Charles and the Story of the Bleeding Brain

Some things are harder to joke about than others, but I managed anyway

This is a true story.

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When the urologist buried something into a part of me that is designed only to spray stuff out, I could have sworn I heard him hiss with glee, “Thith ith fun.” I pinky-swear that was followed by a criminal cackle as he rammed a long plastic hose in there like he was trying to see if the damn thing could be inserted down to my ankles.

My urologist preparing for an afternoon of fun at my expense; Image licensed from Adobe Stock, cropped by author

He seemed to be giggling as he attempted to force his torture device to do impossible things.

Trigger warning: If you suffer from serious health issues, you may not see any humor in this tale. I understand. Probably best to skip this one if so.

It was November 2024. Just a day or two before that most terrible of days when 70+ million Americans voted for… whatever the hell you call what is happening now. My body knew something was up before the rest of us did.

I was lying on a hospital bed, helpless, looking for something heavy and hard to hurl toward the urologist’s head as he mimicked an insane plumber wielding a drain snake into a pipe full of concrete.

“You’ll never break it open,” I whined. “All this because I can’t pee? Why do you need my pee so bad, anyway? What’s wrong with you people?”

More hissing and giggling.

Did I get swept into a 1970s Michael Crichton novel? I began to hope John Carpenter would end this grisly scene by walking in and saying, “Cut!” until I considered the possible ramifications of that wish.

When the cruelty finally ended, I tearfully snapped the urologist’s photo and posted it to a Facebook group called “Doctors Who Kill.”

So begins the story of the first ugly health scare of my life. Notice that I didn’t start the story at its beginning?

Hey, I’ve never been much for following rules, especially when it comes to writing.

What happened to me was serious, but my personality requires that I try to laugh. I make light of it because I must. And I’m also, quite frankly, not afraid to meet my maker, even though, as I explain here, he’ll probably not be overly thrilled to see me.

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This story begins with a walk home from the store. I rent space in a big house in Atlanta from an older gent I’ve grown close to over the last few years. He was tending the garden in front of the house when I returned from the store. We started yakking. Everything seemed fine.

As I opened the front door after we finished talking, I felt weak in my knees and dizzy. I should have known something was up because I had been suffering from vision problems for a couple of days. I had made an appointment to see the eye doctor because I was afraid it was glaucoma, which my dad had suffered from before he passed away. The symptoms seemed similar to what my dad warned me of years ago.

I collapsed on the bed, barely able to stay on my feet. For the first time, I was scared that I was about to meet my maker.

I had no prior experience with a health crisis. My only other visit to a hospital was for a bleeding ulcer for a night, which got fixed up right away, and I was as good as new. “Stop taking orange juice with your aspirin,” the doctor admonished as he said his final goodbyes. I ran out of the hospital exit like I had fire ants in my shorts, swearing to never return.

I dutifully followed the doctor’s instructions, wondering why a being so far above my pay grade couldn’t make a stomach lining that could handle a little orange juice with my aspirin.

There’s an urgent care clinic a block away, so as soon as I felt able to walk again, I braved the short trek to find some help.

The walk to the clinic was surprisingly difficult for someone who walks a lot. This added to my fears about meeting my maker, who I already know is going to yell at me a lot when he finds out I’ve snuck into his house of benevolence without his permission. This article alone is probably going to send me into the waiting room for a few hundred years.

It doesn’t help that I write stuff like this:

The Story Where His Lordship Drops a Jesus Bomb

“What are you doing here?” I imagined him asking as I struggled up the steps to the clinic. “Don’t you have some smartass story you would rather write about me?”

“Dude, my appearance here was not my idea,” I imagined myself responding as my blurred vision tried to find which door handle to try of the two I was seeing. I swiped at one, but came up empty. I scored on the second try.

When I entered the urgent care facility, the intake receptionist got me in to see someone almost immediately after I told her what was happening. No waiting, even though there was a crowd of other people impatiently tapping their feet. I guess triage came into play.

Thus began a series of amazing events led by a bunch of people I didn’t know who were dedicated to saving the life of someone they didn’t know.

When the urgent care nurse took my blood pressure, his eyes bugged out like he was a cartoon character whose tail had been yanked.

“We need to get you to an ER.” He didn’t say “stat,” which I found a little disappointing, but I was too busy apologizing under mumbled breath to my maker about some of my more unpleasant habits to worry much about that.

“I was just hoping for a pill,” I said, even though I’ve had, like, one prescription my whole life.

He called someone else in, who peeled open my eye and shined a light, then looked at the other guy like they should probably just call the embalmers straight up.

“Do you have a preference for where you want to go?” one of them asked.

Not realizing that I’d have a choice between heaven and hell, I shrugged: “Kinda?”

“Well, we’ll just send you to the closest one, Emory,” the other said. Before I could ask if I would have time to pick out a coffin, he said, “They’ll take good care of you.” And then, before I could say, “formaldehyde,” I was whisked off in an ambulance.

“You seem like very nice people,” I wanted to say to my transport specialists as they careened down Atlanta’s pothole-filled pathways some call streets. And they really did. It was my first direct experience with these kinds of folks, and I saw the appeal right away.

People who do this for a living are wired differently than many of us, I think. You can see it in their eyes. Even though they encounter tragedy almost every day, they have this look that reflects a sheer determination to save your ass.

I can’t say that was the first thing that came to mind. I came to that realization later, when I arrived at the hospital ER and found myself in a room buzzing with people whose eyes carried the same worried look as the paramedics and the urgent care nurses.

As I lay on the gurney getting wheeled around to various pit stops, I started thinking about TV hospital shows. “This is just like a hospital show,” I thought. “Absolutely no difference.” I was sure Noah Wyle would show up armed with a stethoscope and say earnestly, “We’re gonna do the best we can, but I gotta be honest, the prognosis isn’t good.”

Noah Wyle photo via Wikimedia Commons

I soon became one with an assortment of tubes and machines. Instantly, I became a cyborg. They quickly replaced all my blood (I think), pasted about 5,000 electrodes onto my chest, and asked me how I felt.

“Never better!” I exclaimed. About half of the 40 or so people tending to me laughed.

A woman in a white smock came in and identified herself as Doctor Henry (I’m making that up because I don’t remember her name). She also casually mentioned that she was a cardiologist.

“Oh, my heart is fine,” I said. “I had an EKG when I applied for life insurance a while back.”

“I’m sorry, but you have an AFIB condition,” she replied.

I told her that I felt like I had pretty much conquered lying when I was 12 or so, back when I was busted by Mr. Henry (no relation to the cardiologist) for stealing a small sack of nails from his hardware store.

“Atrial fibrillation. It’s an irregular heartbeat,” the bemused heart doctor responded.

Wait, I wanted to ask (I wanted to ask a lot of things that I never did), “When did that happen? I exercise all the time and even kind of eat okay.”

“You also have a brain bleed,” said another person in a white smock.

“Wait, what?” I wanted to yell. But I didn’t want to yell at these people. They were all very nice. Also, “Who are you?”

Among the pit stops I mentioned earlier was a quick visit to a very pleasant CT scan operator. I’m not being sarcastic (a necessary disclaimer for those who know my writing). She was very sweet. They were all nice. Except for the lunatic with the hose I mentioned earlier, who had ascended temporarily from the hell of Mar-a-Lago or some such, either as a warning about my future in the afterlife or a warning from the predator-in-chief to stop writing mean things about him.

That’s not me, but we all look the same on the outside to these big electrical donuts. It’s on the inside that we look different. Image by Ramin.essamanas via Wikimedia Commons

It’s amazing how nice hospital people are when you’re about to die. You’d think they thought I’d be leaving them all money (fun fact: I’m a writer: I ain’t leavin’ anybody any money).

Anyhoo, the person in the white smock told me that the results of the CT scan showed that my brain was awash in a sea of blood. Yuk. Also, “Really?”

I put on a brave smile, but I was scared now.

Then the cardiologist chimed in again, saying that the AFIB triggered the brain bleed.

“So, in other words, you folks are very gently telling me I had a stroke?”

“Your cholesterol levels and sugar levels are good,” said the cardiologist, who apparently didn’t do brain talk. She explained that there was nothing in my blood that indicated anything beyond a random event. The AFIB was just dumb luck, probably caused by high blood pressure. I hadn’t been on a doctor’s visit in some time, mainly because of changes in providers and insurance plans, so my high blood pressure didn’t get caught.

Confused, I asked them how my blood pressure could be high if my blood work came out well. I also eat pretty well and exercise. Not perfectly, but better than a lot of people my age. I was confused.

After more blood work was done, they found out that my potassium levels were a little low, but ultimately, they blamed stress and the problems I have sleeping, which came out during my aftercare consultations.

When I was in the ER and was told I was headed for the ICU, my first fear was that I’d have an insane roommate who constantly yelled, “Help!”

Backstory: When I was a younger lad, I filled vending machines for a snack company, and I remembered an old guy yelling “Help!” every few minutes at a nursing home that was on my route. This was the guy I was expecting in my room.

Instead, much to my surprise, I was given a room with no roommate. In the hospital world, this is known as the executive suite.

I developed an unspoken crush on about half my nurses, whom I frequently amused with bad jokes throughout the process. One of them drew a heart next to my name on the whiteboard after the first night, which helps their co-workers know that a patient is easy to get along with.

You get to know your nurses when you’re in an ICU. They come in to check on you frequently, and spend a lot of time fussing with you and taking your vitals and warning you about urologists (“pee into the bottle or endure agony that will leave you begging to see your maker”). And they work long, 12-hour shifts. I have mad respect for them.

It’s thankless work, so I spent a lot of time thanking them.

Pro tip: Treat your attending nurses and medical techs like the angels of mercy they are. Trust me, they return the treatment tenfold. And they love a good sense of humor. I even thanked the urologist after he attempted to drill through the concrete he thought was in my urinary tract. Then I threw a carefully fermented large bottle of pee at him.

I spent several days in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Emory Hospital Midtown in Atlanta. This was a brand new experience for me, and since that’s where I had the pleasure of meeting my urologist, I’m hoping it’s a one-time thing.

But overall, it was a positive education. I met a lot of wonderful people who treated me like I was the most important person on earth, and who were determined to see me through my first health crisis.

Sure, they skitter off to the next room and do the same thing, but that’s what makes it all so beautiful.

Today, I feel much better. Although each day is still a challenge, it is less so than several months ago.

When I found out later that people with my kind of stroke have a 75% mortality rate, I nearly had a heart attack.

This is serious business. Every day is now serious business. For someone who can’t sit still long enough to eat a donut (I’m not allowed to eat donuts), it’s brutal listening to my body when it says, “Nap, or die.”

I still can’t see well when I read. I often see this instead of what you see:

Screenshot from the Abortion Every Day Substack by Jessica Valenti: Check her out!

My right shoulder and the back of my neck ache frequently, for no discernible reason. When I work out, the discomfort clears up. My neurologist says the discomfort is stroke-related. “Keep up the good work!” she says with one finger on the Zoom disconnect button. I’m able to exercise, and my cognitive skills don’t seem any worse than they’ve ever been (my friends and family will tell you they’ve never been particularly good).

And yet, although everything is much better, everything is harder than it was before all this. I measure each day by how much better it was a month ago, or two months ago, or six. And I see progress by every measure. I don’t give up easily. I don’t have a lot of quit in me. Even though I’m not afraid of what comes after.

And most of all, I’m grateful to those dedicated healthcare practitioners who helped see me through the worst November ever.

This stuff is expensive

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Notes

I’m grateful to my subscribers, too, who honor me with their time and sometimes even their hard-earned money.

Another pro tip: Get regular checkups as you get older. No matter how healthy you feel. Don’t be me and end up with a surprise hematoma dancing with your neurons.

I didn’t really throw a bottle of pee at my urologist. Sadly, it was beyond my reach.

Thanks for reading!

Portions of this story first appeared on the Medium platform