Lynzee Szabo
12 May 2011
Block 1
Gurian

When I was twelve years old, and in seventh grade, I went on a retreat with my class. Retreats were something that everyone looked forward to; weather it was getting away from the family for a little, sleeping in a huge room with your ‘besties’ ( boys in a different cabin of course), or just the crisp mountain air. Repelling, rope walking, nature hikes and bonding activities were among the many activities we got to partake in: so you’d think I would have gotten my infection in a cool way like, a snake bite or a very rare mushroom grazed my ankle. But here is how it actually happened.
It was eleven o’clock and ‘lights out’ time, I was crawling into my top bunk, my best friend Taylor insisted she had bottom, and bang! I kicked the side of my bunk with my right ankle. Yeah, it stung a little but no comparison of what was to come.
The next morning I pulled on my jeans and T-shirt, ran across the hall into the girls crowded bathroom to put on make- up, ran back down the hall, threw on socks and shoes, and went to eat breakfast. The only time that I remember my ankle bothering me was during and right after the nature hike. In which, our instructor had informed us that he could tell what gender a deer was from eating its feces, and warned us of the ‘wild llamas,’ in the woods that we could only pet if he was around.
I honestly don’t remember a lot after that other than complaining and asking my mom to take me to the doctor’s. The next real memory that I have concerning this event was about two weeks later. My mom had let me stay home because it was getting tough to walk with my ankle twice the size that it was normally. I decided to take a bath to try and relax and all of a sudden the phone rang. I remember rushing to grab a towel and to go answer it because it was only in the other room and I knew that my mom likes to call to check on how I am doing. On the way to the phone, that was lying on its side on the counter of the bathroom, I tripped over me towel and landed right on my right ankle. I pushed talk on the phone and forced out a, “hello?” The second that I heard that I was right and it was just my mom I started crying with each throb of my ankle. The next thing I knew I was hopping across the vented floor through the glass automatic doors; and we were in the doctor’s office at about three o’clock in the afternoon.
I have always loved the smell of Kaiser and when I hopped in I remember letting the cool air fill my lungs through my shallow breathes and comfort me as much as it could. The receptionist saw my ankle and immediately gave me a wheel chair so my mom could roll me the rest of the way. I remember my mom trying to lighten up the situation and push me fast or slow and spinning me but I was in no mood to giggle. Looking back on those moments I feel bad because I understand that she was going through a hard time too. After passing the little kids crying to their mom, because the flu was hurting their little throats, the doctor called to see me. He didn’t even have to look at me long to decide that I needed an x-ray.
I will never forget the x-ray room. A small and enclosed room accompanied with a way too high bed that is as comfortable as lying down on hardwood floor, the menacing computers and screens that refuse to speak in a language you understand.
The lady that took my x-ray appeared to be nice; tired from a long morning shift perhaps, with brown hair. Her cold hands pinched my swollen ankle as she tried to adjust it to the right angle for the camera to get a good picture: seeing as how I had been trying to keep my ankle as still as long as possible I thought that she was crazy for moving me so freely. Each finger shot pain to my heart shortening my breathing and daring tears to fall.
Next we wait. We had been waiting three hours when, finally, the doctor was ready with the results. This doctor was Asian and a very happy looking man. In his mid-forties, I assumed, and he made fun of the nail polish on my toes. I had painted them a teal green color at the retreat. It was actually a nice contrast to the tired interns avoiding eye contact. My mom wheeled me into a secluded room where he would tell me in the happiest way one could, that there is a slight chance that I have strep in my ankle. What this meant was that if I had waited any longer to come to the doctors I would have had to get my leg amputated from the knee down because it was spreading into my calve muscle. The next instruction was the beginning to a long night. I was to go the Hospital and into the ER room to get my ankle drained and tested; because either way, there was a liquid in my ankle that should not be.
At this point, I was starving and resorted to crying until I got food. We drove through McDonald’s around six at night.
The drive to the hospital was quiet despite the radio playing familiar country tunes and the murmur of assurances from my mom every now and again.
When we arrived at Good Samaritan they handed me a wheelchair that could fit three of me. My mom got off the phone to tell me that my dad was on his way and if I waited here she’d be back: she just had to check me in. I watched those automatic doors like my life depended on it. Thirty minutes later he came walking in and I wanted to run to him but I was confined to the wheelchair by the wall. A few moments after my dad arrived, a girl a little older than me, arrived in a soccer jersey screaming and crying about what I assumed was her leg because she was not using it. Immediately my dad told me to get up out of my wheelchair and he gave it to her; which, the doctors wheeled her away in.
Finally, they called me in and my parents and I were all relieved. First thing was first and they needed to check my vitals. What is your weight, even deep breathes, etc. Soon I was transferred into an ER. This room was not what I expected at all for an ER. The walls were covered in a continuous mural of a depiction of the ocean. A huge grinning sea turtle hovered over my parents as fish swam by as if exchanging good morning hellos. A nurse followed us in holding a gown and before I knew it she had it thrown over me and I was lying on the bed. I watched her closely as she prepared the IV and began to insert the needle into the crease inside my elbow. When she left I watched the liquid travel from the bag and begin to enter the needle, and eventually me arm. I could feel the cool saline enter my bloodstream and flow up my arm. I got chills and when I shook them off a stranger walked casually into the ‘underwater’ room. He was wearing a white overcoat and an unreadable expression, it intimidated me. He first asked how I was, I answered, fine; and then he began to talk to my parents about my condition while his hands expertly shuffled through cabinets searching for the right equipment for my treatment.
As he turned towards me, I have to admit, my breathing became shallower. In his hands were two, two inch needles connected to two tubes, one empty one full of clear liquid. He informed me that the full one was to numb my ankle so that he could drain it.
As he stuck the first needle in I could hardly feel the sting until he forced the liquid into the muscle and the nerves startled awake by the newly added crowding. He smoothly took it out and put the now empty vile on a tray that the nurse had prepared aside for his use. After about thirty seconds he asked me if I could feel my ankle when he touched it. At the moment all I felt was a light brush as if a feather had brushed up against me so I thought I was numb. I told him no. A mistake I realized as soon as he sent the next needle in with less care and began rotating the angle of the needle to get all the liquid out of my ankle that he could. At this point my most vivid memory is of me attempting to kick him while screaming I hate you. This was also a mistake because kicking a doctor while he has a needle in your half- numbed ankle is an awful idea.
When he was finished he slowly pulled the needle out and showed me what he had taken from my ankle. It looked foreign to me and I don’t want to describe it to you. He told us he would be just a minute and then he left. The second he left, and the latch clicked on that door, I let out a deep breath that I didn’t realize I had been holding.
A few minutes later the sting of my ankle had faded away until I couldn’t feel any part of my ankle, heel, or toes. A nurse came in with a silver portable DVD player. She had put the movie Shrek 2 in it to lighten the news that it would be a little while longer.
Two hours and a land, “far far away” later, my doctor came back in without the test results. They would not be ready until tomorrow but the safest card to play, he explained, was surgery first thing in the morning weather the results were positive for strep or not. I was to spend the next seven days in one room in that hospital, and my life would be changed.