she developed a reaction called “steroid dementia”, which happens with certain combinations of Oxycontin and steroids. With this drug reaction B couldn’t think, talk, eat, or do anything for herself; except walk around with her hands at her sides, staring blankly, and acting like a zombie. Talk about surreal. It was after this experience (which included three days in the mental hospital and then three more days in the regular hospital because she stopped breathing again) that I heard the first words that ever made any sense to me. She was doing better, physically, and I asked her doctor if he had given her any medication for her pain. He said, “That’s kind of funny. She hasn’t mentioned her pain once or asked me for anything, so I am not going to give her any pain medication till she does”. Of course, after she was released, her regular doctor started the all of the pills again, and we were off on another three years of hell.
In the few years B had a series of falls where she broke her knee, her spine, her wrist twice, and her shoulder so badly that she needed a titanium ball to replace the damaged bone. She also had a pain pump installed in her abdomen in order to continuously pump morphine to her spine. We had been visiting doctors and emergency rooms and pharmacies on a weekly basis for ten years. It was frustrating, maddening, and seemingly hopeless; but she was my wife, and the mother of our children. We hated the madness but loved her through all of the insanity. What else was there to do? Yes, we all knew it was insanity, but if you love someone (and are codependent I guess), you take care of them and become part of the mental illness of addiction. We, I should say I, supported the insanity by loving her through every step of the way.
**************
This time, when I arrive at the hospital, there is a social worker waiting for me. This can’t be a good sign; I think to myself, there’s never been someone here waiting for me before. I hear myself say, “Yes, I’ll guess I’ll take a Diet Coke, if it’s not too much trouble.” This is the moment when I start to panic. My head begins screaming at me! They don’t give free drink service at the emergency room! It’s all over—she’s definitely dead.
Of course, I was only alarmed…internally. Externally, I waited patiently for the next few hours, sitting quietly with the social worker. Waves of panic followed by breathing, denial, and then complete numbness. I wouldn’t or couldn’t let myself even start to feel. The truth is that I was afraid that if I let myself feel anything, I might begin to feel relief! And that thought scared the hell out of me.
The Social worker waits with me, sharing what kindness she can and asking me things like, “What was B’s religious affiliation?” I see the word come out of my mouth, “Catholic”, but I’m thinking about that word that she just used . . . ‘was’. My head starts to scream, WAS???? Breathe, calm down. Breathe. Don’t panic yet. Numbness, please God.
“Would you like for me to arrange a visit from the priest who’s assigned to this hospital?” Words, feeling dry and empty, dropping out of my throat; I say, “Sure that would be nice.” I can’t seem to really think about anything anymore—shock, I guess. Finally the time comes and an ER nurse opens the door. “Mr. C, you can see your wife now, and the doctor is ready to talk to you. Please come with me.”
“Hello, Mister C, your wife seems to be stable now. She’s breathing on her own, and her heartbeat has been fairly regular for a while, but we’re in no way out of the woods yet.”
Pause.
“We’ve had to shock her heart a few times since she’s been here, and I think you should be prepared that she could go at any time.”
Another pause, to let the words sink in, I guess.
“We can only do so much, when a body is ready to go, it’s ready to go. Let me ask you a question,” he says, “How long had she stopped breathing, before the paramedics got her heart started again?”
“Well…it would have been at least fifteen minutes or so.” I am trying to add it up in my head. “It took almost ten minutes for the paramedics to get there and then they had to shock her seven or eight times. . . So…” I feel my head shaking side to side as I say this.
“I thought as much. Listen, you have to prepare yourself for the fact that she probably will never wake up. And even if she does wake up, she’s probably going to have severe brain damage. The brain can only survive for six minutes without oxygen, before it starts to deteriorate.”
He looks me in the eyes for just a second or two, and then goes back to signing orders. He stiffly puts his hand on my shoulder for a moment, “Spend as much time with her as you like. We’ll let you know when we find out anything more.”
For the next hour or so I curse that seventh grade CPR class!
Why didn’t she just go? Why didn’t I just let her go? She’s going to hate me for keeping her here. My thoughts go on and on…she would have hated the thought of being kept alive as a vegetable. Plus she would have been free of all this, we would have all been free. Thinking and spinning, spinning and thinking. Talk about insanity. But what else is there to do—sitting by her side there in ICU.
After awhile I become lost in the rhythm of the place. Beep, beep, beep, swish, swish, beep, beep, beep. I watched the dials move and wiggle, numbers change; lights flash on and off, nurses and doctors moving about quietly…a constant rhythm.
Then I notice that her body is stiffening up again. I call the nurse over and say, “Look…something’s happening! What is it? What’s happening to her?”
“Nothing sir, that is normal for a person in her condition,” she says, checking the heart monitor.
“No, something’s happening to her,” I plead, “see how she’s all stiff…”
I must have had an insistent quality to my voice, because a different doctor who was attending the patient in the next bed looked through the curtains.
“He’s right nurse. She’s seizing again. Get me three CC’s of adrenalin—stat.”
Then, the wavy line on the heart monitor goes flat, and the speaker blares out that constant sound, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
The helpful doctor shocked her quickly, and her heart started beating again, but they asked me to leave, because they had more work to do on her body.
Goddamn it! I did it again. Why didn’t I just let her go? I’m such a stupid asshole! I just start to regret every stupid thing I’ve ever done in my whole life when I found myself back in the private waiting room; where the rest of my family there waiting. I told them what the doctor had said, and we all hugged each other and cry quietly.
“Dad, does that mean that we are going to have to decide to take her off of the machines,” J asks me, looking at me with so much pain in his eyes.”
It takes me a few moments to come up with my answer. “No J, I’ll definitely listen to your input. But I’m going to have to make that decision. You are not going have to be the one to have to make that decision.” Looking each one of them in the eyes I say, “None of you kids will ever have to make that decision.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Today, I try to do what friends of mine call “living life on life’s terms”; which basically means taking life as it comes, without going into complete denial. Denial has always been my very good friend. Denial is sometimes a very practical tool—it is always one of the stages of grief, and one cannot reach the state of acceptance without going through denial. It wasn’t till years later that I realized how bad B’s addiction was. I told myself that she was in pain and that her doctors were just helping her. They were just doing their job. However, the truth was that she was simply another addict—using to live and living to use—and I was supporting her addiction every single day. I told myself that it was easier than facing the truth.
We were no strangers to addiction and recovery. I met B in a 12 step program, and we both celebrated our 10th year clean before her medical addiction started. Her psychiatrist put her on the Oxycontin testing program, because it was “non-addictive”. I followed three years later by deciding to smoke a little weed—to help with the stress of my wife’s condition. Denial is an amazingly strong and seductive flaw. I learned to blank out my emotions. They always kept creeping in, trying to catch me, but I wouldn’t give them a chance to get a hold on me. I had to remain numb, in order to ride that rollercoaster of pain.
I made it through that week with the use of denial, numbness, and pot. Looking back, I’m not sure I was even actually present; a shell of a man going through the motions of working and living; trying to act as if I knew what “living” might really look like. Actually, I guess I used that whole process of pretend-living for a ten year stretch, now that I think about it…damn.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
July 1st, 2003
Over the next two days, we went through many more ups and downs—actually, mostly downs. B remained unstable; sometimes doing fine and sometimes crashing again. We found out that what happened was that she experienced a “potassium seizure”. One of the medications she was taking to keep the fluid out of her lungs (a diuretic called Lasix), causes ones potassium level to go down. Her doctor had given her potassium pills to take to (huge, monster, horse pills), but the pills were too big to fit into her medication boxes that I filled every week. She was supposed to take them on her own, but must have not taken enough, and I didn’t notice.
I spent most of my time either working jobs or at the hospital, she had many visitors, I made seven hundred dollars worth of cell phone calls, and we spent some time with the priest praying. On the fifth day after the seizure they moved B up to the fourth floor, because she had somewhat stabilized. It was July 5th, and I had worked all day the day before. She hadn’t shown any signs of consciousness at all, but her body seemed to be doing a little better. I was sitting with her when the priest stopped by again to see how we were doing.
“Hello Mr. C, how are you holding up?”
“I guess I’m doing okay Father; tired. How are you today?”
“I’m good,” he says, “I heard that they had moved B up here, so I thought I’d stop by and see about her progress.” He turns and speaks directly to B, “Hello B. How are you doing today?”
She lifts up her head and answers, “Hello Father.”
“How are you feeling today?” he repeats.
“I don’t know, okay I guess,” she answers, looking around, “Where am I?”
I start crying again, and rush to her bedside. The priest had no idea that she hadn’t been conscious or spoken at all before his greeting.
“What happened to me? I don’t remember anything.”
“You had a potassium seizure sweetheart; we thought we had lost you.” I hold her as tight as I can, weeping.
“Well, I guess I wasn’t ready to go,” she says simply. “It must not have been my time.”
She came back to us that day, but it wasn’t an easy process by any means. Her body continued to crash, get high fevers, and her heart stopped many more times. Eventually they put a breathing tube in through a hole in her neck, and a feeding tube into her stomach. The doctors gave her drugs to cause her to go into a medically induced coma, and she spent six weeks in and out of ICU before she was finally transferred to a rehabilitation hospital (where she immediately spiked a fever of 104° and died again).
I did everything I could to stay numb. One day, after two weeks at the new hospital, she and I were playing cribbage. It was hard to communicate back and forth, because with the breathing tube, she couldn’t talk. We used wet-boards, and paper to try and write, but that was hard for her also. It was extremely frustrating for us all, but is a vast improvement from the previous weeks.
“I can’t wait to get the hell out of this place”, she writes. Then, she looks me in the eye and grabs my crotch. I laugh to myself and think, “I think we’re going to make it. B’s definitely back!”
I thanked God for that seventh grade CPR class so many years ago!
Epilogue:
When they finally released B to come home, physically she was doing fine. I was scared shitless, but she was amazing really. She did have some memory issues, such as she didn’t remember anything for the previous year or so, but in every way it was a miracle. The most amazing thing is that she never mentioned her pain, never asked for any medication—and I didn’t give her any! I never took her back to any of her previous doctors or pharmacists, and as far as they were concerned, she had died. When we did visit a doctor for a checkup, she was perfect, not one of her previous diagnosis was present, and though we eventually began to get treatment for her brain injury, physically she was a whole new person. Our lives improved dramatically!
I’d like to say that everything worked itself out easily and that we lived happily ever after, but that’s not true. Eventually she started drinking again, and the whole cycle started over in a newly horrifying way. At first, I lived in denial again and thought that it was actually easier. She was completely disabled, hadn’t done one load of dishes since the accident, hadn’t cooked a meal or shopped for groceries, so I thought that at least it made her happy and got her out of the house. I thought her behavior was due to her brain damage and not her addiction. Again I was fooling myself, and was simply paying for one more ride.
I got clean once more in 2006, not because I wanted to, but because my son had been arrested with marijuana in his car, and he got sentenced to go to 12 step meetings. I laughed and said that sure, I could take him to meetings; but I wasn’t even considering stopping for myself. Except that I was already trying to clean my life in other ways. I had started college, but couldn’t remember the reading assignments. I told myself that I would stop using again to prove to my son that it could work—except that it wasn’t that easy. I was addicted to my drug of choice (pot) and it’s just not that easy to stop.
When I finally used the “one day at a time” method to quit, I told my son that that was it—I was done (hoping that it would help him see that it was possible for him). However, one month later my youngest son went to a Slipknot concert in Riverside and died of an overdose of ecstasy. No trip to the hospital, no drama, no warning; just a call from the coroner’s office at four in the morning saying, “I’m sorry to tell you Mr. C, but your son is dead.”
Was denial really the easier, softer way? It never is; it just extends the ride.
Luckily, I chose to stay clean in honor of my son, instead of going back to using. I embraced the program (meetings), stayed clean; got a sponsor, and have worked my steps again (which entails a lot of writing and looking at reality—instead of avoiding everything). I got into service, committed to ninety meetings in ninety days, and have been doing these things ever since.
B on the other hand, chose to make drinking, and lying to me about it, her full time occupation; just to ease her pain. It never, ever works. It’s just another form of denial.
I also got a therapist who specializes in brain injuries and she taught me that 85% of all brain injuries are caused by drug use; almost nine out of ten damaged brains from drinking and driving, falling off of something, crashing into things, or just plain falling down. She helped me to see the difference between brain injury and addiction. This new view of reality is actually what set me free.
At first I was enraged at her. When I realized that pain that our whole family had been through because of her addiction, I didn’t want to divorce her; I wanted to kill her! However, since I worked the 12 steps again, I’ve had to look at how I participated. I enabled everything to happen, because I was unwilling to fight against her demons or mine. Today, I am sad for her. I know that she actually stopped loving me many years ago (addiction is like that), and I also have faced the fact that the person I loved is not the person that she actually is or was. I loved an illusion of who I thought she was—and who I thought we were. Today, my life is much, much simpler. I don’t get to get high anymore, and THANK GOD FOR THAT! I’ll take this new life over my old one every day of the week.
I divorced B in 2010, and we now live apart. She has her own two bedroom trailer in a senior park, does her own shopping and dishes, and spends half of her income (after rent) on cigarettes and beer. I have tried to tell her how much I have grown, how much better my life is, because I am clean and working the program again; but she doesn’t want anything to do with all of that. She just wants to live her life, doing what she knows so well. She still thinks that “living” has to include roller coaster.
ONE FINAL NOTE
B finally died of cirrhosis of the liver in 2018. Unfortunately she never again found recovery.
Dune C. 