nickOliva.com

This is a pulse oxymeter. You put it on your finger and it tells you your current pulse and oxygen level

On the morning of October 2nd, I went to a pulmonologist – a guy who had tried before to get me to do an invasive biopsy to see if I had a rare disease. Back then it sounded to me like a hugely speculative procedure… throwing darts… and I didn’t have it done.

This time, after blood tests and x-rays, he could not conclusively say I had the disease; a biopsy was still needed. But he knew I was in really bad shape and almost certainly had it. I don’t remember the entire conversation that morning. My body was shutting down and I was still exhausted and sleep-deprived.

I cannot figure out why I didn’t go straight into the hospital that morning. I asked the doctor weeks later why I didn’t and he said I told him I wanted to go home and rest. He already had experience of me turning down tests, so he didn’t fight me. Instead, he put his pulse oxymeter on my finger and it read 98 for oxygen… just as the picture here shows. Normal.

He said to me (translated from the Spanish we speak when we talk – he’s Colombian), “You have to get one of these. They’re cheap on the Internet. If you get it at a store it’ll be really expensive.” Then he got a phone call and walked out of the examining room as doctors do.

While he was gone, I called a few places I found on my phone. I found a place that would sell it to me that evening for $300 or $350 – I don’t remember exactly how much. When he came back I told him this, and that I was debating whether to buy it. He looked at me closely, thought it over for a second, and said, “Here. Take mine. You need to watch the top number – the oxygen. If the number falls to 90 and it doesn’t come up again… and you don’t get oxygen quickly or get to the emergency room, you’re going to die.” (This is exactly what he said, but I’m paraphrasing my translation because I don’t remember the exact words).

He explained to me that based on what was happening to me, without the meter, by the time I realized I wasn’t getting enough oxygen it would probably be too late to call 911 for paramedics to be able to save my life.

On the evening of October 2nd… hours after I had taken home Dr. Harvey’s pulse oxymeter… my oxygen reading started dropping and not coming back up. By the time the taxi made it across town to the emergency room at Weil Cornell, my oxygen level was at 90 and sometimes 89. Less than a minute after I walked in, gave them my name, and sat down, someone called me up. Showing them the meter on my finger, I said, “This belongs to Dr. Harvey. He said when it gets to 90 I had better be in the emergency room.”

Immediately, they put an oxygen mask on me and a swarm of doctors were upon me. They pulled up my records and probably saw Dr. Harvey’s notes. In no time at all they decided I would go straight into ICU. Under the circumstances, I may be misjudging time, but I don’t think an hour could have passed before they sedated me and put the tubes down my throat into my lungs.

But I didn’t intend to write about what happened to me that night, I want to celebrate Dr. Harvey for twice saving my life. The second time was as a pulmonologist. But there he was just doing his job.

The first time he saved my life was not as a doctor, but as a compassionate human being. Dr. Harvey first saved my life he moment he made the unprecedented choice to lend a patient he’s only seen a few times – an overly skeptical patient that rejected his previous advice – his pulse oxymeter. More than any of the other things that had to happen just as they did for me to be writing this today, that moment stands out to me. Even at the time, it freaked me out! It was only when he did that that I really woke up and broke through the sleep-deprivation, exhaustion, skepticism, stupidity, and pride, and said to myself, “He believes that I’m about to die!”

It was difficult to thank Dr. Harvey when I was recovering in the hospital. He’s a humble and simple person that just happens to be a very respected expert in a very complex field. And he didn’t dwell on what he did for me.  This is what you expect from a professional with dignity, but I still want to have a feeling that I have communicated my gratitude. I don’t have that feeling yet. I can’t think of what to do or say to feel that. I just have to accept that there’s no real way for me to get this person that did something that came naturally to him to understand that what he did was something truly exceptional.

On the morning of October 2nd, I went to a pulmonologist; with a simple, impossible, unheard-of, compassionate gesture, he saved my life.

Chemo Chic

The treatments so that I go into remission include a year of chemo. Sometimes people confuse chemo with radiation – not the same thing. I’m just taking a few pills every night. The thing about chemo is that it kills fast growing cells – bad ones and good ones too – which is why people often lose their hair.

I’ve been shedding so much over the last few days, the house looks like a barber shop without a broom. I don’t know yet if my hair is just going to thin or if it’s all going to drop – so for the moment, I’m going with the crew cut look. Later, if it starts to look funky, I’ll probably just shave it all off.

During or after the chemo, whatever hair I lose will grow back. A strangely odd qualification of this wherever the side effect is described is that it “may grow back with a different texture or color.”

We’ll see how this progresses. This was a homemade “do” with clippers bought at the local drug store. I did part of it and Andrea finished it off. Not bad, I think, for the first time I cut my own hair!