THE SEARCH FOR MR. ADEQUATE
12/8/06

By Susan Silver

The 411 on 911 

I told you guys that I was really sick and after a few days I called the Doctor who prescribed some anti-biotics. It seemed like the flu. But after I took the first anti-biotics I started to feel better. I did everything you’re supposed to, drink fluids, sleep, and was overdosing on cough meds when…da dum,

da dum…that’s shark approaching noise…I got a major coughing fit late Friday night around midnight. You know where you turn red and can’t stop the dry coughs.

Only it was more than a coughing fit. My throat suddenly CLOSED OFF! There was this giant suction sound. And I couldn’t talk or breathe. At all!

Everything started to go in slow motion and I do remember saying to myself...oh oh…I am dying. Now what? Call 911!  Except I couldn’t talk! I tried to pull my throat open and nothing…I finally called downstairs and managed to whisper to the Doorman to call 911. He wasn’t sure who it was, as which apartment calling is not indicated, but said ok.

I threw on a coat over my p.j.s and tried to be calm as I made it downstairs. I was now making strange wheezing sounds and trying to breathe and he kind of looked at me panicky. I told him to call the Super...not home. I asked him if there were any doctors in the building. He said no. I had him call two of my friends who had just come home and they rushed downstairs.

We waited about 20 minutes and when I had calmed enough to be really pissed off at EMS, we went back upstairs and called again. Now here is the part I’m telling you guys so you know what to do if God Forbid this ever happens to you:

WHEN YOU CALL 911 YOU HAVE TO TELL THEM WHAT IS WRONG OR THEY DO NOT PRIORITIZE IT AS AN EMERGENCY.

When the Doorman called, he didn’t say “she stopped breathing”…so they were taking their own sweet time. Now, they came right away.

Find another job, jerk!     

The EMS team came up and the guy was a real jerk. I was coughing my ass off and the first thing he does is glare at me and say “Hey…don’t cough on me!” (The ‘Bitch’ part was implied.)

I am barely breathing and he is yelling at me? Excuse me? The woman, a lovely person named Esther was much nicer. They ask you a lot of questions and thankfully my friends could answer as I couldn’t talk that easily.

They then strap me on the gurney and bump me around and knock me around and throw me into the back of the ambulance. Then, the jerk is “cold” and so he knocks the gurney back and forth a few times to trigger the heat or something. I ask him what he is doing and he says nothing.

I’m not going to go into the icky details of the Emergency Room out of a thirties horror film on mental wards ala Snake Pit, but in the end it seems I have pneumonia and had something called a “stridor” attack. Which is the trachea freezing up from a coughing spasm.

By four thirty a.m. I was back home. I am still in some kind of traumatic shock I think. And here is what I’ve ruminated on and learned over the past few days:

1. Don’t kvetch about another birthday coming…it might not.

2. Thank god for good friends. Make some of your neighbors.

3. Tell your building to have a system in place for emergencies. My building is rethinking theirs.

4. Life can turn on a dime…one moment I was high as a kite from my glorious experience at the Renaissance Week which I will tell you about next week I promise, and then the next second…oy!

5. I am thinking it would be good to have a roommate. Or live in help!

6. I think everyone needs to be married to a Doctor!!!! Listen, any of you Doctors out there…you don’t even have to be Adequate, as long as your license and practicing skills are good. Call me…no I mean it…call me!

On a lighter note, on Sunday, I was feeling really sorry for myself that I missed all the Birthday plans, and then the Precious Boys called to sing Happy Birthday and Ben threw in “and many more.” I asked him how old he thought I was and he said “fourteen.”

The little guy, Natie, was repeating what his mom is telling him and told me to please have a “gate day.”

After talking to them…it was the “gatest.”

The trip to Palm Beach and Art Basel/Miami is off. Back to bed for now…pity party continues. Hey it’s some kind of celebration.

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